CAIRO: The announcement of Egypt's results of the presidential election's second round was delayed until Sunday afternoon, postponed from last week. While both presidential candidates Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi and military strongman Ahmed Shafiq have declared their respective victories, the Presidential Election Committee, cites both candidates allegations of electoral fraud in explaining the delay in announcing a new president. However, independent watchdog organization Shayfeencom, has released a report questioning the transparency of the committee, who is in charge of organizing the election. The report, written independently to ensure a lawful electoral process, distinguishes between fraud carried out by the candidates and their supporters, and “systemic fraud conducted by the authorities managing the elections.” While the reported coercion of individuals and groups in both rounds were cause for concern, the report concludes that this does not affect the final results of the election. However, it raises concern, that between the referendum and the parliamentary and presidential elections, the report notes discrepancy in the voter registration lists. In the results of the second round there is also some discordance between results from individual polling stations and the votes added up in the general committees. The independent report argues that the committee itself might be endangering the validity of the election by refusing to disclose the voters registry to the election monitors and the political nominees. This decision leaves no way for election monitors to ensure that names of voters did not figure twice on the list or that military personnel and the police were exempted from voting. Shayfeencom has even received complaints that names of deceased voters were included in the registry, which it supposes might have been augmented with as much as five million manipulated names of voters. "We have received hundreds of complaints regarding all the above-mentioned abuse but we are unable to confirm or deny the reports because the election committee has officially refused to allow the monitors to review the signed voter registry at the General Committees,” the report stated. Shayfeecom also calls the original decision to postpone the announcement of the winning candidate "nothing less than a hijacking of the democratic process and an absurd attempt to lessen the impact of public protests by making the announcement at the beginning rather than the end of a work week." It claims that it would set an unhealthy precedent for future elections. It concludes its report by imploring the election committee to release the list of registered votes, as is customary, hoping to increase the transparency of the electoral process. The committee, however, has yet to comply with this demand.
