CAIRO - The Higher Election Commission has refused to give the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights (ECWR) (a member of the Egyptian Coalition for Monitoring the Legislative Elections of 2010) permission to monitor Sunday's polls, the non-governmental group said in a statement Wednesday. “It gave permission to only 16 monitors out of the 90 who requested it,” added the group in the statement, a copy of which was obtained by The Egyptian Gazette. ECWR was supposed to obtain official permission to monitor the elections from a gender perspective in all constituencies for women all over Egypt, but the Higher Election Commission refused the request, it added. “The commission gave permission to 16 observers to monitor elections in the governorates of Cairo and 6th of October and to the operations room of ECWR,” it said. “The refusal to the remainder of the 90 requests is a violation of the Committee's guarantee to permit NGOs to monitor elections and a violation of practicing the political rights law and administrative judgment rulings, which confirms that NGOs have rights to monitor the elections.” No official at the Higher Election Commission was immediately available for comment.
