In the absence of voters, wholesale violations and violations

Does the vote of the voter make a difference ... ???

First report

The (Voter Voice) project represents an extension of Maat Center's vision for human rights and constitutional studies that seeks to create new forms of oversight that support the views calling for activating the role of civil society organizations in monitoring elections and reveals aspects of distortions and overreach that may be practiced during the electoral process intentionally or unintentionally. At the same time, the audit form, with its objectivity, is a response to those who question or question its usefulness.

The beginning was through the partnership that the Center made with the One World Foundation for Development and Civil Society and the Human Development Association in Mansoura to implement the project (Monitoring for Participation), which was implemented voluntarily and without any funding to monitor the performance of the observers and the extent of their commitment to the monitoring standards pursued and demanded by the institutions International during the midterm elections for the Shura Council (June 2007).

The executive strategy of the Voter's Voice Project depends on monitoring local elections in 94 electoral districts spread across 21 governorates through 940 field observers and 94 coordinators working to monitor and document the activities of the electoral process with the eyes of the voter and through his voice, who analyzes and expresses his views on the competitive situation of the candidates and does he feel Is it in his favor or in the interests of the competitors only.

On this basis, the observer in the voter vote project does not seek to monitor electoral funds or procedures directly, but rather achieves its goal through the voters who participate by casting their votes in the electoral process and are able to determine the extent of the impact of the procedures or violations on their participation and voting biases and how they can be overcome to ensure more Participation and the ability to achieve the development process through community solidarity.

In the framework of implementing the Voter's Voice Project, the Center issues its first report on the local elections (April 2008), through which it monitors and analyzes the various performance of the participating parties, towards which it makes the following observations:

First: The last local popular elections were held on April 8, 2002, with the aim of occupying 49 thousand and 522 seats distributed as follows: 3230 members at the level of the popular councils of the provinces, 13302 members at the level of the popular councils of the centers, 5168 members at the level of the popular councils of cities and 1,374 members at the level of the popular councils of neighborhoods. 26448 members at the level of the popular councils of villages, which are the seats for which 59708 are nominated, distributed among all political forces, and 25,804 seats have been decided by acclamation, equivalent to 52.1% of the total seats, so that the elections will be held on the rest of the seats to show through the final results the distribution of seats among the political forces with the National Party obtaining 45,943 One seat was 97%, the Wafd Party won 142 seats, 0.3%, the Tagammu Party won 8 seats with 0.02%, the Nasserist Party won 8 seats with 0.02%, the Egypt Girl Party 1 seat, and the Liberal Party won 5 seats with 0.01%, while the independents got 1239 seats with 2.6%.

Second: The local elections were supposed to take place during 2006, given that Law 43 of 1979 on local administration limited the duration of the parliament’s term to four years. However, the results of the People's Assembly 2005 and the success of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in appearing as a possible alternative to the existing system led to the hesitation in conducting the elections. Until the matter was settled based on a proposal submitted by the representatives of the National People's Assembly in the session of February 15, 2006 to postpone local elections for a period of two years until the completion of the issuance of a new law supporting decentralization and local administration after constitutional amendments (Article 76), which has not happened until today despite the initiative of constitutional amendments. The second amendment of 34 articles of the constitution, one of which was justified in support of localities and decentralization of government by transferring the powers of the central authority to the local sectors in the governorates. A pressing societal dialogue in favor of issuing a new law for localities that supports popular participation and ends the central retreat of national services and interests in one city that represents the community. The political imprint of the country.

Third: The work of local councils is regulated by Law No. 43 of 1979 and its successive amendments by Law No. 49 of 1981, Law No. 145 of 1988, Law 9 of 1989 and Law No. 84 of 1996 which clarifies the absence of an integrated and clear vision for the work of local councils and the purpose behind them in light of comparing them to district councils Where it appears through the criticism of the current law the extent of the defective anomaly that the local councils lose their supposed prestige, as the available monitoring tools, the members of the local councils, lack the right to interrogate officials in the executive body, in addition to the council’s role being limited to oversight without management, which made the council’s decisions a recommendation that is often not implemented. While the law sided with the occurrence of any dispute in favor of the executive authority, it granted the prime minister and governors the right to dissolve local councils without specific criteria for the use of this right and without being matched by any accounting procedure that these councils can use to control the executive authority, which made the councils lose their effectiveness or their ability to Implementing its advancement projects, which in many cases were caused by the strange electoral system that binds the voter to the group Voting in favor of 44 candidates who may not be able to identify them or communicate with their electoral programs, bringing in many cases people who are not worthy of the positions for which they were elected, and this increased the degree of confusion and corruption and the inability to provide objective solutions to problems, which was recognized by senior leaders in the executive authority and the ruling party Both.

