CAIRO: Employees counting the votes from the first phase of parliamentary elections resumed work early Wednesday after a strike that delayed the process in a number of constituencies. Some employees were protesting against the bonuses they would receive, which they said were lower than what was promised. Head of the Supreme Electoral Commission in Alexandria, Chancellor Ahmed El-Gamal told Daily News Egypt that 20,000 teachers helped the judges count the votes, adding that voter turnout reached 60 percent. El-Gamal added that most complaints filed are primarily logistical and will not affect the voting results, adding that violations of campaigning outside the polling stations are not of the authorities of the judges. Employees responsible for vote counting said they were promised LE 350 per day by the Supreme Electoral Commission, for three days of work — two days at polling stations and one counting the votes. However, Qasr El-Nil constituency, employees later learned that they would receive only LE 250 for two days, excluding the third. They went on a brief strike, chanting against the responsible judge who ordered them to get back to work for the “love of Egypt.” “We will not count, let him count,” they chanted. They called on independent candidate Gameela Ismail to intervene, who worked with other candidates in the constituency to resolve the issue. Shortly after, the judge monitoring the constituency announced that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces agreed to pay LE 500 for two days for this round and LE 250 for the run-offs, state TV reported. In Shoubra, members of the judicial committee and employees resumed the counting process by 11:30 am on Wednesday. Earlier, army forces had taken control of ballot boxes after the head of the judicial committee supervising elections there decided to postpone a process marred by chaos and lack of regulation. The previous night, army forces had fired shots in the air when candidates' representatives and employees ignored a decision to disperse. "There are more than 2,500 employees supervising the counting along with the judges and the candidates' representatives in a relatively small place, which would surely lead to chaos," Tarek Hamed, a teacher supervising the counting at Galal Fahmy School, told Daily News Egypt. He said the disturbance began after a rumor spread that employees supervising the elections and counting would only receive LE 150 as a bonus. "Employees then demanded counting be stopped. I went to Councilor Moataz Khafagy, head of the judicial committee, who called Councilor Abdel Moez Ibrahim, head of the SEC [Supreme Electoral Commission], to inform him about the problem," he added. Ibrahim decided to increase the bonuses to LE 800, after which “employees agreed to continue the counting.” When counted resumed, Councilor Khafagy threatened to defer the counting if calm did not return. "He asked one of the personnel of the military police to secure the counting committee. The soldier then fired shots in the air," he said. Ismail Salah, representative of the Salafi Al-Nour Party, told DNE that the logistics of the counting process were a mess to begin with. "They allocated a small place for counting the results of more than 2,000 boxes with the presence of 5,000 people," he said. The boxes, delivered to military police, were left with one judge inside the counting committee and that the army, police and employees secured the school from the outside. Meanwhile, Mohamed Bayoumi, another representative of Al-Nour Party, said chaos ensued as a result of a number of judges and employees who fainted, exhausted from the long electoral process. "This lead Councilor Khafagy to postpone the counting to the morning," he said. Employees and candidates' representatives stressed that there was a deal with the office at the police station to resume the counting process at 9 am in the presence of a fewer number of representatives to restore order. -Additional reporting by Abdel Rahman Youssef
