Africa

Home page

Africa

Egyptians riot, burn cars, claiming vote fraud

29 November 2010 23:37 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Protesters clashed with police Monday, setting fire to cars, tires and two schools used as polling stations in riots sparked by alleged widespread fraud by the ruling party in Egypt’s parliamentary elections, APA reports quoting â€œAssociated Pressâ€.
The Muslim Brotherhood acknowledged it had been heavily defeated, blaming vote rigging.
Riots broke out in several Egyptian cities a day after the voting, and in some places police fired tear gas to disperse protesters.
Egypt’s opposition says the government of this top U.S. ally was using the election to secure a complete monopoly over parliament and prevent dissent ahead of more significant presidential elections next year. The upcoming vote is clouded in uncertainty, because the man who has ruled Egypt for nearly three decades, 82-year-old President Hosni Mubarak, has had health issues and underwent surgery earlier this year.
A coalition of local and international rights groups Monday reported that the balloting was marred by widespread rigging after the government prevented monitoring. It said opposition candidate representatives and independent monitors who were supposed to be allowed to watch the voting were barred from almost all polling stations around the country, allowing officials to stuff ballot boxes.
Though official results are not due until Tuesday, candidate supporters around the country took to the streets in anger after hearing word their favorites lost.
In the southern province of Assiut, police fired tear gas at a procession of Muslim Brotherhood supporters armed with sticks who were carrying their candidate Mahmoud Helmi and chanting "Islam is the winner."
Further south in the city of Luxor, backers of an independent candidate set fire to cars and clashed with security forces. Five people were injured and 30 arrested.
Other protests erupted in Egypt’s northern Delta region. Around 500 backers of the secular opposition Wafd party clashed with ruling party supporters in Gharbiya, and police fired into the air and shot tear gas to disperse them. Other protesters set fire to two schools used as polling stations in Menoufiya and burned tires outside a station south of the Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria, briefly blocking the main highway to Cairo.
In a statement, the High Election Commission dismissed reports of violence or irregularities during the voting, saying that the few incidents it uncovered "did not undermine the electoral process as a whole."
The ruling party secretary-general, Safwat el-Sherif, blamed the Brotherhood for fomenting reports of fraud.
"An outlawed group of people is trying to stifle the positive results of the elections by spreading rumors about the whole process," he said, referring to the Brotherhood â€” though most of the rioting was by supporters of independent candidates, and even one ruling party candidate who lost to a rival within the party.
Defeating the Islamic fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood appeared to be the government’s main goal in the election. The group, though banned, is Egypt’s strongest opposition movement and in 2005 elections stunned the government by winning a fifth of parliament’s seats, its strongest showing ever.
The Brotherhood’s media official, Abdel-Galil el-Sharnoubi, acknowledged that when the results are announced, his movement may end up with almost no seats. He said none of its 130 candidates have so far secured a seat, either losing to the National Democratic Party or facing a Dec. 5 runoff.
"The elections revealed the real intention of the regime to unilaterally take over the Egyptian political arena," he said.
The coalition of rights groups estimated turnout Sunday was only 10 to 15 percent, substantially less than the 25 percent turnout in the 2005. While the government has yet to issue official figures, election commission chief al-Sayyed Abdel-Aziz Omar admitted it was "less than the accepted level."
Before the election, Egypt publicly rebuffed U.S. calls for international election monitors, maintaining that its own civil society groups were adequate to the task. The rights coalition, however, said authorities then largely prevented even local groups from watching.
In 2000 and 2005 voting, independent judges watched the polls, but a 2007 constitutional amendment also removed them.
"We are facing violations that we have not seen in the last two elections, when the stuffing of ballots boxes had stopped because judges were in the polling stations," explained Hafez Abu Saada of the Egyptian Organization of Human Rights. "This year we have gone back to the tradition of marking ballots."