CAIRO: Lawyers affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood won more than half the seats on the syndicate board, the interim judicial committee supervising the elections said Thursday. The Brotherhood candidates won 27 of 44 seats on the board. Of the 29 seats reserved for courts of first instance, the group won 14, while dominating the 15-seat general board, raking 13 seats. The elections were held last Sunday and the results were expected by to be announced 24 hours later. However problems with the counting and void votes delayed the results. While Nasserist Sameh Ashour was declared the Syndicate chief for the third time, Khaled Abou Kriesha and Werdany Al-Touny were the only winners on the general level who do not belong to the Muslim Brotherhood. A number of candidates vying for seats on the syndicate board had filed earlier an appeal to the Court of Cassation demanding a recount due to delays in announcing the results of the elections which were held Sunday. The judicial committee had said that it was waiting for some sub-committees in specific governorates to file their results. "The farthest sub-committee is away by only 10 or 12 hours at most. It was an illogical reason," Kriesha, a former board member of the syndicate, said. According to press reports, the appeal states that any delay in announcing the results of an election is against the law, which stipulates that the results must be announced within 24 hours of the start of vote-counting. Kriesha challenged the existence of such a law, explaining that “the counting process should take its time to guarantee the accuracy of results.” The judicial committee, however, insisted on annulling the general level vote results. According to the committee, the Lawyers' Act says that the 15 members elected for the general level board must include three who work in the public sector and 12 employed in the private sector, meaning that votes that did not make the distinction are considered void. However, this regulation has been a subject of contention. "The selection of 12 members from the private sector and three from the public sector has not been applied for years and it never invalidated votes," Kriesha said. He added that the committee could have stated that the 15 winners are the 12 who got the highest votes among the private sector candidates and the three who got the highest votes in the public sector. "However, the invalidation of votes and the delay in announcing results are not related," Kriesha said.
