Widespread allegations of vote rigging dog the newly-elected Shura Council, which meets next week to elect a chairman and two deputies, reports Gamal Essam El-Din The ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) swept the mid-term of Shura Council elections, ending with 80, or more than 95 per cent, of the 88 seats which were up for grabs. Opposition parties, which fielded 39 out of the total 446 candidates, won just five seats. The Tagammu's Salah Misbah won in the Nile-Delta governorate of Damietta; Al-Geel's Ahmed Al-Agouz and the Arab Nasserist's Mohsen Attia in the Old Cairo districts of Gammaliya and Azbakiya and Al-Ghad's Moussa Mustafa Moussa in Giza. On Monday Wifky Madani, an independent candidate who won a seat in the Upper-Egypt governorate of Sohag in the run-off round on 8 June, decided to join the liberal-oriented Wafd Party. It is the first time that five opposition parties have been represented by elected deputies on the 264-member Shura Council since it was created in 1980. Three independents also won seats. In the next few days President Hosni Mubarak will issue a presidential decree appointing 44 members, a large number of which are expected to be existing appointees. They include Moufid Shehab, minister of state for legal and parliamentary affairs; Abdel-Rehim Nafei, the Shura Council's deputy chairman; Ragaa Al-Arabi, a former prosecutor-general and the current chairman of the Council's Legislative and Constitutional Affairs Committee and Khallaf Abdel-Gaber Khallaf, chairman of the Economic and Fiscal Affairs Committee. It is widely anticipated that Mamdouh El-Beltagui, a former minister of tourism, and Mohamed Zaki Abu Amer, a former minister for parliamentary affairs, will lose their seats. Political observers believe the appointees will include a high proportion of Copts and women. The council currently includes 21 women, 20 of them appointees and just one elected member. The recent poll brought a second elected woman -- Hoda El-Tabalawi, NDP candidate in the Nile-Delta governorate of Kafr El-Sheikh. The council also includes 11 Coptic members, all appointed by Mubarak. The majority of them are businessmen. In addition, three Copts -- Eid Labib and Malek Yacoub Qaldas in Minya and Assiut, and Karam Bekhit in Alexandria -- won seats in the latest poll, all of them members of the NDP. Osama El-Ghazali Harb, Al-Ahram journalist and an appointed member of the Shura Council, announced earlier this week that he would be leaving the council. "Appointed members have no role to play beyond rubber-stamping laws and decrees," said Harb, who is also chairman of the liberal-oriented Democratic Front Party which boycotted the Shura elections. Amr Elshobaki, an Al-Ahra m analyst who has studied the 2007 Shura election, points out that "most Shura Council appointees in recent years belong to the NDP's Policies Committee led by President Hosni Mubarak's son Gamal." "This committee currently plays a leading role in Egyptian politics and most of its members have become Shura Council appointees." The Shura Council will meet on 24 June to elect a chairman, two deputies and the heads of 10 committees. Safwat El-Sherif, NDP secretary-general and chairman of the council since 2004, is expected to be re-elected for the third time. His two deputies, Abdel-Rehim Nafei and Ahmed Al-Amawi, are also expected to continue in their posts. NDP members are also slated to occupy all the leading positions on the council's 10 committees. The NDP's clean sweep of the Shura polls was denounced by Muslim Brotherhood and independent MPs in the People's Assembly this week. Many took the ruling NDP and security forces to task for rigging the election. They also criticised the Higher Election Commission (HEC), alleging that its performance had been partisan. The Brotherhood, which currently holds 86 seats in the People's Assembly, fielded 15 candidates but failed to secure a single seat. In a meeting of the assembly's Defence and National Security Committee on 12 June, Brotherhood and NDP deputies clashed. Saad El-Hussein, a Brotherhood deputy for Mahala and a member of the group's Guidance Bureau, lashed out at NDP members, describing them as "liars and experts at rigging elections". Brotherhood deputies said HEC figures about the election had been falsified. "It is utterly incredible that HEC officials expect to be believed when they claim that more than seven million registered voters turned out in the first round and more than three and a half million turned out in the second," said El-Hussein. In his study of the 2007 election Elshobaki estimated turnout at around three per cent. NDP MPs responded to the accusations by launching a verbal attack against Brotherhood deputies. MP Mohamed Abdel-Fattah Omar, a former police officer, described Brotherhood MPs as "fanatics who should thank President Mubarak for allowing them to run as independents rather than attack the NDP". Abdel-Rahman Radi, another NDP MP, lamented that the security forces had dealt too leniently with Muslim Brotherhood supporters during the election campaigns, claiming "Brotherhood candidates were allowed by security forces to raise religious slogans in violation of the constitution and the HEC's instructions". Independent MP Talaat El-Sadat, a nephew of late president Anwar El-Sadat, said the NDP's sweep of the Shura polls was possible only because of the lack of full judicial supervision. "I think that Article 88 of the constitution should be re-amended to re-institute judicial supervision which will held put a stop to poll rigging," he said. In a statement on 9 June the Wafd Party said it feared that "the rigging of the recent Shura poll would be repeated in the next parliamentary and presidential elections." Major-General Hamed Rashed, director of the Interior Ministry's Legal Affairs Department, denied that security forces had a hand in manipulating the polls. "The role the security forces played in the Shura election was confined to ensuring that candidates did not violate HEC instructions," said Rashed. A day after the 8 June second round poll the HEC announced that turnout had reached 14 per cent (3.9 million) of registered voters. The HEC has received 498 complaints against the results of the election, all of which, it says, will be investigated.
