CAIRO: Less than 24 hours before run-offs of the first round, candidates were contesting the results announced by the judicial committee supervising the parliamentary elections, citing inaccurate results that do not correspond with the number of votes. In the Maadi-Helwan constituency, where journalist Mostafa Bakry was announced the winner of the professional seat with 374,550 votes and Ramadan Omar Salem the winner of the workers seat with 428,983 votes, the results do not align with the recorded number of valid votes. Lawyer Khaled Ali, along with other lawyers, filed a complaint against the results. “We are not appealing the results, we are appealing the vote-counting process,” he explained. “There have been imaginary numbers that exceed the actual count by 130,000,” he explained. According to Ali, the total number of votes in the constituency is 608,503, which leaves a discrepancy of 137,115 votes with the number of votes both candidates received, which totals 745,618, according to the Supreme Elections Commission (SEC). By press time, it wasn't determined whether the case will be referred to administrative or appeals court. The SEC was not available for comment on the alleged violations. The first round of the parliamentary elections took place on Nov. 28-29. The results were partly announced on Dec. 2 and the runoffs for the individual first past the post elections are to take place on Dec. 5-6. Meanwhile, members of Al-Wasat Party started a sit-in at the headquarters of the SEC in protest of alleged violations that occurred during the vote counting in the fifth constituency of Cairo. “There have been numerous violations, [such as] open ballot boxes and ballots thrown on the street without being counted,” explained Tarek El-Malt, spokesperson of Al-Wasat Party. “We are heading to the SEC; if they don't take action against those violations then we will keep demonstrating until they do,” he added. El-Malt also pointed out that there hasn't been any transparency on part of the SEC in announcing the numbers of Egyptian voters abroad. Maged Sorour, executive director of One World Foundation, which was part of the Independent Coalition of Election Monitoring observing the elections, said that while there have been minor violations during the electoral process, it is usually the vote counting where violations allegedly occur. “There has been no monitoring of the vote counting,” he said, “We have repeatedly asked to monitor the vote counting, at least electronically [through security camera] if we are not allowed inside.” “Furthermore, moving the ballot boxes from one place to another is extremely risky which is why we are calling to have the vote counting taking place at the polling stations,” explained Sorour.
