Cairo - Voting for Egyptian local councils got underway
Tuesday amid a boycott by the opposition Muslim Brotherhood and
allegations of election procedure violations by civil society groups.
Fardia al-Nakkash, editor-in-chief of the Tagamo opposition
party's newspaper Ahaly, dismissed as 'forged' in discussing the vote
with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
'The elections have started since the application date, when many
violations were committed by the ruling National Democratic Party
(NDP),' al-Nakkash said.
'They (NDP) prevented many candidates of other opposition parties
to apply for the elections and stood today unopposed,' she added.
Only 1,000 of the councils' 52,000 seats were being contested
between opposition parties Wafd, Nassiry and Tagamo and the NDP.
Of the remaining seats, the NDP was unopposed for 45,000 seats,
while a further 6,000 seats were being contested only by NDP
candidates.
In Cairo, low turnouts were reported in most of the polling
stations. There are separate voting 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 had voted, mostly
for NDP candidates, media reports said.
Campaigners for NDP candidates and opposition Tagamo were seen
canvassing voters as they entered through the gates of the polling
stations.
Voting was taking place in schools, each school having six
polling stations with a head of the voting committee and another
three assistants to observe the voting process.
Hoda Tolba, a government employee who voted for the NDP, told 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 both Tagamo and the NDP. She claimed 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).
In the textile town of Mahalla al-Kubra, where tensions prevailed
after two days of clashes between protestors and police, voting for
local councils was cancelled.
Candidates of different political parties, including NDP, reached
an agreement in which some NDP candidates withdrew in favouor of
other candidates of opposition parties such as Tagamo, Geel and Wafd
and independent candidates
But in governorates across Egypt, there were claims of procedure
violations against voters and candidates of opposition parties.
In upper Egypt, observers from civil society groups and
representatives of opposition and independent candidates were not
permitted to enter polling stations, according to one group,
the Egyptian association for training Human Rights
Elsewhere, local residents told dpa that governmental employees
were ordered to vote for the NDP candidates, while voting cards were
rigged for the favour of the NDP.
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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