Al-Ahram Weekly Issue No. 251 14 - 20 December 1995
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

Watch group warns of election backlash

Despite the government's insistence that the 6 December election runoffs were conducted with integrity, an independent election-watch committee has reported many irregularities, including vote-rigging, the arrest of candidate supporters and the expulsion of poll monitors from polling stations. However, the committee's report continued, "The most serious phenomenon in the election campaign was the revival of trends posing a threat to social stability, such as sectarianism and tribalism, as well as the sanctioning of fraud, violence and money as effective mechanisms of political action."

The committee, established by six human rights groups and non-governmental organisations, is headed by economist Said El-Naggar and has Milad Hanna, a housing expert, as deputy chairman and sociologist Saadeddin Ibrahim as secretary-general. It deployed about 600 human rights activists to observe the balloting in 88 constituencies during the two rounds of the elections. The government took exception to the committee but did not ban it.

The committee reported receiving a total of 800 complaints during the period between the 29 November first round and the second round a week later. Of these complaints, the committee said it had been able to verify 320, or about 40 per cent. Sixty per cent of these complaints, of which the committee found 192 to be justified, focused on the arrest of candidates' supporters, mainly Islamists as well as supporters of Nasserist, Tagammu and independent candidates.

Islamist candidates, said to total 36, complained that hundreds of their supporters and poll-watchers had been rounded up or harassed. As a result, some of them withdrew from the election race.

Eighty-three complaints alleged that NDP candidates were getting support from local government departments, either by bussing their employees to polling stations or registering them as voters in certain stations, regardless of their residence or work addresses.

In violation of administrative orders, the committee charged that some mosques attached to the Ministry of Al-Awqaf (religious endowments) were used to make propaganda for NDP candidates, while others, unsupervised by the government, were similarly used by candidates of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. A Coptic candidate used at least two churches for the same purpose, the report claimed.

On the eve of the second round, administrative courts ruled that flagrant irregularities had rendered the results of the first round null and void in 109 constituencies, 49 per cent of the nation's total 222, and that consequently the election run-offs in these electoral districts should not be held.

The government filed appeals which were rejected by the administrative courts in some governorates. However, it then filed the same appeals with a summary court in Cairo, which agreed to consider them. "In the government's view," the committee maintained, "this was a legal justification for not implementing the orders of the administrative courts".

On 6 December, runoff election day, the committee said it received 406 complaints, of which 60 per cent were from Islamist candidates, and the remaining 40 per cent from other opposition and independent candidates. The committee reported greater government preparations for the second round, with a heavy presence of security personnel, particularly outside polling stations.

"Flagrant interventions" were alleged in 33 out of the 88 constituencies monitored by committee representatives. They claimed that polling stations were stormed, opposition poll-watchers kicked out and votes rigged in favour of NDP candidates. The committee claimed that those in charge of polling stations and their staff, but not security men, committed "gross violations" in 52 constituencies.

In 22 per cent of the monitored constituencies, polling stations opened at 7.30am, half an hour ahead of schedule, "and there were indications that some NDP representatives had already signed papers testifying that pre-voting measures were sound."

In 40 per cent of the monitored constituencies, polling stations opened late - between 8.30 and 10am. Some polling stations, such as those in the Cairo constituency of Matariya, closed early - between 3.30 and 4pm instead of 5pm.

Candidates' representatives in some constituencies were denied permission to accompany the ballot-boxes as they were transported to the principal polling station for the vote count, giving rise to suspicions that the boxes might have been replaced or their contents tampered with, the committee charged. In addition, the committee claimed that in more than 50 per cent of the monitored constituencies, "judicial supervision was either inadequate, ineffective or not neutral. There were several cases in which candidates or their representatives attempted to submit complaints to the supervising judge, but to no avail."

Voter turnout varied from place to place. While some Cairo polling stations were almost empty, throngs of people gathered to vote in other areas. In general, the turnout was higher in provincial areas. The committee noted that candidates in provincial constituencies did not monitor the polls in the home villages of their opponents. The reason behind this, the report claimed, was that the practice of rigging a candidate's home town vote in his favour had become widely accepted, despite being recognised by law as fraud.

Committee representatives also noticed a revival of family and tribal loyalties in Upper Egypt and some Nile Delta provinces "on a wider scale than in the first round. These trends were also observed in Cairo and Alexandria as a result of family connections with Upper Egyptians."

The "money factor" played a large role, particularly in the second round, according to the committee. "The committee's representatives monitored feverish competition between some candidates and their supporters to distribute money openly on election day, as well as in the weeks preceding the election," the report alleged. "Blankets, shoes and clothes were also distributed in some poor neighbourhoods. And donations, or pledges of donations, were made for the construction of schools, clinics, mosques and sporting clubs."

In contrast to its observations of the first round, the committee report acknowledged that during the second round representatives of all candidates were allowed to watch the vote-count and that some ballot boxes, which committee members claimed were obviously rigged, were actually excluded from the count.

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