CAIRO: Elections in Cairo's first constituency will be repeated on Jan. 10-11 in accordance with a verdict by the Supreme Administrative Court, the Supreme Electoral Commission (SEC) said. The court issued a verdict on Monday night annulling the first round of elections in this constituency — which includes the districts of Shoubra, Sahel and Sharabiya — that took place last week, due to several violations. "This is a historical verdict because it's the first court order to be implemented regarding the elections ever, since Egypt had a parliament," said Saeid Abdel Meseih, head of the Egyptian Center for Development and Human Rights and lawyer representing independent candidate in this constituency, Magda Naguib. During the reign of ousted president Hosni Mubarak, hundreds of court orders annulling the elections due to flagrant violations were ignored, especially in the 2010 parliamentary elections. "There were over 4,000 court orders issued against the state during Mubarak's reign related to the elections and other violations, and they were all ignored," the lawyer said. The Supreme Court upheld a previous verdict issued on Sunday evening by the Administrative Court that was based on 25 appeals from candidates and lawyers. But as voting in the run-offs proceeded on Monday, SEC argued that after results are announced, the Appeals Court is the one authorized to review cases related to the electoral process. On Friday, Head of SEC Adel-Moez Ibrahim admitted in a press conference that the improper spaces allocated for sorting and counting votes led to halting the counting process by the responsible judge in that constituency. The station was expanded and the process resumed the next day, but the resulting chaos led to invalidating 90 ballot boxes, 15 of which were missing. Over 2,600 boxes were left intact. Ibrahim, however, stressed that the reported violations would not void the elections. The SEC proceeded with the run-offs in the first constituency on Monday, in hopes that the Supreme Administrative Court would overturn the previous ruling. In a press conference on Monday, Ibrahim said the voting would continue but results would not be announced until a binding court order was issued. After the Supreme Court annulled the elections, the SEC was forced to halt the second day of run-offs in the first constituency. The run-offs will be repeated on Jan. 17-18, following the three stages of elections in the People's Assembly (lower house). The ruling opens the door to the possibility of repeating elections in other constituencies, whose results are contested in court. This particular constituency was expected to witness competition between the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), and the more liberal Egyptian Bloc over two individual seats in the run-offs. The Egyptian Bloc was discouraged by the court verdict, saying that a repeat in elections would negatively affect them. "The religious campaigns targeting liberals and accusing them of being atheists will have reached more people and will be harder to over come in January," Basel Adel, member of the political bureau of the Free Egyptians Party, which spearheads the bloc, told DNE. "The fact that we reached the run-offs against the FJP shows that we had a great chance of winning if the elections weren't canceled," he added. Basel said people of the first constituency have been discouraged by the annulment and the violations that took place during the vote counting. "People have started to feel that their vote won't count, since thousands of votes were wasted because of the negligence in the vote counting process," he said. Abdel Meseih speculated that about 90,000 votes were wasted in the vote counting process. "We wanted strong, integral elections [without] violations," Basel said. However, the FJP was more optimistic and welcoming of the court order despite its members' belief that they would have beaten the Egyptian Bloc in the run-offs. "We suffered the most from ignoring court orders under the former corrupt regime, so we will respect the court order and accept it," said Reda Fahmy, spokesperson of the FJP in the first constituency. Reda stressed that FJP supporters were more adamant on casting their vote once more in January, than they were last week. "Our presence in the streets and constant connection with the people will preserve their support for us in January," he said. "Many of the candidates who appealed the results received around 5,000 votes while FJP candidates received over 210,000 votes. The gap is too big and there is simply no comparison even if we repeat the elections," Reda added.
