The first stage of People's Assembly elections will see Islamists and liberals go head to head, reports Gamal Essam El-Din Amid a flurry of judicial appeals and street protests against the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) Egypt's first post-25th January Revolution elections are due to begin on 28 November. The first stage, which lasts until 5 December, includes nine governorates: Cairo, Alexandria, Fayoum, Assiut, Luxor, the Red Sea, Port Said, Damietta and Kafr El-Sheikh. Of the 168 seats at stake in the round, 56 will go to independents and 112 to candidates standing on party lists. On 14 November Abdel-Moez Ibrahim, chairman of the Supreme Electoral Commission (SEC), announced that the opening round would be supervised by 10,000 judges who will be in charge of 9,841 polling stations authorised to count votes, and 18,536 auxiliary, non-counting stations. The SEC has not provided figures for the total number of candidates standing in the first round. Unofficial estimates suggest 3,500 independents and 6,500 party-based candidates will be fighting for seats. Cairo and Alexandria are expected to see the most fiercely contested election battles. Cairo is due to elect 54 MPs -- 18 independents and 36 party-based -- while Alexandria, long thought to be an Islamist and Salafist stronghold, will return 24, eight independent and 16 party-based. Prominent members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafist parties and of the older secular parties are all hoping to secure seats in either Cairo or Alexandria. In Cairo close to 800 candidates will contest the 36 party list seats to be decided by proportional representation, while a staggering 1,400 candidates are fighting for the 18 seats. The SEC's ban on the raising of religious slogans during campaigns is already being flouted. Leading members of Islamist and Salafist parties have already issued fatwas telling Muslims not to vote for liberals who they denounce as "infidels and unbelievers". Secular parties have filed complaints with the SEC against such tactics. Cairo's election districts will see many new faces competing for a place in the People's Assembly. In East Cairo's Nasr City district candidates include Asmaa Mahfouz, a former member of the 6 April Movement, and Amr Hamzawy, political analyst and a founder of the liberal-oriented Egypt Freedom Party. In Qasr El-Nil district, which includes Tahrir Square, Gamila Ismail, former television presenter and ex-wife of opposition leader Ayman Nour, will stand as an independent. She will be opposed by, among others, Wafd Party member but independent candidate Nihal Ahdi, and Ibrahim Al-Aboudi, a business tycoon and onetime stalwart of ousted president Hosni Mubarak's now defunct National Democratic Party (NDP). The battle for Qasr El-Nil's party-based seats pits the Democratic Alliance, led by the Muslim Brotherhood's political wing the Freedom and Justice Party, against the liberal oriented Egyptian Bloc, the Wafd Party, the Reform and development Party, Salafis and Nasserists. The Democratic Alliance's candidates include Wahid Abdel-Meguid, an analyst with Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, and former Brotherhood MP Gamal Hanafi. Among the candidates they face are the Egyptian Bloc's Tayseer Fahmi, an actress, the Wafd's Mohamed El-Maliki, businessman and a former MP, and the Reform and Development Party's Rami Lakah. In Helwan and Maadi, human rights activist Nasser Amin is standing as an independent against journalist and former MP Mustafa Bakri. The lists of party-based candidates include prominent lawyer Mahmoud Al-Sakka from the Wafd and Ziad Al-Oleimi from the Egyptian Bloc. Business tycoon Akmal Qortam, a former NDP MP, will represent the newly-licensed Conservative Party. In Alexandria Muslim Brotherhood lawyer and former MP Sobhi Saleh contests the East Alexandria's district of Al-Raml. In the same district the Democratic Alliance's candidate -- reformist judge Mahmoud Al-Khodeiri -- faces a tough battle against construction magnate Tarek Talaat Mustafa, once a leading member of the NDP. The Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) expects to field more than 500 candidates -- standing as both independents and on party lists -- for elections to both the People's Assembly and Shura Council. They include most of the Brotherhood's 88 members of the 2005-2010 People's Assembly. Freedom and Justice Party candidates, despite earlier promises, seem unable to resist raising the Brotherhood slogan "Islam is the Solution". Candidates from across the Islamist spectrum also exploited the Eid Al-Adha feast to attempt to curry support with Salafist parties and the Muslim Brotherhood distributing vast quantities of meat in the hope of winning votes. The Brotherhood and the Salafist Nour Party distributed fliers, posters and Eid greetings cards as people left mosques following Eid prayers. Amr Hamzawy, who is standing in Cairo's Heliopolis district, criticised the way in which the Islamist parties have sought to exploit Muslim celebrations for political gain.
