Parliamentary Elections in Egypt

Bad Habits Linger at the Polls in Egypt
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

CAIRO, Nov. 9 - At many of Egypt's polling places, the government appeared to keep its promises as voters cast their ballots for members of Parliament on Wednesday: ballot boxes were transparent so there was no obvious stuffing, official monitors worked to make sure only registered people voted and the security services did not appear to stop people from casting ballots for or campaigning for opposition candidates.

With a poll monitor standing by, a voter examined a ballot for parliamentary elections Wednesday in Cairo.
But even the best of intentions could not transform the culture of Egyptian politics, where for years bribery and intimidation have been as much a part of many political campaigns as slogans and billboards, poll watchers said. Even a casual observer walking through polling places in Cairo could see irregularities, like voters being steered by party officials to cast their ballots for certain candidates.

Poll watchers talked openly about the practice of candidates paying for votes.

"In the new election law, this is prohibited," said Muhammad Zaghloul, a lawyer who was guiding voters at one polling place to cast their ballots for an independent candidate. "But, in practice, it happens."

Egyptians voted on Wednesday in the first of three rounds to select 444 members of Parliament. With more than 5,000 candidates, and a requirement that a candidate collect more than half of the votes to be declared a winner, officials said they expected to hold runoffs for many of the races after each of the three rounds.

After decades of what amounted to one-party rule, President Hosni Mubarak has promised to open the political process and allow for a viable political opposition. The parliamentary elections were widely viewed as the first chance to see if Mr. Mubarak - elected to a fifth term in September - and his governing National Democratic Party would follow through on that promise. Even government critics acknowledged that on some levels, compared with past parliamentary elections, the contest that began on Wednesday was a significant improvement.

The government allowed many more candidates into the race than it had in the past, did not block the Muslim Brotherhood - technically barred from forming a political party - from openly campaigning and using religious slogans and did not instruct security forces to block voters from casting ballots against N.D.P. candidates.

"On the administrative level, everything is really in order," said Ghada Shahbandar, who heads a local electoral monitoring group. "The judges are controlling everything inside the polling station, and everything is in order."

With far more international scrutiny than it has been accustomed to, the governing party has concluded that it can maintain power and win greater credibility by not resorting to the heavy-handed tactics it employed in the past, officials said.

"The security agencies are performing their roles as best as they can in safeguarding the electoral process," said Hamdi Abdel Karim, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. "No policeman intervened in any of the polling stations unless asked to."

But in the presidential race in September, and again in the parliamentary elections, that message did not always filter down. Poll watchers reported irregularities around Cairo on Wednesday, including charges that voters supporting opposition candidates were at times attacked.

"There are people being beat up," said Feryal Gomaa, one of many volunteer poll monitors around Cairo. "I was violated personally. When they saw me writing my report, they took my purse and tore it."

Campaigning is supposed to stop on election day, but walking into polling sites involved running a gantlet of campaign workers. In many places, candidates set up huge speakers and boomed their slogans as voters tried to make their way past. Uniformed and plainclothes police officers were often slow to intervene, poll watchers said.

Candidates from many parties bused voters to the polls, at times walking them into the polling places while instructing them whom to vote for. "Everyone is doing this," said Muhammad Mostafa, 27, who said he was campaigning for a candidate supported by the Muslim Brotherhood. But the very presence of campaign workers who identified themselves as supporters of the Brotherhood - and candidates promoting themselves with Brotherhood slogans - signaled a significant change from years past, when such activities were stopped by the police. The Brotherhood was allowed to campaign aggressively for candidates who ran as independents.

"No one is bothering us," said Hussain Khatab, 26, as he campaigned for a Brotherhood-affiliated candidate outside one polling site.

In addition to the Egyptians working as independent poll monitors, four members of the European Parliament visited Cairo on a fact-finding mission, another sign of the increased scrutiny this country faces. Edward McMillan-Scott, vice president of the European Parliament and head of the small delegation, said he, too, experienced the dual realities of the contest - a more open process coupled with many of the traditional irregularities associated with Egyptian parliamentary races. He also said it appeared that turnout would be very low.

"I can say that the procedures look on the face of it competent," he said, adding, "There are the usual reports of irregularities: misuse of voting lists, one party gets the correct list, another gets the wrong list, even to the bribing of voters, which I fear is not an unusual mechanism."

Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting for this article.