Mohamed Abdel-Baky reports on a new alliance formed to monitor next month's parliamentary elections Concern about the monitoring of November's parliamentary elections after the problems faced by NGOs during the recent Shura Council poll has been alleviated after more than 120 NGOs created a new alliance to monitor the election in 26 governorates. The new body, called The Egyptian Alliance for Election Monitoring will use more than 1,000 observers to monitor the ballot boxes in 254 constituencies. In a press conference last Monday held at Al-Andalus Institute for Tolerance and Anti Violence Studies, the NGOs said that they had decided not to accept funding from foreign donors and would depend on their own resources to do the job. "We have a network of 120 NGOs all over Egypt. All of them offered to observe the elections using local resources," said Al-Andalus Institute Director Ahmed Samih. During the 2005 parliamentary elections many Egyptian NGOs received funds from foreign donors, mostly from the US and EU, to monitor the poll. The bulk of money was spent on capacity building courses and workshops for lawyers, activists and journalists. In their mission statement the alliance's leaders said "thousands of Egyptians now possess the capacity to keep the process transparent and expose any violations to the public which has the right to vote for a parliament capable of meeting their aspirations". Until now regular donors like USAID and the EU have shown little interest in funding local monitors. The alliance has called on the Egyptian government to invite international observers. Hafez Abu Seada, director of the Egyptian Organisation for Human rights, a member of the alliance, argues that international monitoring will not violate Egyptian sovereignty but will instead publicise to the world that Egypt conducts free and transparent elections. Following a meeting with Egyptian activists last week Michael Posner, US assistant secretary of state for democracy and human rights, said that Washington would like international and local observers to monitor parliamentary elections and the Egyptian presidential election scheduled for 2011 but did not specify that funding from USAID would be made available to local civil society. Funding is not the only problem the alliance faces. NGOs seeking to observe the vote must first obtain permission from the High Election Committee (HEC). The HEC has delegated authority for the granting of permission to the government-affiliated National Council for Human Rights (NCHR). In the Shura council election the NCHR allowed 1,600 observers and turned down more than 3,200 requests for reasons it has yet to disclose. "We will not deal with the NCHR. We will go directly to the HEC for permission," said Abu Seada. He added that if the HEC failed to respond the alliance would then begin legal proceedings in an attempt "not to repeat the Shura election disaster". The alliance also revealed it will rely on the new generation of mobile phones to help monitor the ballot boxes. Each observer will have a 3G mobile phone to send text messages and videos of any violations to the alliance's headquarters in Cairo which will upload them onto a website accessible to the public. The website will also broadcast press conferences and any clashes between candidates. The Bar Association, which has an office in every city in Egypt and thousands of members willing to act as observers, has already requested NCHR permission to monitor the election.
