CAIRO - With just few hours before Sunday's second- round of the general elections, campaigning reached its a peak as candidates and their political parties have spent LE515 million to fill the 508 seats in the People's Assembly (the Lower House of the Egyptian Parliament), two political observers said Saturday. Press reports claim that the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), whose candidates swept the first round of the polls on November 28, has spent LE500 million on the elections, whereas the libral Al-Wafd Party and the banned Muslim Brotherhood group paid an LE15 million bill for their campaigning and supporting their candidates before they decided to quit the race. One political observer, professor Samer Samir of the American University in Cairo, said the power of money shaped the course of the elections and results in favour of “those who paid more”. "I would say that the power of money and vote-buying are not something new in Egyptian parliamentary elections since 1932. They played a key role in shaping the course of the 2010 legislative polls and their results,” professor Samir, who teaches political economics, said. The NDP candidates have spent LE500 million before and after the November 28 vote – on billboards, television talk shows, campaign rallies and meetings with voters, according to the two experts. Money and religion play a key role at all levels in Egypt, Youssri el- Gharabawi, an independent political researcher with the semi-official newspaper Al-Ahram, said, adding that parliamentary hopefuls had used the power of money to buy crucial votes and spread undelivered promises to the voters. About 40 per cent of Egypt's 80 million population lives under the poverty line and free gifts are the magic word during election season that could make or break a candidate's career, according to el-Gharabawi. "People vote for the candidates, who offer them cash bribes, or Government ministers, who have the power to provide them with basic services," he said. He said that it was no secret that many Egyptians sold their votes because money remained their only tangible and immediate benefit on Election Day to buy food. Al-Masry Al-Youm, an independent newspaper, wondered what the Government could do with such a huge sum of LE515 million that was wasted on elections, whose disputed results made waves at the local and international levels. The newspaper argued that the money could have been used to build low-cost housing units for the poor in the Delta Governorate of Menufia, or upgrading the health and education services in some poor village in Upper Egypt, or building, equipping and staffing a small environmentally- friendly factory in the Suez Canal governorate of Ismailia, or buying new buses, etc. It lamented the fact that the money was wasted on election campaigns from which no one benefited anything.