Fourth: Local elections take place in the absence of the Supreme Elections Committee, whose role was regulated by Law No. 18 of 2007. Despite the clear text of the committee in supervising the legislative elections to the People's Assembly and the Shura Council, any mention of the local elections was neglected because the executive authority is uniquely setting its dates and announcing its results without a clear justification that justifies the reason. In establishing the Supreme Committee, or at least ignoring the extension of its supervisory role to the localities, whose election management is divided between the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Local Development, represented by governors who control their decisions in forming committees to receive nomination applications and appeals committees, managing the voting process, announcing results, and calling councils to convene, so that we find it impossible Imagine the possibility of holding the executive authority accountable or carrying out oversight over it, with all these powers in its hands.

Fifth: As soon as Republican Decree No. 55 of 2008 was issued on February 13, 2008, inviting the voters whose names are registered in the election tables to choose members of local popular councils on Tuesday, 8/4/2008, the Minister of Interior issued Decree No. 358 of 2008 specifying the documents required with an application for candidacy for membership of the councils And after that, the Local People's Assembly issued Decree No. 359 of 2008 regarding the legal controls for organizing electoral campaigning, which prohibited the use of religious slogans or the use of places of worship and state-owned places in advertising whose upper limit was set at twenty thousand pounds only, regardless of the seat being nominated for.

Then the Minister of Local Development, Muhammad Abd al-Salam al-Mahjoub, announced that the governors had issued their decisions to open the door for candidacy for membership in local councils from Tuesday 4 March 2008 for a period of ten days ending Thursday, March 13, 2008, provided that the announcement of the final lists of candidates is Sunday, March 23, 2008.

Sixth: The absence of clear and specific information about the elections or the number of candidates without the presence of any source that can be referred to. Even the Ministry of Local Development, the Council of Ministers and the State Information Service, their websites have ignored the electoral process, and to this day no official statement has been announced about the number of candidates or their names and characteristics, which is considered strange and unseen. A normal justification for demonstrating a desire to be alone in the process and a tendency to bring it to specific results.

Seventh: Since the first day of submitting candidacy applications, the increasing violations against those wishing to submit their nomination papers have become clear where fake queues have appeared that impede any candidate and make him stand in order far from the place of submission of applications until the end of the daily deadline for receiving applications, a phenomenon that all independent candidates or members complained about. Opposition political forces, which are queues formed mostly from suspects and leaders of precedents who frequently resorted to bullying and assault on the candidates, as happened with the assembly candidate in Qaliubiya, Mahmoud Abdo, and with Mahmoud Abd al-Latif Qutb, a member of the People's Assembly for the Muslim Brotherhood who applied for the nomination in Beni Suef and the Wafd candidates in Menoufia, in addition to imposing The governors imposed compulsory cleaning fees of 1000 pounds for each candidate, which led to obstructing the candidacy of many who wish, despite the issuance of final rulings by the Administrative Court to cancel these fees due to their unlawfulness, as well as the violations obstructing the candidates' obtaining the required documents such as the status certificate and the criminal status newspaper, which showed biases. Clear to the executive branch in the elections.

Eighth: The local elections have entrenched the state of division that the NDP has been witnessing for some time in the context of the conflict between the reform movement and the old leaderships, where the successive accusations were directed against engineer Ahmed Ezz of singling out the candidate lists and imposing his men on them, which appeared to determine the percentage of the selection of the base units for the candidates by 70 % and leaving 30% for the leaderships This is the process in which the Secretary General of the party, Safwat Al-Sharif, announced that its conferences would be held in 2,900 party units with the participation of 400,000 members. However, numerous accusations of non-compliance with its results were directed at the leaderships, as happened with the party member Samir al-Talbani, who confirmed that he obtained 5,960 votes. Governorates of Egypt after excluding names and symbols have weight in the governorates.

