Gamal Essam El-Din peruses the results of Egypt's first post-Mubarak poll Run-off elections appear to have consolidated the Muslim Brotherhood's lead in the parliamentary race as its Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) captured 34 of the 45 independent seats that had not been won in the first round. Overall the FJP won 36 seats out of 56 seats reserved for independents in the first of the three stage ballot. The party's victorious candidates will add to the 44 colleagues who won seats on the proportional party lists. This means the FJP secured 80 out of 168 seats up for grabs. Initial results show at least 10 FJP winners are former Muslim Brotherhood MPs. In Alexandria four former Brotherhood MPs -- Mohamed Mustafa, Saber Abul-Fotouh, El-Mohamedi Sayed Ahmed and Mahmoud Attia -- will return to the People's Assembly. In Cairo two former MPs, Yosri Bayoumi and Khaled Hanafi, do the same. Twenty FJP candidates lost in the first stage, among them Hamdi Hassan, Alexandrian Muslim Brotherhood firebrand who had been an MP since 2000. Alexandria, a stronghold of Muslim Brothers and of the ultraconservative Salafis, produced several surprises. Reformist judge Mahmoud El-Khodeiri defeated Tarek Talaat Mustafa, a former leading member of ousted president Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP). Tarek, who is chairman of the Talaat Mustafa group, is the brother of Hisham, the NDP construction magnate currently serving a 15-year jail sentence for conspiring to kill Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim. El-Khodeiri beat Mustafa by 11,000 votes. Alexandria witnessed intense rivalry between Salafis and the FJP though only two non-Brotherhood candidates won. Both El-Khodeiri and lawyer Hosni Dowidar, who defeated Abdel-Moneim El-Shahat, deputy chairman of the Salafist Nour Party who in a recent TV programme stated that "democracy is a form of apostasy", won on the back of Brotherhood support though neither are members of the FJP. Salafis failed to capitalise on their success in the first stage. Just five Salafis belonging to the Nour Party won seats in Monday and Tuesday's run-offs, two in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Assiut, two in the Nile Delta governorate of Kafr Al-Sheikh and one in Fayoum. In polling on the 28 and 29 November the Salafist Nour Party won 28 seats (25 per cent) of the 112 reserved for party lists. The Wassat -- an offshoot from the Muslim Brotherhood -- failed to win a single individual seat though with 3.6 per cent of the vote it can expect to return four MPs from its lists. The Salafist Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya, the group which assassinated President Anwar El-Sadat in 1981, failed to win a single seat. The Islamists' strong showing in the first stage of elections has caused concern in both local and foreign circles. "Transitions require fair and inclusive elections, but they also demand that those who are elected embrace democratic norms and rules," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe which is meeting in Lithuania. Foreign analysts say Clinton's words belie the nervousness felt in some Western capitals by politicians torn between the desire to support popular Arab Spring movements that have toppled dictators and brought nascent democracy to the region and the fear that radical Islamist movements will be the ultimate beneficiaries of the changes. Marina Ottoway, a Middle East analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, told the CNN yesterday that no Western government was happy about the result of the elections in Egypt. While the Muslim Brotherhood is widely seen in the West as a moderate group which respects minority rights and will work with liberal parties, the success of the Nour has rung alarm bells over women's rights and those of Egypt's Coptic minority. Israeli politicians also voiced concern over the results. Diaa Rashwan, director of Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, says Israeli official concern is almost exclusively focussed on how far Islamists will respect Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. "The Israelis are facing several challenges, on top of which is the Iranian nuclear programme. But they are also worried that Islamists in Egypt will support Hamas and that its southern borders with Egypt will be open for militant Islamists." Rashwan believes that "in spite of the victory of the Islamists in the first round it is too early to state categorically that Egypt's first post-Mubarak parliament will be dominated by radical Islamists." "We still have two stages in which the Islamists could conceivably fail to clinch the support they received in the first stage. Eighteen governorates, in which rural and tribal connections play a big role, have yet to vote." Some leftists and liberals did manage to snatch seats in the run-off round from the Islamist surge. El-Badri Farghali, a former Tagammu MP, defeated Nour's Ali Fouda in Port Said. Journalist Mohamed Abdel-Alim Dawoud, a former Wafd Party MP, won a seat in Kafr El-Sheikh while Mustafa El-Naggar, chairman of the Adl (Justice) Party, secured the seat reserved for independent professionals in East Cairo's Nasr City. In Downtown Cairo's Qasr Al-Nil district, which includes Tahrir Square, Mohamed Abu Hamed, the candidate of the liberal Egyptian Bloc, won the seat reserved for independent professionals. In Damietta Omran Megahed, a former NDP MP, was returned to the People's Assembly. Several candidates fielded by NDP offshoots also won seats. The Horreya Party's Khaled Abdel-Moneim won a seat in Luxor, the Egyptian Citizen Party's Abdel-Basset Qouta won in the Red Sea governorate and the National Egypt Party's Youssef El-Badri won in Kafr Al-Sheikh. Independents Amr Ouda and Hisham Suleiman won two seats reserved for workers in the East Cairo districts of Nasr City and Heliopolis. The Wafd Party failed to secure a single seat in the run-off round to add to the 11 seats it secured proportionally. It trailed behind the liberal Egyptian Bloc which won 16 seats (14.3 per cent) in the first round of voting. The bloc now has 17 seats. The Revolution Continues alliance won four seats in the first round of voting but failed to add to them in the run-offs, leaving secular parties with 45 out of the 168 contested seats. The poll in three districts was cancelled as a result of voting irregularities. Abdel-Moez Ibrahim, chairman of the Supreme Elections Committee (SEC), has announced the ballot in North Cairo's Al-Sahel district will now take place on 10 January. Ibrahim also expressed concern that the turnout in the run-off round was very low, with some human rights organisations estimating that it fell to five per cent. Pundits have suggested that the initial high turnout was a result of fear that non-voters could face fines of up to LE500. "It suggests," says Rashwan, "that many Egyptians still feel indifferent towards politics and elections." The second stage of parliamentary elections begins on 14 December with run-offs on 21 December and includes the governorates of Giza, Beni Sweif, Menoufiya, Sharqiya, Isamilia, Suez, Beheira, Sohag and Aswan. Sharqiya and Beheira are considered Islamist strongholds as -- to a lesser extent -- are Giza and Menoufiya. Ismailia and Suez are not thought to be particularly pro-Muslim Brotherhood, while in Sohag, Beni Sweif and Aswan voting is expected to follow tribal and clan lines.
