Clean sweep

In spite of claims of fraud, the ruling National Democratic Party easily won by-elections in Alexandria and the Nile Delta. Gamal Essam El-Din reports

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On Sunday, the National Democratic Party (NDP) secured a landslide victory in two by- elections in Alexandria and the Delta despite fierce objections from opposition and civil society organisations that the polls were marred by irregularities and police interference.

However, the Supreme Election Commission (SEC), headed by Chairman of the Cassation Court Adel Zaki Andrawis, said no irregularities had been recorded and that the NDP candidates had received the majority of votes. Chief of the Interior Ministry's Election Department Mohamed El-Qomsan said police forces intervened only to ban the use of religious slogans. "We made sure that all candidates respected Article 5 of the constitution which bans the formation of religious parties and mixing religion with politics," said El-Qomsan.

In a public announcement on Monday, the SEC announced that 26 candidates belonging to various political currents competed in the by-elections of Alexandria's Manshiya district. "NDP candidates Amer Abu Heif and Nashed El-Malki swept most of the polls, with the former winning 19,164 votes and El-Malki 19,046," the SEC statement said. It added that Mahmoud Awad and Saad El-Sayed, two candidates belonging to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, collected 186 and 95 votes respectively. SEC said Galal Amer, the only opposition candidate (for the leftist Tagammu Party) won 16 votes. More surprisingly, the SEC said five independent candidates garnered only five votes, one vote for each.

SEC also said that as many as 17 candidates vied for the two seats in Dessouq, a district in the Nile Delta governorate of Kafr Al-Sheikh. According to SEC, the two NDP candidates Tareq Selim and Ahmed Abdu swept the polls, with Selim winning 43,607 votes and Abdu 42,199.

Just a few hours ahead of the voting, Brotherhood candidate Ragab El-Banna pulled out of the poll, claiming the Dessouq election was marred by a low turnout and a heavy police presence. "The few citizens who bothered to vote were barred from voting by police forces while the voting process itself lacked any kind of judicial supervision," said El-Banna.

Independent monitors and journalists said the number of votes the four NDP candidates in Manshiya and Dessouq received were too high and that in previous elections these same NDP candidates had never been able to accrue more than 4,000 votes. "Why did voters decide all of a sudden to change their mind and give NDP candidates such a generous number of votes?" asked Amr Hashem Rabie, a parliamentary analyst with the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.

Two days ahead of the elections, police forces detained 21 members of the Brotherhood in Kafr Al-Sheikh and in Alexandria. El-Banna, the Brotherhood's candidate in Dessouq, was arrested ahead of municipal elections in April and was released one month ago. Interior Ministry officials, however, strongly denied Brotherhood allegations. El-Qomsan said the by-elections ran smoothly and that arrests were made only because some Brotherhood members tried to raise religious slogans, especially the Brotherhood's "Islam is the solution", in violation of the constitution.

The three major opposition parties, Wafd, Tagammu and Nasserist complained that the elimination of full judicial supervision of the elections last year opened the way for the NDP to rig votes. The parties fielded four candidates in Manshiya and Dessouq but failed to win a single seat.

Ahmed Hassan, secretary-general of the Nasserist Party, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the by-elections in Manshiya and Dessouq "were a bad scenario for the parliamentary elections in 2010. This week's elections were an NDP message that the elections in 2010 will produce a small number of opposition MPs and that rigging will be the hallmark in the absence of full judicial supervision."

The Manshiya and Dessouq seats have been left vacant since the parliamentary elections of 2005 because of legal battles among rival candidates. Other by-elections have yet to be held to fill eight seats left vacant in four districts in three Nile Delta governorates (Qalioubiya, Daqahliya, Kafr Al-Sheikh) and one Upper Egypt governorate, Fayoum. Interior Ministry officials said the by-elections of these last four districts will be held next month.

The NDP victory on Sunday brought its total number of seats in the People's Assembly to 330 or 73.9 per cent.

The make-up of opposition and independent MPs is: Muslim Brotherhood (86 MPs), Wafd Party (six MPs), Tagammu Party (one MP), Free Constitutional Party (two MPs), Ghad (one MP), Karama Party (two MPs) plus 18 non-affiliated independents.