Egypt’s month-long parliamentary elections enter their third and final phase on Thursday with Islamists continuing their impressive run and judges pressing for guarantees against state interference.
Violence that marred the first two phases of the vote and the level of interference by security forces or thugs said to have been hired by the regime of President Hosni Mubarak prompted Egypt’s United States ally to express its concern.
The Muslim Brotherhood was already the country’s main opposition force before the polls kicked off three weeks ago, but the extent of its gains in the first two phases of voting took everybody by surprise.
The officially banned movement has already secured 76 seats — five times its tally in the outgoing Parliament — and stands a chance of reaching the 100 mark after the final phase, for which it fielded another 49 candidates.
The second phase of voting saw the country’s respected judges — tasked with supervising the polling process — mount an offensive against fraud, openly alleging organised rigging against the Brotherhood.
Judges will this time be deployed outside polling stations to ensure voters are not blocked by police and have ordered that results for each polling station be announced publicly in the tallying centres.
The areas involved in the third phase include the Sinai peninsula, where votes are traditionally cast along tribal lines, and parts of Upper Egypt.
Tensions are expected to be rife in the Nile Delta regions, north of Cairo, where most Muslim Brotherhood candidates are running as independents.
Arrests
About 500 Islamist sympathisers and Brotherhood campaign organisers have been rounded up by the security services ahead of the third phase, in what the Brotherhood charges is an attempt to slow its momentum.
”The police are arresting them in their houses, in mosques, in the street and confiscating computer hard drives,” Abdel Moneim Abul Futuh, a senior Brotherhood leader, said.
In last week’s latest round of polling, tens of thousands of voters were barred access to polling stations by police or prevented from casting a ballot after last-minute changes in voter registries.
Washington, which has made Egypt one of the kingpins of its policy of democratisation in the Middle East, expressed its displeasure at the violations.
”These are sources of real concern. And we have spoken to the Egyptian government about these concerns,” State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said on Monday.
‘Message to US’
Presidential runner-up Ayman Nur, who was denied victory in his own Cairo stronghold in the first round, said the regime has chosen to crush the secular opposition.
”The rise of the Brotherhood is of course the reflection of the movement’s strength, but the regime had decided to use it as a message to the United States,” he said.
”They are saying, ‘You will get Islamists in power if we leave’. It was designed to scare the West, but they hadn’t quite counted on such scores,” said the Ghad party leader.
The Brotherhood has conducted a well-crafted campaign under the slogan ”Islam is the solution”, but its critics have demanded the movement spell out its political programme.
In Wednesday’s London-based Arab daily al-Hayat, Brotherhood spokesperson Issam al-Aryan suggested splitting the movement into a ”civil” political party and a religious-based charity network.
Yet the movement’s various currents and generations hold differing views on the path to follow.
Its new-found political strength will likely boost its case for legalisation as a political party, although the ruling party and Washington have consistently ruled out such a move. — Sapa-AFP