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

'Nobody is blameless'

The Muslim Brotherhood and the government among others, were held responsible for irregularities in the first round of parliamentary elections

An independent election-watch committee has reported violations of the law, ranging from the expulsion of poll-watchers to physical assaults, which it blamed on both the government and the various political forces that contested the first round of parliamentary elections on 29 November.

"Many infringements, some of them gross and flagrant, were committed on election day by some candidates and their supporters, including the candidates of opposition parties, the Muslim Brotherhood and independents," the committee said in a report on the first round. "But the majority of these infringements were committed either by the state authorities or in their full view without any attempt on their part to prevent or document them."

The committee's chairman is Dr Said El-Naggar, a renowned economist; Dr Milad Hanna, a housing expert, is deputy chairman, and sociologist Dr Saadeddin Ibrahim, secretary-general. With the participation of six human rights groups and non-governmental organisations, the committee said it had deployed 600 human rights activist volunteers to observe the elections in 88 constituencies.

Listing its conclusions, the committee noted that a record number of candidates, nearly 4,000 had contested the elections. Two thirds of them were independents, including a significant number of Muslim Brotherhood members. Fifty-six Christians stood for election, either independently or as opposition nominees. A large number of candidates spent exorbitant amounts of money on their election campaigns, in violation of the LE5,000 ceiling set by law.

In the weeks preceding the elections, the committee received 1,100 complaints from candidates, but was able to verify the authenticity of only 264 of them. They mainly concerned irregularities in voters' lists. In 50 out of 88 electoral districts, some names were listed more than once, and sometimes as many as 20 times, "which proves that this was neither a coincidence nor an error". Between five and eight per cent of the names on the electoral rolls belonged to dead people, the committee said.
On election day, the committee said it received more than 1,240 complaints from candidates or their representatives, as well as from voters. Noting a relatively heavy voter turnout, the committee reported confusion at many polling stations as large numbers of voters, who had already waited in long queues, had to move from one station to another to try and find where they were registered. Between 15 and 20 per cent of voters got nowhere and gave up trying.

Sixty per cent (744) of the complaints came from the candidates of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamist-oriented Labour Party. The committee was able to verify 149 of these complaints, many of which concerned the arrest of about 600 Brotherhood and Labour sympathisers as well as the use of violence against Islamist supporters. As an example, the committee cited the case of the Giza constituency of Dokki, where a polling station for women voters was stormed and 37 women supporters of Brotherhood candidate Maamoun El-Hodeibi were arrested and detained until the following day.

"But the wide scale fraud in numerous electoral districts did not only favour the candidates of the ruling party," the report said. "The committee also received complaints about vote-rigging by candidates of the principal opposition parties and independents, including Brotherhood members."

Seventeen per cent of the complaints reported that some polling stations opened their doors at 9 or10am, instead of 8am. And when they eventually opened, poll-watchers from the National Democratic Party (NDP) were already inside.

Twelve per cent of the complaints reported that the managers of some polling stations refused to open the ballot boxes before the voting started, to ascertain that they were empty. Their refusal raised suspicions that rigged ballots had been placed inside the boxes in advance. In some cases, boxes were opened on the orders of the judge running the polling station, and rigged votes were found inside.

Forty per cent of the complaints reported that poll-watchers had been kept outside polling stations, despite being in possession of power of attorney documents. The observers were told that their papers must carry the approval of a certain police officer. Locating this officer took hours and, in some cases, he refused to approve the papers. As a result, some candidates were left without representatives inside the polling stations for periods of between one and five hours.

Thirty per cent of the complaints reported that poll-watchers were ejected from polling stations by people who were said to be police agents, but whose identity the poll-watchers were unable to establish. Some of those who refused to leave were physically attacked, the committee said.

Fifteen per cent of complaints reported physical assaults by candidates, their supporters, or thugs, the committee added. These included a police attack on Dr Hilmi Nammar, a candidate and chairman of a professional syndicate, and his wife.

Hisham Mubarak, director of the Human Rights Legal Aid Centre, one of the six NGO's making up the committee, told Al-Ahram Weekly that police were neutral on election day. "But this was a passive neutrality," he added. "As a result police did not provide security or legal support to some candidates and their representatives in face of the physical intimidation by some NDP and independent candidates.

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