Egyptians trickle to local poll amid violent protests

[Marulus]

Egyptians trickle to local poll amid violent protests

‘Results were known before voting, the ruling party has already won two thirds of vote’

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

CAIRO: Few Egyptians headed on Tuesday to a municipal poll boycotted by the main opposition group the Muslim Brotherhood, against a backdrop of popular discontent over price rises in which one person has died.

“The results were known before the voting, the ruling party has already won two thirds of the vote because they were uncontested,” said the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights in a statement.

The vote was a shoo-in for the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) of President Hosni Mubarak, which is fielding a candidate for every one of the 52,000 council seats up for grabs, following a clampdown on the opposition.

But the regime is under mounting pressure after two days of unrest in the Nile Delta industrial city of Mahalla el-Kobra.

A 15-year-old died after being shot by police during clashes on Monday in the city, home to Egypt’s largest textile mill and some of its more militant workers, a security official and medics said. A doctor said that 96 people had been injured in two nights of protests. Around 300 people were arrested and face charges of rioting.

A high-level government team led by Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif visited the Mahalla el-Kobra on Tuesday for talks with the textile workers.

Nationwide, only 30 per cent of seats were being contested, the official MENA news agency said, as the NDP has already won 70 per cent unopposed.

Polls set to close at 7:00 pm (1700 GMT).

Tarek Zaghloul of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights told AFP that his group had decided not to formally monitor the elections.

“We took the decision because of the fact that opposition candidates have had such trouble registering and (the seats) are going straight to the ruling party.”

Zaghloul said his group had received reports that members of the opposition liberal Al-Wafd party had been banned from entering polling stations to vote, as well as reports of weak turnout.

Another organisation, the Egyptian Association for Supporting Democracy (EASD), said its observers were barred from entering polling stations in at least six provinces, and some were detained.

“I’ve come to vote in the hope of having a life that is less hard, with no bread problems,” Mohammed Abdel Meguid, 28, told AFP at a Cairo polling station.

“We hope that these elections will change things a bit, if they’re not rigged like the others when the NDP has always won.”

The elections gained an unprecedented importance after a 2005 constitutional amendment requiring independent presidential candidates to secure the backing of councillors.

Those not belonging to political parties, including the banned Muslim Brotherhood whose members sit in parliament as independents, need the support of at least 10 local councillors in at least 14 provinces to stand.

The next presidential election is set for 2011, with many expecting the veteran 79-year-old Mubarak to stand down in favour of his son and senior NDP member Gamal. The Islamist party had been due to field just 21 candidates out of around 4,000 they originally put forward after a sweeping government crackdown left many would-be candidates behind bars or blocked from registering. In response, the Brotherhood announced a boycott and urged all Egyptians to follow suit.

“We have decided to boycott the municipal elections, to withdraw our candidates and to appeal to the people not to vote,” the deputy head of the Brotherhood’s bloc in parliament Hussein Ibrahim said on Monday.

He said the authorities had used “illegal and immoral means” to exclude Brotherhood candidates, including “the arrest of 1,000 members, administrative obstacles to candidates registering and using prisoners as hostages.”

The Brotherhood has vowed to use legal channels to try to get the vote result invalidated because of the restrictions on opposition groups.

On Tuesday, 39 members were re-arrested following orders for their release. “This is a reaction to our boycott,” deputy supreme guide Mohammed Habib told AFP.

The group has said the government is eager to avoid another electoral setback after the Brotherhood won 20 per cent of seats in parliament in the 2005 legislative election.

The polls were postponed for two years in 2006 in what observers said was a way of preventing another success for the Brotherhood. International organisations have condemned the crackdown against opposition candidates.

[source]