CAIRO - Egypt's first post-revolution first round runoff polls started on Monday, amid hopes, by Islamist powers to maintain their lead, vociferous attempts by liberal candidates to prove that they are not an easy nut to crack, and noticeable lack of interest on the part of the voters. Around 17 million voters should have showed up at polling stations in the 27 constituencies of the nine governorates of the first round of the elections where the runoffs are held. A major chunk of these voters, however, was nowhere to be found, sending fears against a possible return to Egyptians' customary lack of interest in politics, something that characterized political work under Hosni Mubarak's 30 years of rule. Even with this, Islamist and liberal candidates and their supporters used every tool to lure the few voters who showed up in the nine governorates to them. In the coastal city of Alexandria, Tarek Mustafa, a construction mogul who runs against judge-cum-political activist Mahmud Al Khoderi, was reported to have bused women and men supporting him to polling stations in the governorate, while some newspaper reporters said they saw Mustafa distributing shirts and gifts to supporters near to the polling stations. In other governorates, including in the Nile Delta Governorate of Kafr Al Sheikh, clashes happened between supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party and the Salafi Al Nour Party, eyewitnesses told The Egyptian Gazette. The clashes did not result in any human casualties, but they contributed to making tense the scene outside some polling stations in the governorate, the eyewitnesses added. Outside the polling stations, the few voters who attended seemed to know who they are going to vote. One of them was Ahmed Mohamed, a public relations specialist who was walking in the direction of a polling station in Cairo to cast his ballots. "The candidates of the Muslim Brotherhood are the best," Mohamed said. "They are organised and have their good plans for this country," he added in an interview. Not far away from him, another voter, Mohamed Aly, said he preferred the Salafis, believing that the ultra-conservative Muslims were more close to the people. "I like the Salafists, because they are not fond of power like the other political groups," Aly said. "The Salafists are also more moderate than the other powers," he added. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) had expected the runoffs to attract more voters as they entered their second day on Tuesday. The election commission had initially announced that the first round of the elections attracted 62 per cent of a total of 17 million eligible voters in its nine governorates. Monday, however, commission head Justice Abdel Moez Ibrahim said the turnout was only 52 per cent. With the apparent lack of interest on the part of the voters to go to polling stations in the runoffs, some people expected the total voter turnout not to reach the 52 per cent of the elections on 28 and 29 November. Even with this, in some election hotspots some Salafists candidates overused religion and religious figures to attract voters, according to NGOs watching the vote. One of these candidates was Salafists candidate Abdel Monem Al Shahat, an official spokesperson of the Salafists movements in Alexandria, whose supporters attached his photo to the photo of a famous Salafists preacher, telling the voters that the preacher supported their candidate. The Islamist powers (the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists) had managed to win 60 per cent of the votes dedicated to party lists in the first round of the elections. On Monday, 104 individual candidates, some of them belonged to Islamist parties, contested 52 seats. If these individual candidates manage to end competition over the se seats in their favour, they will be adding yet more power to the Islamists who are expected to make the majority of the next parliament.
