Al-Ahram Weekly Issue No. 250 7 - 13 December 1995
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

Losers and winners

photo: Abdel-Wahab El-Seheiti

Prominent Islamist figures who were defeated in the first round of parliamentary elections blamed their failure on wide-scale vote-rigging by the authorities and their rival candidates of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). But the charges were dismissed as nonsense by the NDP winners, who insisted that they had not been party to any irregularities.

Ibrahim Shukri, leader of the Islamist-oriented Labour Party, who ran, but failed, in his home constituency of Sherbin in Daqahliya Governorate, alleged that his poll-watchers were denied entry to many polling stations. Moreover, he maintained that voters' lists inside the polling stations were different from those which he had been given on the eve of the election.

"Many of my supporters could not cast their ballots because the lists in the polling stations did not include their names," he said.

Moreover, Shukri charged that the supporters of his main rival, the NDP's Fathi Mansour, acted "like bullies" and prevented his own supporters from voting in a large number of villages. "Security forces did not intervene at all," he alleged, "simply because they were not there."

Similar charges were made by Adel Hussein, Labour's secretary-general, who ran in the Cairo constituency of Nasr City but failed. "The elections were a farce," Hussein claimed, adding that his poll-watchers were required to obtain police approval of their power-of-attorney documents before they were allowed inside the polling stations. "This took hours," he said. "In the meantime, the boxes were filled with ballots that tipped the balance in the NDP's favour."

Moreover he alleged that his representatives were denied their legal right of accompanying the ballot boxes from the polling stations to the vote-counting committee, and that some journeys from polling station to committee took a suspiciously long time: "The trip between the two places should not take more than 15 minutes. But it took the agents of the executive authorities three hours to deliver the boxes."

Hussein said that he planned to contest the election results in an administrative court, but maintained that this would change nothing. "The Assembly will refuse to abide by the court ruling on the grounds that it is the one and only decision-making body," he said.

Abdel-Moneim Emara. chairman of the Supreme Council for Youth and Sports, who defeated Hussein, insisted that there was no foul play. "As minister of youth affairs, I have not asked any young man or woman to vote for a specific candidate," Emara said. "Also, out of personal decency and respect for the law, I would never think of influencing the opinion of the Egypt's youth."

Soraya Labena, another victorious NDP candidate in Nasr City, was also confident that the election had been free and fair. "Our victory is well-earned, there is no doubt about it," she maintained. "The voters who gave us their confidence did so because they wanted true representatives who can raise important issues of concern to the public in the People's Assembly and upgrade the quality of services in the constituency."

She dismissed as "nonsense" the charge that the vote was rigged in the NDP's favour. "In my constituency, the representatives of the NDP candidates were not given any privileged treatment at all," she said. "Like the representatives of other candidates, they had to go to the local police station to get additional approval."

Opposition charges of fraud were nothing more than "sour grapes. The opposition candidates are angry because it has become clear that they do not have any public support."

Mohamed Abdel-Qoddous, a candidate for the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood in the Cairo district of Bulaq, insisted that the elections had been rigged. "I was arrested three times during my election campaign and nine of my supporters were also arrested on the eve of election day," he said. "They did not allow our representatives inside the polling stations until two hours after opening time."

Abdel-Qoddous charged that eight ballot boxes in Bulaq had been tampered with in favour of the NDP, drawing protests from 16 out of 18 candidates running in the district. The rigging, he claimed, had not been carried out by the NDP candidates themselves but by the Interior Ministry.

But Badr El-Qadi, Abdel-Qoddous's NDP rival, described the Islamist candidate's defeat as "only natural".

"He has no popularity in Bulaq for two reasons: he is not a resident of Bulaq and, more important, the religion factor which he has been promoting does not count much with Bulaq voters."

Two other losing Islamist candidates - Seif El-Islam Hassan El-Banna and Ma'moun El-Hodeibi - made similar charges of fraud.

El-Banna, secretary-general of the Bar Association, claimed that the circulation of a rumour in his constituency, Al-Darb Al-Ahmar, that a bomb was about to explode inside a polling station, was evidence that the government had "played dirty". The station was closed temporarily, and, he alleged, "in the meantime, ballot boxes filled with NDP votes were brought in".

But this was denied by El-Banna's NDP rival Ahmed Shiha, who said the station was closed for only 15 minutes and that no boxes were brought in during that time.

El-Hodeibi, who was defeated in the Giza constituency of Dokki by Social Affairs Minister Amal Osman, said his loss had been expected. "I was not competing with an opponent, but with the state," he said.

Asked why he had decided to run when he knew his chances were doomed, Hodeibi replied: "We [the Brotherhood] must keep on trying, otherwise we will either sit in our homes or go underground. Both alternatives are unacceptable. We have a message to convey to the people and we will continue doing so via the legal channels."

Reported by staff

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