With less than two weeks to the mid-term Shura Council elections only four NGOs have registered to monitor the poll, reports Mohamed Abdel-Baky The National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) announced last week that only four NGOs have registered to monitor the Shura Council elections. Egyptian civil society, it seems, is far less interested in the upcoming poll than in parliamentary elections of 2005 or the Shura Council elections of 2007. Commentators and activists interviewed by Al-Ahram Weekly point to limited resources, largely a result of foreign donors shifting their own priorities, as the main reason for the reluctance to participate in the monitoring process. The four NGOs which registered with the NCHR to monitor the elections are the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR), the Egyptian Association for Supporting Democratic Development (EASD), the Egyptian Association for Community Participation Enhancement and the Egyptian Coalition for Democratic Reform. Under rules set by the Higher Election Commission (HEC) all NGOs seeking a licence to monitor the poll must coordinate with the NCHR. Intissar Nessim, chairman of the HEC, stresses that licensed civil society organisations will be allowed to monitor all stages of the Shura elections, including the voting process in polling stations and the count. They will not, however, be allowed to direct questions to voters inside polling stations or hold interviews with monitoring judges. Three of the four NGOs are receiving funds from foreign donors. The EASD has announced that 1,500 of its observers will monitor the poll in 67 districts across 27 governorates. The monitoring process, says EASD's project executive director Ehab Bahie, is being financed by a $267,000 grant from USAID, and includes a newly launched website to serve as a virtual platform connecting observers across all monitored districts. "Anyone can go to the website on election day and follow minute by minute what is happening in particular districts," says Bahie. The EOHR, which failed to secure foreign funding, will be staging a far more limited operation. "We have selected 30 districts that are expected to see confrontations between the candidate of the ruling NDP and the opposition," says Hafez Abu Seada, director of EOHR. In its first report, on the registration of candidates, the EOHR has identified a number of procedural violations. More than 20 candidates from the opposition, it says, were barred by the security forces from entering election offices to register themselves as candidates. The Egyptian Coalition for Democratic Reform, a newly established NGO, will be largely dependent on local funds and volunteers in monitoring the poll. The coalition said in a statement that it will be able to monitor the election process in seven governorates, using unpaid volunteers. The Shura Council mid-term elections in 2007 were monitored by 15 Egyptian NGOs who between them received $1.5 million from USAID and the EU Commission. An American diplomat in Washington told the Weekly that debates in the State Department and USAID about how much money should be allocated to monitoring October's parliamentary elections were ongoing. USAID's Cairo office, he added, had decided to offer grants to a limited number of NGOs to monitor the Shura mid-term elections until Washington reaches a decision on whether USAID should continue its work in this area or not. Said Abdel-Hafez, who led the NGO coalition that observed the 2007 vote, argues that donors have always shown far less interest in Shura Council elections that in the parliamentary poll. He criticises civil society for not paying enough attention to this year's mid-term election. "It comes just a few months before what are expected to be fiercely contested parliamentary elections. As such it is likely to be one of the most important Shura elections of the decade," he said.
