If the results of the Shura Council reveal anything, it is the determination of the NDP to corner the Muslim Brotherhood, writes Gamal Essam El-Din While the results of Monday's Shura Council mid-term elections had not been announced until Wednesday afternoon they will come as no surprise. The National Democratic Party (NDP) is expected to sweep the board, with press reports suggesting that out of 77 contested seats the NDP has already secured victory in 57. Add to this figure the 11 seats in which the NDP was standing uncontested and it has already secured 68 of the 88 seats up for grabs in the consultative upper house. Only one opposition figure, the leftist Tagammu Party's candidate Ahmed Shaaban, has so far won a seat, in Alexandria's Al-Gomrok district. Mohamed Azzam, an NDP member who opted to run as an independent, won in the Nile Delta governorate of Daqahliya. In the run-off round scheduled next Monday, 36 candidates belonging to the NDP, or NDP members running as independents, will compete against each other for the remaining 18 seats in 12 governorates. Sameh El-Kashef, spokesman of the Supreme Election Commission (SEC), said on Tuesday the delay in announcing the official results was because the SEC was determined they would reflect what really happened in polling stations. The NDP's list of first round winners include Petroleum Minister Sameh Fahmi in Suez; former minister of labour Ahmed El-Ammawy in east Cairo's district of Hadayeq Al-Qubba; Chairman of the Egyptian Football Federation Samir Zaher in the Nile Delta governorate of Damietta and the NDP's Shura Council spokesman Mohamed Ragab in Cairo's Gammaliya district. Among the party's unopposed candidates were Hani Seif El-Nasr, the secretary-general of the Social Fund for Development, in Fayoum, and Mohamed Faragallah, a business tycoon, in Alexandria. NDP leaders said the party's clean sweep of the elections showed that the public had faith in the ruling party's ability to improve their lives. It is an analysis unlikely to be shared by the NDP's main challenger, the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which fielded 19 candidates and failed to win a single seat. Despite facing a six-month security clampdown, the MB had been determined to challenge the NDP at the polls. Senior MB member Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh said that it would have been a good step had they won. Losing is good, as well, because they will be able to expose what Abul-Fotouh alleges is a rigging of votes. The MB has already filed petitions at the Court of Cassation asking for the results of the election to be annulled. After the Supreme Administrative Court rejected NDP appeals, referred by the SEC, to disqualify MB candidates for raising religious slogans, the NDP had resorted to the security option, says Abul-Fotouh who claimed that hundreds of security personnel were mobilised to prevent MB voters from reaching the ballot boxes and that polling stations in constituencies with MB candidates were closed by the security forces by 2pm. While NDP leaders have remained tight-lipped over the MB's accusations, civil society and human rights organisations report that MB supporters were systematically detained and representatives of MB candidates were prevented from entering polling stations. Al-Jazeera, the Qatari-based satellite channel, broadcast footage of a polling station in Fayoum where supposed government employees were shown stuffing ballot boxes with votes, a common occurrence, say observers. The National Council for Human Rights, headed by former UN secretary-general Boutros Ghali, said it has received 35 complaints from civil society organisations who say their representatives were not allowed into polling stations. Independent observers estimate that the turnout in rural areas did not exceed 10 per cent, and was probably around three per cent in urban areas. The Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) estimates overall voter turnout at less than six per cent. "In the absence of judicial supervision and with vote rigging commonplace, it's hardly surprising the public opted to stay away," said the EOHR. Amr Hashem Rabie, a researcher with Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, said the main lesson to be learned from the conduct of the poll is that full judicial supervision is essential to curbing fraud. "The elections were the first test of the recent constitutional amendments that eliminated judicial supervision in all polling stations," said Rabie, and they failed miserably, dragging Egypt back to a time of mass vote rigging. Rabie also believes that the performance of the Supreme Election Commission, established after the political rights law was amended, was deplorable. "Despite promises of impartiality it caved in to pressure from NDP leaders," said Rabie. Following the second round of the poll, a further 44 members of the Shura Council will be appointed by presidential decree. President Hosni Mubarak has the option of appointing new figures or renewing the membership of NDP stalwarts such as party Secretary-General and Chairman of the Shura Council Safwat El-Sherif, Interior Minister Habib El-Adly, former prime minister Atef Ebeid, Minister of Labour Aisha Abdel-Hadi and prominent businessman Mohamed Farid Khamis. Current members whose appointment is not expected to be renewed include Ibrahim Nafie, former chief editor of Al-Ahram, Samir Ragab, former chief editor of Al-Gomhuriya, Mamdouh Ismail, shipping magnate and owner of the ferry which sank in the Red Sea last year killing more than 1,300 passengers. Rabie believes the appointment of public figures loyal to the NDP only serves to reinforce the public's perception of the Shura Council's marginal roll. "Even after the constitutional amendments gave it symbolic powers, the Shura Council remains little more than democratic décor with no real say in Egypt's political life," he insists.
