Egypt’s month-long elections are heating up as voters prepare for a new round on Sunday that could see Islamists chip away further at the ruling party’s dominance in Parliament.
More than 120 seats remain to be decided in runoffs for the second phase, which kicked off on November 20 and prompted a surge in irregularities and violence that claimed the first deaths of the elections.
Last Sunday’s polling, which centred around the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta, saw the officially banned Muslim Brotherhood inflict a stinging defeat on the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP).
President Hosni Mubarak’s NDP only garnered eight seats while the outlawed Islamist movement won 13 outright, bringing their tally half-way through the polls to 47, trebling the number of MPs they had in the outgoing Parliament.
”The NDP is determined to win two-thirds of parliamentary seats and will do so by hook or by crook. This being the case, we can expect further violence and chaos in the next stage of the elections,” commentator Salama Ahmed Salama said in the state-owned al-Ahram Weekly.
On November 20, the driver of a candidate was beaten to death by what monitors said were NDP thugs in Alexandria, whose streets were the scene of pitched battles between rival supporters armed with truncheons and machetes.
On Wednesday, a man was killed when supporters of a newly-elected MP northwest of Cairo seized backers of a losing candidate, tied him to the back of a tractor and dragged him through the streets, police said.
The respected syndicate of judges this week demanded the protection of the army, due to what it described as the police’s ineffectiveness and sometimes complicity with ruling party thugs.
Egypt’s attorney general said on Thursday he had received 123 complaints following last week’s round of polling, some of them from judges manning polling stations.
A female judge who supervised polling in the northern district of Damanhur said she had been forced by the head of the local electoral commission to leave during the counting process.
Noha al-Zeini, Vice-President of the administrative court, explained in an open letter published by the independent daily al-Masri Al-Yom that the local Muslim Brotherhood candidate had been stripped of his victory over the NDP candidate.
However, widespread accusations of rigging have not prevented the Islamists from making historical gains that caught the regime off guard and sparked concern among secular and Christian Egyptians.
”Who’s afraid of the Brotherhood?” was the frontpage headline in al-Aram Weekly on Thursday.
The movement deliberately fielded only around a third of the maximum 444 candidates nationwide. So far, the Brotherhood’s success rate hovers around 50%, suggesting it could win fair and fully contested elections.
”We ask for the application of the teachings of Islam,” said leading Muslim Brotherhood Hazem Salah Abu Ismail in Cairo. ”How can one claim they are being observed when alcohol is sold in poor neighbourhoods with official authorisation?”
Comments such as these have raised concern over the Brotherhood’s programme — which has remained vague behind their campaign slogan ”Islam is the solution” — and their policies if they were to gain power.
The regime accused the Muslim Brothers of having initiated the violence.
”Reject those who extort your votes through money, thuggery and religion. We are running in the elections in the name of all moderates and the silent masses,” NDP chief Safwat al-Sherif said in the government daily al-Gomhurriya.
The NDP’s dominance in Parliament is not at risk, but the seemingly inexorable rise of the Brotherhood has thrown the issue of their legalisation as a party wide open.
The secular regime, backed by the United States, has consistently ruled out this option.
The third and last phase of the parliamentary elections will kick off on December 1, with run-offs to be held six days later. – AFP
