The ruling NDP and other political parties have begun preparing for mid-term elections of the Consultative Council scheduled for June. Gamal Essam El-Din reports Preparations for the mid-term elections of the Shura or Consultative Council, scheduled for the beginning of June, have shifted into third gear. Intissar Nessim, chairman of Cairo's Court of Appeals and president of the Higher Election Commission (HEC), announced on 24 April that the elections will be staged in 67 districts to elect 88 deputies from all governorates, with the exception of Ismailia and the Al-Wadi Al-Gadid. Nessim said the 67 districts include 21 designed to elect 42 deputies, or two in each district, while the remaining 46 were designed "to elect just one deputy in each district." According to Nessim, HEC decided that the financial ceiling imposed on campaigning be boosted from LE100,000 to LE200,000. "In the run-off round," Nessim indicated, "we decided that the ceiling be upped from LE50,000 to LE100,000." He indicated that administrative committees will be tasked with guaranteeing that candidates abide by the funding rules. Nessim also explained that general judicial committees will be formed to take charge of monitoring the polls. "These committees will be headed by chairmen of First Instance Courts in all governorates," said Nessim, adding that "female members of judicial authorities such as administrative prosecution and state cases will participate in monitoring the elections for the first time." Nessim emphasised that Egyptian civil society organisations will be allowed to take part in monitoring all stages of the Shura elections, including voting in polling stations and vote-counting in main polling committees. "These organisations will be required to coordinate with the National Council for Human Rights [NCHR] to be officially licensed to participate in monitoring," said Nessim. He, however, indicated that civil society monitors will not be allowed to direct questions to voters inside polling stations or hold interviews with monitoring judges. In response, Hafez Abu Seada, secretary-general of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR), said an EOHR team is being mobilised to monitor the Shura elections. "A random sample of 30 districts where competition is expected to be fierce between candidates of the ruling National Democratic Party [NDP] and opposition and independent candidates was selected to be monitored by the EOHR," Abu Seada said, emphasising that "the role of the EOHR and other civil society organisations in supervising elections will be marked with complete impartiality." Meanwhile, President Hosni Mubarak ordered on Monday that the door of registration for the Shura elections be opened between 5 and 10 May. "The elections will be held at the beginning of June while the first meeting of the new Shura Council will be convened on 24 June," Mubarak's order said. Minister of State for Legal and Parliamentary Affairs and NDP's Assistant Secretary-General Moufid Shehab said the NDP's preparations for the elections had begun in earnest in the last few days, that the NDP's electoral colleges -- committees in which the party's candidates are selected in secret polls -- were held between 21 and 25 April. "Statistics show that as many as 305 NDP members competed strongly to receive their party's official nomination," Shehab said. Shehab argued that electoral colleges were devised by the ruling party as part of efforts exerted to democratise the process of decision-making in the NDP. "These colleges aim to encourage NDP members to choose the candidates they see most qualified to run in elections instead of giving NDP leaders the upper hand in selecting the party's candidates," said Shehab. A number of prominent NDP members competed in the party's electoral colleges. Mohamed Abdallah, chairman of the NDP's Foreign Relations Committee and former president of Alexandria University, won the party's candidacy in Alexandria's district of Al-Montazah. Hisham Talaat Mustafa, the business tycoon currently facing trial on murder charges, was the NDP's former representative of Al-Montazah in the Shura Council. Minister of Waqf (religious endowments) Hamdi Zaqzouq won the NDP's official nomination uncontested in the district of Talkha, in the Nile-Delta governorate of Daqahliya. Shehab said out of a total of 305 nominees, the NDP's electoral colleges should have selected 88 official candidates in the mid-term elections. Shehab said once its list of official candidates is adopted, the NDP will embark on an election platform "which will explain the NDP's ideology and vision for the next stage of Egypt's history and political life," adding that "the NDP's political and economic achievements in the past three years will be also reviewed by the programme." Most opposition parties announced that they will run in the Shura elections. More than 60 candidates are expected to be fielded by as many as 14 parties. The liberal-oriented Wafd Party said a mere 10 candidates will run in the polls. "The party will spend LE300,000 on supporting the election campaigns of these candidates," said Essam Shiha, a member of Al-Wafd's Higher Council. Rifaat El-Said, chairman of the leftist Tagammu Party, said the party will field 11 candidates in the governorates of Alexandria, Helwan and Qena. Ahmed Hassan, secretary-general of the Arab Nasserist Party, argued that "since the cost of running the Shura elections is too expensive for the party members to afford, we found it enough that just one candidate be fielded in the Upper Egypt governorate of Qena." Most opposition parties believe that running in the Shura elections is futile. "This is a council which does not have any legislative or supervisory powers and whose elections are very costly for under-funded parties to afford," said Hassan. Osama El-Ghazali Harb, chairman of the Democratic Front Party, announced on 18 April that its party would boycott the Shura elections. El-Ghazali, himself an appointed Shura Council member, announced that his party had strong doubts that the Shura elections will be marked by integrity and transparency. "Because these elections lack any kind of guarantees of integrity and fair competition, we decided not to participate because the whole matter will turn out to be a big farce," El-Ghazali argued.
