CAIRO: Hafez Abou Saeda, head of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) and a parliamentary candidate, filed a lawsuit Tuesday appealing the results of the fourth constituency of South Cairo, on claims that the results were forged. Abou Saeda is running in the eighth constituency for individual candidates, which is part of the larger fourth constituency for electoral lists. The Administrative Court had referred Monday Abou Saeda's appeal to the State Commissioners Authority to prepare a report of its legal opinion on the case. "I went to the Commissioners Authority to find out that all the councilors there were assigned to supervise elections. So I filed another lawsuit to recount votes in the entire fourth constituency of South Cairo," he said. The verdict in the case, expected Tuesday, was not issued by press time. Abou Saeda argued that the initial results announced in his district said that he and three other candidates will compete in the run-offs. According to Abou Saeda, he was to contest the run-offs with Khaled Hanafy, affiliated to the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). Three days later, he continued, the judge supervising the electoral process in the district changed the results to replace two of the declared candidates, including Abou Saeda. Mohamed Al-Akkad, an independent candidate replaced Abou Saeda in the run-off on the professionals' seat while Said El-Se'eady was replaced on the workers seat by Mohamed Afify, the activist claimed in a televised interview on Dream TV. After the vote counting, Abou Saeda said he received 21,500 votes while his rival, Hanafy got the highest number of votes: 23,500. In the second and final announcement of the results, Hanafy got 147,465 votes, Al-Akkad got 59,627 and Abou Saeda got about 55,000 and was out of the run-offs. "They first said that the [change] is due to the number of votes of Egyptian expats who voted abroad, but this is not true because we already know the number of expat voters and the results before the results in the district were announced," he said. According to Abou Saeda, the other explanation the judge gave was that 44 boxes were discovered after the count, whose ballots changed the pre-announced result. "Where have those boxes been for three days? And why did they count [the ballots inside] without the presence of the candidates' representatives?" he asked. "These justifications are all lies." Abou Saeda claimed that the results of the entire electoral process have been changed to serve certain purposes. "The elections weren't honest as the head of the Supreme Electoral Commission (SEC) announced," he claimed. "A lot of violations occurred and the head of the SEC said that they will investigate them later," he said pointing out that the promotion of certain candidates during the electoral process, the alleged buying and rigging of votes have affected the integrity of elections which contradicts with the statements of the head of the SEC. Meanwhile, Councilor Yousri Abdel Karim, head of the technical office at the SEC, denied that the SEC had any information regarding this case. He stressed that SEC is committed to implementing any judicial verdict issued by the Court of Cassation or the Supreme Administrative Court. "The final results were announced by the head of the SEC and anyone who has a complaint is welcome to file an appeal and if he gets a court ruling we will directly implement it," he told DNE. Abdel Karim added that according to the ruling, the SEC decides whether to recount votes or to repeat the elections in the concerned area. Al-Akkad could not be reached for comment.