As Saad Al Hafyan, head of the Matrouh local council, who described what is happening as piracy, and Saad Eid, the head of the Ismailia local council, Yassin Nujida, the council’s deputy, Ahmed Abdel Ghani Hassan, the head of the Sohag local council, Alaa Farouk, the deputy of the Red Sea local council, and others were excluded, so that the governorates caught fire with protests and resignations, so 30 party members demonstrated. In Kom Hamadeh, in front of the headquarters, 12 leaders in Beheira send a letter to the party leader (Mohamed Hosni Mubarak) asking him to intervene, and 800 members of the National Party in Dakahlia submit their resignations in protest against the nominations fools, 100 members in Gharbia, 241 members in Damietta, 120 members in South Sinai, 50 members in Sharqia demanding resignations Accountability and dismissal of party trustees responsible for everything that happened, such as Salah Ghoneim, Amin Damietta, Saad al-Dali, Secretary of Hurghada, Hassan Adas, Amin of Ismailia, Mustafa Aql Amin al-Daqahliya, Ahmad Atman, Amin al-Buhaira, Counselor Walid Rahmi, Secretary of the Red Sea, and Reda al-Najjar, Secretary of the Organization.

Al-Watani deputies raised the order to submit a number of them for their resignation or requests to freeze their membership in the party, so Mahmoud Selim, a member of Parliament in Ismailia, resigned in protest against Hassan Adas's nominations of undesirable people, and Ali Hassan Al-Basandili advised him of his resignation in protest against the nominations of Mustafa Akl Amin al-Dakahlia, whose bodyguard tried to assault the member. Inside the governor’s office, the representatives of the People's Assembly and Shura Council (Shadul Tawfiq - Muhammad Abdel Maqsoud - Hosni Ahmed Hanafi - Oded Awad Allah - Syed Qasim - Ali Hamdoun) in the Red Sea froze their membership in the party until the dismissal of Counselor Walid Rahmi, the secretary of the governor and Reda al-Najjar, the secretary of the organization, in protest of their disregard The Ababda, Bashariya, Ashraf, and Brahmins tribes in the party's nominations, and 9 Nawati MPs in Beheira threatened to freeze their membership if Ahmed Atman, the governor of the province, was not dismissed.

These nominations were marred by a lot of Alawar, due to the presence of people on the party’s lists around whom there are suspicions. The Nationalist nominated on his lists in Dakahlia Karam Muhammad Ali Hussein Yusef, who is imprisoned in the Mit Ghamr prison pending the case (8288) for the year 2007, misdemeanor appealed fraud, and the party nominated Ibrahim Ahmed Hamdto, against whom the verdicts were issued. Multiple cases involving the issuance of checks without balance, including Case No. 12052 of 2001, Misdemeanor Bella, in addition to the arrest of the candidate Mamdouh Al-Samman in the Dar Al-Salam district while receiving a bribe. All are facts of the angry party members ’opinion that it detracts from the party’s position and its ability to achieve an overwhelming victory in the local elections, which made them They file complaints against the party leaders, so Jaber Abdel-Sadiq Muhammad made a report at Edfu Police Station, No. 1348 of 2008, in which he accused the governorate secretariat of laughing at the candidates after they paid the fees for nomination, and Abd al-Latif Tulan, a member of the martyrs' local council, filed a lawsuit in which the party’s secretary in Menoufia demanded compensation of one million EGP and the symbols of the Red Sea tribes submitted a complaint to the Attorney General of the Red Sea Prosecutions against the National Party, accusing the tribal symbols in which the party’s secretary is in the governorate and the organization secretary is steal. A Ali files the nomination of tribesmen to prevent them from nominating in addition to the bias of Saad Al-Daly, Secretary of Hurghada for his tribe, from which nine candidates were nominated in Hurghada only, and Dr. Hanan Al-Huwairi, party member in Aswan, announced the sit-in at the office of the Organization Secretary Ahmed Ezz amid solidarity of 6 of the people's representatives and the Shura Council with it, which is the anger that moved The Copts who protested against the nomination of any Coptic candidate in Monufia despite 6 of them submitted their papers and represented three churches and a member of the local council in Mansoura submitted a protest note to President Mubarak in protest against the Dakahlia leaders ’neglect of the nomination of Anba Daoud Bishop of Mansoura on the national lists, which caused the objection of 6 churches of the Coptic Orthodox Mansoura (The Virgin - Saint Damiana - the Martyr Stephen - Anba Paula - Saint Gerges).

