Finally taking place after two long years of legal wrangling, today's parliamentary elections for Al-Raml district promise to pose a significant challenge to the ruling National Democratic Party. Gamal Essam El-Din reports The controversial elections for two parliamentary seats from Alexandria's Al-Raml district first took place in 2000. Fought over fiercely by the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) and the banned Muslim Brotherhood, the struggle moved from the ballot boxes to the courts, and is now set to be decided by the people once again. The two-year delay was the result of NDP and Brotherhood candidates' efforts to disqualify each other from running via rulings from administrative courts. As a result, for the first time in Egypt's 136- year parliamentary history, two whole sessions of parliament went by with the two Al-Raml seats (one earmarked for professionals (fi'at), the other for workers (omal)), remaining vacant. Today's elections feature 25 candidates. The battle, however, basically boils down to four: two official NDP candidates and two running under the umbrella of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. The remaining candidates include two members of the liberal-oriented Wafd Party, a member of the Green Party, a Copt, and 18 independents widely believed to be members of the NDP. The NDP's official candidates are Sami El-Guindi, an Alexandria University professor running for the "professionals" seat, and Gomaa El-Gharabawi, an employee at a public-sector company running for the "workers" seat. The two Brotherhood candidates are Gihan for "professionals" and El-Mohammadi El-Sayed for "workers". is married to Ibrahim El-Zaafarani, an active member of the Brotherhood and assistant secretary- general of the Alexandria chapter of the Doctors' Syndicate. El-Sayed is also an active member of the Brotherhood's Alexandria branch. Three of these four candidates -- the Brotherhood's and El-Sayed, and the NDP's El-Guindi -- also made it to the run-offs of the original October/ November 2000 parliamentary elections at Al-Raml. A fourth candidate, independent Salah Eissa, was also in the run-off, which was supposed to be held on 24 October of that year. The original 18 October elections had been held despite an appeal filed by El- Halafawi with a local administrative court accusing the interior ministry of using arbitrary measures against her. The court had ruled that the elections be postponed until 24 December 2000, but the ruling, like many others, went unheeded by the Interior Ministry. Only after successfully reached the run-offs did the Interior Ministry decide to implement the court's ruling. From then on, Al-Raml district became embroiled in a dramatic saga of appeals and counter-appeals between Brotherhood and NDP candidates. The two-year saga lasted until 30 May 2002, when Alexandria's Administrative Court ordered that the Al-Raml elections be held within 60 days. The Court also ruled that all 26 candidates who had taken part in the district's 2000 parliamentary elections also take part in the new election, and the Interior Ministry set 27 June, today, as the date for the first round. Run- off elections are set to be held on 7 July. Mohamed Moussa, chairman of Parliament's Legislative and Constitutional Affairs Committee, told Al-Ahram Weekly that although rulings issued by administrative courts are immediately effective, "they, however, are not final verdicts because citizens still have the right to appeal them with the Supreme Administrative Court." Aware of this fact, El- Halafawi decided to lodge an appeal against the court's 30 May ruling, accusing the Interior Ministry of tampering with Al-Raml's voter lists, and asking the court to postpone the elections again. told newspaper Afaq Arabya (Arab Horizons, the Brotherhood's mouthpiece), that the court's ruling is in the Interior Ministry's favour because it improves the NDP's candidates' chances of winning the two seats. According to , the Interior Ministry chose to ignore as many as 17 court rulings handed down in her favour over the last two years. "All of these rulings ordered that the Al-Raml elections take place between only the four candidates who succeeded in the first round of the 2000 parliamentary elections," she said. Another Al-Raml candidate, independent Salah Eissa, also filed an appeal with the Administrative Court. Eissa alleged that it is the President of the Republic, rather than the Interior Ministry, who is empowered with setting a date for elections. In spite of the continuing legal wrangling, NDP and Brotherhood candidates decided to launch wide-scale election campaigns. According to informed sources, the Al-Raml elections have become "a matter of life and death" for the NDP. Sources said that the Brotherhood winning the two Al-Raml seats would be a blow to the NDP and a shocking defeat for NDP's new Alexandria secretary- general, Mohamed El-Fayoumi. El- Fayoumi was appointed in the aftermath of the NDP's harsh defeat in the first stage of parliamentary elections (which included Alexandria and eight other governorates). Alexandria was the governorate in which the Brotherhood won the largest number of seats (three). Sources said that and El-Sayed's success "would send a message showing that the NDP is too weak to face the Muslim Brothers in elections". Kamal El-Shazli, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs, visited Alexandria last Saturday. Reports show that in a meeting with Alexandria's governor Abdel-Salam El-Mahgoub and the NDP's secretary, El-Shazli gave strict instructions that NDP members should pledge their firm support to the party's candidates. The day before El-Shazli's visit, El- Halafawi managed to hold a public campaign rally in spite of, as said in a faxed statement, the fact that security forces did their best to disrupt it. 's rally was attended by four Brotherhood MPs. One of them, Gamal Heshmat, said the Al-Raml district has turned out to be very unique in Egypt's parliamentary election history. Heshmat argued that the government and the NDP should not greet the possibility of an increase in the number of Brotherhood MPs (currently standing at 17 members) with suspicion and fear. For her part, expressed hopes that today's elections will be free from any confrontations between citizens and security forces. She predicted, however, that the security forces will do their best to ensure that the NDP wins. El- Halafawi said that she had attempted to secure the support of women's associations, but that "they turned me down simply because I belong to the Islamist trend."
