Mubarak Rival Loses Parliamentary Seat

Mubarak Rival Loses Parliamentary Seat By JASPER MORTIMER, 
 
President Hosni Mubarak’s strongest challenger in the presidential race two months ago lost his parliamentary seat in an upset in the first round of Egypt’s legislative elections, according to initial returns Thursday.


Ayman Nour, a key mainstream opposition figure, was defeated Wednesday by a candidate of the ruling National Democratic Party for the south Cairo seat he had held for 10 years, the results said.


While returns were still far from complete and broad trends were not clear, Egypt’s strongest opposition organization, the Islamic-based and still-banned Muslim Brotherhood, appeared ready to strengthen its parliamentary bloc by winning a place in 41 runoff elections next week in constituencies where no candidate got a majority. The Brotherhood fields its candidates as independents to get around the ban.


One of its strongest candidates, Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, suffered a surprise loss to Amal Othman, former Cabinet minister who ran for the ruling party.


The polls were not expected to challenge the ruling party’s dominance of parliament. Instead, they were seen as a test of Mubarak’s pledge to reform his autocratic system.


Pundits predicted the turnout would show whether voters took Mubarak’s pledge seriously. The Electoral Commission did not give a figure for the turnout, but the Independent Committee on Election Monitoring estimated it at 34 percent.


While not high, the figure well surpassed the 23 percent recorded in the last two national votes — September’s presidential ballot and the parliamentary vote five years ago.


The three-stage elections allow for runoffs to be held six days later in cases where no candidate receives more than half the vote. The second stage is scheduled for Nov. 20 and the third stage for Dec. 1.


Monitoring groups hailed the fact that Wednesday was the first time they had been granted access to polling and counting stations, but they also reported a recurrence of the chicanery that has characterized previous elections: busing civil servants to polling stations, bribing voters, intimidating them and even assaulting opposition supporters.


Many of these irregularities were alleged to have taken place in Bab al-Shariya, the Cairo constituency where Nour lost to Yehia Wehdan, a former colonel in the State Security service.


Nour, a populist who became Egypt’s best-known opposition leader when he was detained on forgery charges early this year, accused police of intimidating people from voting for him and said his opponent’s campaign bribed voters and stuffed ballot boxes.


“What happened today is not an election,” Nour said.


The local police chief, Brig. Ehab Rushdy, refused to respond to the charges. But the chief monitor for National Association of Human Rights, Amir Salem, said police had told petty criminals to harass Nour supporters, and on occasion they had attacked them.


Salem added that monitors had seen representatives of the NDP distributing money to voters and that there was video of cash changing hands.


Another monitor, Aza Suleiman, said NDP supporters had stopped her in the street and offered her about $17 to vote for Wehdan.


Wehdan dismissed such allegations, telling The Associated Press late Wednesday: “What happened is normal. These things happen around the world, including in the United States.”


European parliamentarian Edward Macmillan Scott of Britain said the elections were “reasonably fair and free,” but he had heard that the government had bused voters to polling stations and the state should allow international monitors to observe the process