Al-Ahram Weekly Issue No. 252 21 - 27 December 1995
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

Election watchdogs set to keep on watching

By Omayma Abdel-Latif

Senior members of an election-watch committee agreed at a meeting on Monday that the committee should remain active even after it accomplishes its principal objective - the publication of a comprehensive report on the parliamentary elections of 29 November and 6 December. But there were disagreements as to what the committee's future role should be.

Present at the meeting were the committee's chairman, Said El-Naggar, an economist, deputy chairman Milad Hanna, a housing expert, Mohamed Selim El-Awwa, a lawyer and Islamic scholar, Said El-Gamal, a jurist, Nabil El-Hilali, a leftist lawyer, and Hassan Nafa'a, a professor of political science. Representatives of human rights groups and non-governmental organisations that contributed to the committee's work also attended.

The committee has already published two preliminary reports on the two rounds of elections, which reported many irregularities, including vote-rigging and the arrest of candidates' supporters. It is planning to release a comprehensive and final report in about two weeks.

Chairman Said El-Naggar's suggestion that the committee should not disband after the report was released was supported by the attending members. "Our work should not stop with the publication of this report," El-Naggar argued. "The committee should continue as a mechanism to emphasise the importance of participation in public life."

However, while some members suggested that the committee should involve itself in monitoring human rights violations, others insisted that it should confine itself to election-related issues.

"Our prime concern should be the performance of voters and candidates," maintained Said El-Gamal. "In this way, we can promote society's understanding of the electoral process. It will also help us draw an overall picture of the political situation in this country." This could be achieved, he said, by observing municipal, trade union and syndicate elections. No final decision was taken on the issue.

The forthcoming report, committee members said, would focus in its first part on refuting government charges that the committee had violated the law and the constitution by appointing itself as an election-monitor.

"The committee has won de facto legality from voters as well as the political forces that participated in the elections," claimed Milad Hanna.

And Selim El-Awwa argued that the committee's work was in line with the constitution, which describes active citizenship, as a national duty. "Everyone has the right to choose his own way of contributing to civil society," El-Awwa said. Moreover, he added, the action of hundreds of candidates who authorised the committee to act as their poll-watchers in the elections vested its work with additional legitimacy.

The report will also deal with the participation of Copts and women in the elections, and will criticise the fact that not a single Copt was included in the ruling party's list of candidates. It will also seek to establish a precise figure for voter turnout, officially set at around 49 per cent of the nation's 20 million registered voters. Another task will be to follow up the ongoing legal battles between the government and numerous defeated candidates who are seeking to have the election results annulled in their constituencies.

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