CAIRO: The National Democratic Party (NDP) won 69 out of 71 contested seats in the Shoura Council's mid-term elections that took place last Monday, according to the foreign press reports. According to the official web site of Egypt State Information Service, spokesman for the government-appointed High Elections Commission (HEC), judge Sameh El-Kashef, announced that the election reruns that are expected to take place on June 18 will include 34 candidates who will compete for the remaining 17 seats. The total number of contested seats in the Shoura Council is 88, indicating that 59 NDP candidates had already won in the first round, while 12 get recommended by the government, leaving 17 seats open for the reruns. Adel Zaki Andraws, HEC chairman, announced the results in a press conference that took place on Wednesday May 14. According to the official web site of Egypt State Information Service, Andraws has indicated that around 31.2 percent of the registered voters turned out for the election. This is the highest percentage of the past Shoura elections, when turnout varied between ten and 15 percent. Andraws confirmed that the HEC has received all complaints. They have submitted them to the election's general committees which assigned some of its judges to investigate them, as the official web site of Egypt State Information Service reported. Hafez Abu Saada, secretary general of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, who personally rotated and visited the ballot boxes during elections, told The Daily Star Egypt that the elections were forged and the National Democratic Party were hired to occupy the seats and did not undergo any real elections. The government went back to its policy of shutting down the boxes before deadline, which deteriorated the election's liberty and took us back to the style of falsified elections that used to take place before year 2000, Abu Saada said. Abu Saada described the results of the elections as amazing indicating that the percentage of voters was really low and could not by any means reach the percentage that the government announced. This election is a drawback to Egyptian political reform, Abu Saada added. Mahmoud Ezzat, Muslim Brotherhood secretary general, told The Daily Star Egypt in a previous interview that there had been disputes everywhere against the voters who were planning to vote for members affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood group. The group, although they have nominated 19 candidates, did not win any seats so far. All types of suspension were used from disabling voters by force, to forging in the ballot boxes, Ezzat said. Ezzat also added that when some voters entered polling stations to vote, they found their names already signed, indicating that they had already voted for members affiliated with the government. In Suez in particular, according to Ezzat, where the Minster of Petroleum, Sameh Fahmy, won as NDP, representing the city in the Shoura Council, buses came fully occupied with employees working for the Ministry forced to vote for the Minster. Ezzat also indicated that journalists and members of the press were unable to go further than kilo 109 at the Cairo-Suez highway. As far as I know the High Elections Committee managed the election process according to the constitution and abided by Egyptian law, said Mohamed Khalil Kwaitah, a member in the People s Assembly affiliated with the NDP to The Daily Star Egypt.
