The final stage of the Shura Council mid-term elections took place on Sunday. Gamal Essam El-Din reports on the National Democratic Party's nearly unopposed success The ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) won 18 seats in Sunday's first round of the third stage of Shura Council mid-term elections. 121 candidates were competing for 30 seats representing 19 constituencies in eight governorates: Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said, Kafr El-Sheikh, Minya, Assuit; Aswan, and Marsa Matrouh. Five of the 30 NDP candidates won their seats unopposed (three in Alexandria, one in Cairo and one in the upper Egyptian governorate of Minya). While just a handful of the candidates were from opposition parties, the vast majority (86) were members of the NDP who decided to run independently after the party declined to include them on its official ticket. These so- called NDP-independents clinched two seats in Sunday's election. Thus far, the NDP has won 64 of the 88 seats on offer. NDP independents have won 14. The 10 remaining seats will be decided during run-off elections to be held on Saturday in eight constituencies in five governorates: Cairo; Kafr El-Sheikh; Minya; Assuit; and Aswan. Twenty candidates -- ten independents and ten from the NDP -- will be running. Topping the list of last Sunday's NDP winners was incumbent Shura Council chairman Mustafa Kamal Helmi. Helmi has been a Shura Council member since its inception in 1981, and its chairman since 1989. On Sunday, he picked up 94.5 per cent of the vote. NDP winners also included Galal Ghorb, chairman of the Pharmaceutical Holding Company, from East Cairo's Al-Zeitoun district, construction magnate Hesham Talaat Mustafa (who won unopposed in Alexandria's Montazah district), and Hussein Hegazi, the chairman of the Shura Council's agriculture committee, from the Delta governorate of Kafr El-Sheikh. The competition for Cairo's eight seats was relatively stiff. In North Cairo's Rod Al-Farag district, while NDP-independent candidate Saad El-Gohari won the professionals' seat, the race for the district's workers' seat will be decided by a run-off. Run-offs will also take place in the South Cairo districts of Al-Sayeda Zeinab and Misr Al-Qadima (Old Cairo). In the latter, NDP candidate Khalifa Hassanein will face leftist Tagammu Party candidate Abdel- Rahman Kheir, the only opposition candidate who managed to make it to the run-off stage. In Al-Sayeda Zeinab, NDP candidate Mohamed Kamal Soliman -- who was disqualified by the Administrative Court from running on the grounds that he had not performed his military service -- lodged an appeal with Cairo's Urgent Matters Court. Sunday's races included five women candidates, all of whom lost. The one Coptic candidate who vied for a seat in Alexandria also lost. In Port Said and Minya, the Wafd Party's three candidates (Mohamed Khodeir, Saad El-Miligi and Kamal El-Sirogi) lost to NDP candidates, as did the Tagammu Party's candidate, Hilal El-Dandrawi, in Aswan. In Alexandria, the lone Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Khaled El-Zaafarani, also lost. The opposition papers claimed that the election was rife with irregularities and rigging. Al-Wafd published photos of what it claimed were thousands of ballots with the NDP candidates already selected. The ballots, the paper said, were found on the streets of different districts. Al-Wafd called the Shura poll yet another example of the NDP's insistence on rigging election in its favour. "It also provides additional proof that all of the NDP's rhetoric about the need for greater democratisation and political reform is groundless and false." Perhaps, the paper suggested, "it would be better if Shura Council members were appointed by the president rather than elected in this comic poll." In fact, President Hosni Mubarak will appoint 44 council members next week, bringing the total number of newly elected and appointed members to 132. He is also expected to extend several incumbents' memberships as well. The council will later hold three procedural sessions to elect a speaker and two deputies and swear in new members. Helmi will most likely be re-elected for a fifth term as speaker. The council is also expected to discuss amendments to the Nationality Law. The new amendments, which were recommended by the NDP's first annual conference last September, will give children of an Egyptian woman married to a foreigner the right to receive an Egyptian nationality.
