An electoral commission will Thursday announce the final official results of the mid-term elections of the Shura Council (the Upper House of Egypt's Parliament), set to be swept by the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) amid accusations of rigging and blocking from opposition groups. "A press conference will be held Thursday to announce the official winners in the Shura Council vote and the runners-up who are going to have a re-election next Tuesday," said Judge Intisar Nassim, the head of the Higher Electoral Commission Wednesday. He added that all official statistics about the number of voters who cast their ballots and the votes for each hopeful would also be announced Thursday. In a relatively low turnout on Tuesday, Egyptians voted to elect 74 members of the Shura Council out of 446 candidates. In the run-up to the election, 14 runners from the ruling party were elected unopposed. The council, currently dominated by the NDP, consists of 264 members, two-thirds of whom are directly elected and 88 appointed by the head of the state. The polls were also marred by violence including a clash in which a candidate affiliated to the banned Muslim Brotherhood and three policemen were shot and wounded. Police controlling polling stations had prevented voters supporting Brotherhood contenders from entering to cast their votes and also kept reporters away, according to the Islamist group and monitors. The initial reports obtained by The Gazette from governorates across the nation referred to a sweeping victory for the NDP, though some key seats were grabbed by El-Ghad (tomorrow) Party chief Moussa Moustafa Moussa and four other independent candidates. The Maat Centre for Peace Development and Human Rights, an NGO that monitored the voting, cast doubts about the transparency and fairness of the process. "Some polling stations closed their doors an hour and a half earlier than scheduled, while some voters were denied their right to cast their ballots in other constituencies, namely in Qena and Minya governorates (in Upper Egypt)," read a statement from the centre. The statement, a copy of which was obtained by The Gazette, added that the turnout in all constituencies was apparently low, despite campaigns by candidates exceeding the limits set by the authorities. "All constituencies ignored instructions to help voters find their names in lists," the Maat statement further said. A low turnout has been a feature of such elections in Egypt. The Shura Council mid-term election in 2007 reportedly saw a turnout of 15 per cent among eligible voters. Prior to the poll, President Hosni Mubarak and the electoral commission urged the voters to go to polls. "The polls have been marred by fraud allegations," said the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, a non-governmental group, while some other rights groups with monitors reported widespread irregularities. Egyptian rights group observers say they have detected numerous cases of vote-buying and assault on opposition candidates. In addition, rights group monitors were reportedly prevented from entering several polling stations. There have been reports from some constituencies that candidates from the ruling party transported voters en masse to the polling stations.
