CAIRO: As of 1:30 PM, a number of political parties have expressed varying degrees of concern about the conduct of the elections so far on Monday. Hala Mustapha, the press coordinator for the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, one of the main parties in the Egyptian Bloc electoral alliance, told Bikyamasr.com that there had been many violations of the electoral procedures, and the organization of the elections by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces displayed some shortcomings. Mustapha said that in some cases votes had been cast on behalf of voters by members of the Muslim Brotherhood. She was also critical of the judicial supervision of the elections, saying that the judges in charge of polling stations were not helping voters to cast their ballots correctly, and in some cases were not following the rules regarding the stamping of voters fingers with ink to prevent repeated voting. The spokesperson told Bikyamasr.com that despite everything, Egyptians were determined to exercise their democratic rights and everyone she knew herself had gone to vote. However, the party would be presenting complaints concerning the conduct of the elections, which, she said, had been manipulated by “SCAF, the system and the Muslim Brotherhood.” She felt that the elections might have to be cancelled. A founding member of the Popular Socialist Alliance, a leading party in The Revolution Continues electoral alliance, told Bikyamasr.com that the elections were on the whole well-organized, albeit with some violations of procedures. They had come across cases of Muslim Brotherhood activists carrying out electoral campaigning directly outside polling stations and their own activists were engaged in trying to persuade voters not to be swayed by them. He added that as a revolutionary party, a large proportion of their activists were currently involved in the protests on Tahrir Square and many party members felt that the elections should have been postponed given the current circumstances. The Wafd party, which is not a member of any of the electoral alliances, issued a press release at 12:30 PM detailing its observations on the electoral process so far. In general the Cairo governorates were seeing a high level of participation in the elections which were proceeding well except for the delay in opening a number of polling stations, mostly in South Cairo. At the time of the press release, the elections also appeared to be proceeding well in Kafr Sheikh, Assiut, Alexandria, the Red Sea, Damietta or Fayoum. BM
