Candidates excluded from the official lists of nominees complain of being bounced between the Interior Ministry and the Higher Elections Commission, reports Mona El-Nahhas With three days to go before the parliamentary polls open dozens of candidates remain unsure whether or not they will be allowed to run. Excluded candidates fall into two groups: those whose nomination papers were rejected by the Interior Ministry without being informed, and NDP hopefuls not selected by the party as candidates. Many members of the second group have announced their intention to contest Sunday's ballot as independents. When the final list of parliamentary candidates was announced on 15 November many of those who found their names excluded appealed to the administrative courts which subsequently found in favour of more than 300 of the plaintiffs, ruling that they should be allowed to practise their constitutional rights to nominate themselves as candidates. Yet only a handful of names have been added to the lists. Imam El-Kerdasi, a NDP member, whose name was not added to the candidates' lists despite a ruling in his favour, says he now intends to file a lawsuit calling for a halt to the polls in the Matareya constituency where he intended to run. Hussein Ibrahim, a Muslim Brotherhood member who won a parliamentary seat in the 2005 polls, is in the same position as El-Kardasi. Like many excluded candidates who got rulings backing their right to run, Ibrahim went through a labyrinth of procedures which led him nowhere. He too intends to go to the courts to halt the poll in his constituency. Immediately after receiving copies of rulings candidates headed to the Interior Ministry's security administrations in the concerned governorates demanding their immediate implementation. More often than not they were fobbed off with vague excuses, told by ministry employees that they had not been officially asked to implement the ruling, or else that the rulings must first be examined before any action could be taken. The Higher Election Commission (HEC), the body authorised under the political rights law to supervise the election process, appears to have washed its hands off the affair, informing excluded candidates that it was not the HEC's responsibility to secure the paperwork necessary for registration for getting papers and that they should return to the relevant security administrations. It has backtracked from the position it adopted in a meeting held on 18 November, when the HEC pledged to carry out all the rulings passed by the administrative judiciary courts. Less than 24 hours later it had started to place legal restrictions on the implementation of such rulings. In press statements published on 20 November HEC spokesman Sameh El-Kashef said some rulings would not be implemented because of legal obstacles, identifying such obstacles as appeals before the Supreme Administrative court against the rulings passed by lower administrative courts in favour of candidates. El-Kashef's statements effectively returned the ball back to the court of the Interior Ministry, leading Ibrahim to question the competence of the HEC, which includes seven judges as members yet who are unable to decide whether or not a court ruling should be implemented. "At the first test the HEC has shown itself to be a bystander as far as the electoral process is concerned. Everything is still in the hands of the Interior Ministry, which has been left to practise its old tactics when it came to the polls," says Ibrahim.
