Apr 8, 2008, 13:15 GMT
Cairo - Voting for Egyptian local councils got underway Tuesday with only 1,000 of the councils' 52,000 seats being contested between opposition parties and the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP).
The NPD headed into the elections unopposed for 45,000 seats, while NPD candidates were vying against each other for another 6,000 council seats.
The remaining 1,000 seats were being contested by NPD candidates as well as by those from the opposition political parties Wafd, Nassiry and Tagamo.
In Cairo, low turnouts have been reported in most of the polling stations. There are separate poll stations for women and men.
In one of the polling stations in central Cairo, where the electoral list includes 5,964 names, only 50 voters have voted, mostly for NDP candidates.
Campaigners for NDP candidates and opposition Tagamo were seen canvassing voters as they entered through the gates of the polling stations.
Polling stations are located in schools. Each school has six polling stations with a head of the voting committee and another three assistants to observe the voting process.
Hoda Tolba, a governmental employee voted for the NDP, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that most of her friends and colleagues also voted for the NDP candidate, 'for providing them with services and facilities.'
'The NDP candidate is our manager and he serves all of us. We must vote for him,' Tolba said.
Abdul-Rahman Mohamed, voting committee head, said that most voters had voted for the NDP.
'NDP candidates order their employees to go vote for them. I am sure that most of the voters here came for the NDP,' he said.
'The voters believe that they are protected by the ruling political party,' Mohamed added.
However, Tagamo Candidate Fatema al-Zahraa told dpa that there was a low turnout for Tagamo and for NDP. She stressed that NDP candidates were not leading the elections. She also said their campaigners were not committing violations in the voting process.
She said the number of voters was expected to significantly increase by the time polls closed at 7 pm (1700 GMT).
Meanwhile the banned Muslim Brotherhood movement was boycotting the vote in protest against a government crackdown against its candidates. Only 20 out of 6,000 Muslim Brotherhood members were accepted as candidates, prompting the group to boycott the election.
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