CAIRO: Sixty percent of registered voters cast their ballots in the first round of elections, accounting for 10.7 million valid votes out of 17.5 million registered voters, Abdel Moez Ibrahim, head of the Supreme Electoral Commission (SEC), announced in a press conference Wednesday. A total of 679,221 votes were invalidated. In the run-offs held this week, four constituencies were eliminated, including the first Cairo consistency of Sahel, the third constituency of Moharram Bek in Alexandria, the second and third constituencies in Assiut, based on court orders due to violations in these areas. The elimination left around 13.25 million registered voters, out of which 5.22 million voted, representing 39 percent. Around 4 million of the votes were valid, while 152,331 were invalid. The Islamist parties including the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and Salafi Al-Nour Party swept the polls both in the independent seats and the closed party lists. Together they raked in around 68 percent of the vote, with the FJP list receiving 3,565,092 votes out of 9.7 million valid votes, and Al-Nour snatching 2,372,713 votes. The liberal Egyptian Bloc came in third place, winning 1,371,713 votes. Al-Wafd and Al-Wasat parties followed garnering 690,771 and 415,059 votes respectively. The Revolution Continues came next claiming 335,947 votes followed by other parties which made minimal gains. In the run-offs, the FJP won 34 of 50 seats, in addition to the two independent seats they won in the first round of elections making a total of 36 seats. Al-Nour won five seats in the run-offs, according to its head, Emad Abdel Ghaffour. The Egyptian Bloc announced that one seat was snatched by its leading Free Egyptians Party in Cairo's sixth constituency. Mostafa El-Naggar, leading member of El-Adl Party in the third constituency won the professionals' seat against independent Salafi candidate Mohamed Youssry. In Alexandria, Salafi leader Abdel Moniem El-Shahat lost the run-offs to independent candidate Hosni Dowidar, backed by the FJP. El-Shahat made statements last week denouncing democracy and describing those who promote it over the word of God as "atheists." He also described the literature of Egyptian Nobel prize winner Naguib Mahfouz as “inciting promiscuity, prostitution and atheism.” These statements aggravated many Egyptians and liberal parties who joined forces against El-Shahat to guarantee his loss in the run-offs. Councilor Mahmoud El-Khodeiry, who ran with the FJP, also beat Tarek Talaat Moustafa, a former member of the dissolved National Democratic Party. Before announcing the results, Ibrahim stressed that any candidate who violated campaigning laws will be referred to the general prosecution and forced to destroy all campaigning material. He added that police forces have the jurisdiction to handle those who violate campaigning laws. Several violations were reported during the elections including distributing flyers outside polling stations. Click here for a pdf of the election results for the single-winner seats in phase 1, and here for a pdf of the number of votes given to each party list.
