The quick and dirty

By Bahieddin Hassan

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The majority of voters (75 per cent plus almost 10 million unregistered) have turned their back on legislative elections. It seems that they don't believe in the integrity and fairness of Egyptian polls, whether parliamentary or presidential.

Programmes have been confined to the desks of candidates and the newspapers; the content of the electoral campaign was mainly one of bribes, self-interested short-term promises or long-term empty statements; a seat in the paradise on the wings of Islam or the Quran.

The electoral process is administratively incompetent in addition to being financially corrupt; voter lists varying from one party to another and from one round to another. Consequent to the violence practised by state bodies, the National Democratic Party (NDP) and Muslim Brotherhood militias, voters didn't enjoy the dignity of free choice and in some areas were not allowed to vote at all. Civil society monitoring was selective at polling stations and almost absent at counting stations. Court rulings were not respected, at least on the first round. The High Committee For Parliamentary Elections should be questioned. These elections clearly reflect the absence of political will for political reform.

The large representation of the Muslim Brotherhood should help make the game more open from now, in spite of the fact that the NDP will not face any substantive obstacle to its policies and laws, having secured a necessary two-thirds majority in the People's Assembly. But the new parliament will likely be worse concerning human rights. We should bear in mind that Muslim Brotherhood deputies were the only opposition that supported the NGOs law.

This week's Soapbox speaker is director of

the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies.

Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/771/op7.htm