Will political detainees cast votes in next week's presidential elections, asks Mona El-Nahhas While still working to paper over recent disputes with judges, the Presidential Electoral Commission (PEC) this week faced another challenge after the Association for Human Rights Legal Aid (AHRLA) filed a case against the PEC for depriving political detainees of their right to vote. The first hearing of the lawsuit will start today at the Administrative Court, amid expectations on the part of the AHRLA that a ruling will be passed within a couple of days in their favour. Although the PEC did not overtly deny the political detainees' right to participate in next week's presidential elections, the AHRLA views the PEC's negligence of the issue as a matter warranting censure. According to Tareq Khater, the AHRLA's chairman, the PEC should have made preparations guaranteeing that political detainees will vote next week. The AHRLA also filed a legal case against the interior minister for not including the detainees' names in the voters' lists before submitting them to the PEC. The AHRLA was founded in 1999 to offer legal aid to victims of human rights violations. Khater regarded the legal challenge as a unique chance to shed light upon the sufferings of nearly 17,000 political detainees, kept for long years in prisons under very humiliating conditions. "Judges, who are going to supervise elections will be eyewitnesses to such sufferings", he said. The AHRLA insisted in the legal suit that political detainees should take part in elections, as the law that regulates the practice of political rights does not prevent them from voting. Legal experts back the legal grounds upon which the AHRLA lawsuit is based. "The law, the constitution and even all the international conventions of human rights did not ban political detainees from practicing any of their political rights, including the right of voting", said Atef El-Banna, professor of constitutional law at Cairo University. El-Banna sees a difference between detainees and prisoners: "A political detainee is a person deprived of his freedom by an administrative decree passed under emergency laws, while a prisoner is one convicted by a court ruling for committing a crime", he said. "That's why the law regulating the practice of political rights only banned prisoners and convicts from practicing any of their political rights, without referring to political detainees in such context," El-Banna noted. According to El-Banna, political detainees are considered innocent citizens under law, so long as no court rulings convicted them. "Only if convicted should their rights to vote be dropped," he said. In this regard, El-Banna expects a ruling will be passed in favour of detainees, who will, for the first time in Egypt's history, get a chance to use their political right and vote. This being the case, the PEC will have to shuffle fast to surmount a very significant crisis situation. The commission would, at very short notice, be obliged to add the names of all political detainees to the voters' lists, place electoral committees at detention camps, and assign judges to supervise balloting everywhere the political detainees are. Would the PEC really do this? As yet it is unclear whether it would accept such a ruling if it was passed or if it would contest it before the Supreme Administrative Court. According to Khater, the response of the PEC to a court ruling backing political detainee rights will test the commission's neutrality and credibility. "The commission, which was given unlimited powers, should abide by the law and implement the ruling," Khater said, explaining that the process of adding the names of detainees to voters' lists will not take more than a couple of days, because the Interior Ministry knows quite well their number and location.
