Egyptians Vote in Election Runoff
15/11/2005| IslamWeb
Polls have opened in runoff parliamentary elections in Egypt, after the first round saw Hosni Mubarak's ruling party confirm its grip on power and the Muslim Brotherhood gain political momentum.
Voters who cast ballots on Tuesday will decide the outcome in 133 seats where no candidate scored more than half the vote in last week's polling, the first of the three-round elections for the People's Assembly.
In the first round of the three electoral phases that was held on 9 November, influential members from the National Democratic Party (NDP) attempted re-election amid reports of widespread corruption and vote-rigging.
According to the electoral commission, a quarter of the electorate went to the polls for the first round.
Yet, after the first election days staggered over a month, there was no clear indication on the shape of the next parliament.
According to the Egyptian press, NDP members who ran as independents were brought back into the fold before the run-offs in constituencies where the ruling party's official candidates made poor first-round showings.
Complications
Complicating matters, the results announced in three of the 82 constituencies involved in the first round were annulled on Sunday and will lead to re-runs.
With each of Egypt's 222 constituencies having its own local dynamics, observers struggled to detect a pattern in voting in the run-offs.
Most of the 133 seats to be decided on Tuesday will set official NDP candidates against independents, mainly ruling party renegades and Muslim Brothers.
The NDP holds 404 out of 454 seats in parliament, and observers have predicted that opposition movements might make only small inroads into its domination.
Electoral campaigns
But the officially banned Muslim Brotherhood has capitalised on recent freedom to conduct an intensive and well-crafted campaign, which it claims should help treble its current seat tally of 15.
The first round was marked by the failure of the secular opposition to organise a challenge.
Al-Ghad party leader Ayman Nour, who came second in the presidential election behind Hosni Mubarak, lost in his own Cairo stronghold but filed a complaint alleging vote rigging.
A coalition including the Kefaya (Enough) movement, the Marxist Tagammu, the Nasserists and the liberal Wafd failed to secure a seat in the first round.
Independent monitors, opposition candidates and judges said that besides the corruption that characterised parliamentary campaigns, irregularities included falsified voter registries and ballot-stuffing during the counting process.
The elections were planned in three two-round phases. The second, which includes Alexandria, is to begin on 20 November, and all 26 governorates in the country will have finished voting by 7 December.
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