Monitors want new parliament dissolved amid fraud charges - Summary

Mon, 06 Dec 2010

Cairo - A coalition of Egyptian non-governmental organizations on Monday called on President Hosny Mubarak to dissolve the newly-elected parliament because of alleged election fraud.

The second and final round of voting for the lower house of parliament ended on Sunday. The ruling National Democratic Party swept the first round, and it is expected to have made similar gains in the run-off, with results due to come in later this week.

The Independent Coalition for Elections' Observation, comprised of three groups, put together video-footage, presented at a press conference in Cairo, showing an alleged range of abuses.

The footage, which could not be independently verified, depicted acts of bribery taking place, ballot cards being forged and violence at different polling stations across the country.

One video purports to show a 12-year-old boy casting a ballot, while another shows a five-year-old who allegedly received a gun shot injury to his foot, during a dispute at a polling station in southern Egypt.

"I think such political and moral disaster, which the whole world has seen despite restrictions on media, will make the president seriously consider the situation," said Bahi Eddin Hassan, director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, one of the three groups behind the observation project.

The coalition said the violations were due to the absence of judicial supervision during the elections. Local observers said they had trouble keeping tabs on the voting, while foreign monitors were totally banned in the most populous Arab country.

Egypt's High Administrative Court criticized the election process last week, after the official elections commission ignored the court's ruling to halt voting in areas where opposition candidates were told they could not run.

The judges said ignoring their decision nullified the results and raises suspicion about the validity of the People's Assembly, the 518 member lower house.

The NGO coalition concurred said that "not respecting these rulings means that these elections are null."

According to Magdy Abdel-Hamid, of the Association For Community Participation Enhancement - another member of the NGO group - the new parliament will put "the legitimacy of next year's presidential election into question."

Mubarak, 82, who has been in power for nearly 30 years, has yet to name a vice-president, successor or confirm if he will seek another six-year term in 2011.

Preliminary results indicate that the NDP received around 90 per cent of the vote in the recent election, while the opposition managed only a handful of seats in the lower house of parliament.

The Muslim Brotherhood, a major opposition group, and several other parties refused to take part in the run-off after making a poor showing in the first round and accused the NDP of fraud.

The Brotherhood, which has 88 seats in the outgoing parliament, failed to win a single seat in the first round.

One member of the Brotherhood, Magdy Ashour, won a seat in the run-off, while four members each from the small al-Wafd and the al- Tagammu parties are reported to have also made it into parliament.

Ahead of Sunday's run-off, the Brotherhood was accused of kidnapping Ashour after a heated argument with the group's leaders because he refused to join the boycott.

On Monday, the Independent Coalition for Elections' Observation said that security had forced Ashour to take part in the run-off.

The government's High Elections Commission said there were only limited irregularities.

Eight people were arrested for stuffing ballot boxes in a voting center, while another station was destroyed after supporters of one candidate accused the competitor's supporters of forging ballots.

However, the integrity of the electoral process as a whole was not impacted, the commission said. In total, 508 seats were up for grabs in the election.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/356844,fraud-charges-summary.html.