The crises that erupted within the National Party with the end of the candidacy application stage and the anger caused by the choices, which included all groups that the patriot was keen on, such as tribes, Copts and women, show the extent of the crisis the party is going through and the seriousness of the reactions that used new forms on the party such as sit-ins, cases, and freezing Membership, which makes it necessary to conduct a comprehensive internal dialogue that restores the unity and cohesion of the party, which has been greatly affected by the events it is going through.

Ninth: The localities clearly showed the extent of the crisis that the official opposition forces are suffering from, which shows in every electoral round the extent of their isolation from the Egyptian street and their inability to communicate with him or to present candidates. We do not say capable of winning, but at least able to complete the required number of all electoral districts, so they were unable. All parties except for the national party nominated candidates covering the electoral districts, or at least 1% from those constituencies, so the most nominated party, the Wafd Party, submitted 573 candidates out of a total of 52 thousand seats, after it promised to present 1770 candidates, and the Tagammu Party nominated 227 candidates after it promised to present 600 candidates in 22 A governorate and the Nasserite Party nominated 148 candidates in 16 governorates after it promised to present 500 candidates, and the Al-Jeel Party nominated 92 candidates in 10 governorates after it promised to present 220 candidates, and the Al-Ghad Party nominated 100 candidates, and the Egyptian Youth Party nominated 12 candidates in 3 governorates after it promised to nominate 300 candidates. As for the National Accord Party, he said That he will nominate 30 candidates in 6 governorates, but he failed and withdrew, which is what happened with the Takaful Party, which failed to present any candidate, which illustrates the depth of the crisis and the difficulty of imagining a partisan life in which 24 political parties are fighting for power (or so) It is assumed) that all except for the ruling party fail to cover the electoral districts in which the elections are held.

The opposition, despite its apparent weakness, suffered from severe violations during the candidacy application period due to intransigence in extracting official papers, such as the criminal case newspaper and the fake queues that closed the entrances to the committees that received applications, which consisted of dangerous precedents and registrars who attacked opposition candidates and tore their nomination papers and were exposed. Wafd MP Salah Al-Sayegh, along with twenty delegate candidates, attacked them inside the governorate office in Ismailia when submitting their nomination papers, and violently assaulted the Wafd candidates in Monufia, which made the governorate party committee announce its final withdrawal and demand that the party leadership boycott the elections.

And the attack on the candidates of the Nasserist Party on Abdo al-Malhi and Muhammad Zaki in Damietta, preventing them from running, and dragging Mahmoud Abdo, the candidate of the gathering in front of the office of Qalyubia governorate, and stealing his bag with his papers, belongings and money in front of the security men who refused to release a report for him about the attack and when an unknown car hit Mr. Mahmoud Abdel Sami, the Wafd candidate in Al-Qanater .

Violations did not stop at the violence and obstruction of candidacy, as committees receiving candidacy applications themselves formed a new obstacle to opposition candidates. In North Sinai, independents and opponents threatened to sit in offices that received candidacy applications because of the compulsory fees and the committee’s insistence on reserving the first numbers from 1 to 14 in favor of the national candidates. The committees also refused. In Fayoum, candidates were given receipts indicating their submission of nomination papers on the claim that receipts for payment of fees are sufficient and in Kafr El-Sheikh the committees refused to receive 160 warnings from bailiffs to enable candidates wishing to nominate to present their papers and in Ismailia, the opposition candidates issued a warning by a reporter against Counselor Majdi Al-Abyari, President The Appeals Committee to enable them to present their appeals against the NDP candidates, violations that prompted representatives of the opposition in the People's Assembly to discuss them inside the parliament and demand urgent solutions for them if the state is sincere in its endeavor towards comprehensive political and societal reform.

Tenth: The local elections supported the political image that places the Muslim Brotherhood in the seat of a possible alternative to the existing power in the event of a change or movement in the seats of the executive authority, which is evident in the Brotherhood’s nominations for the localities, after a tug of war about the possibility of the Brotherhood to participate in the local elections, especially after the violent blows they received The most violent was the referral of the second deputy to the guide, Khairat Al-Shater, along with the leaders of the group to the military judiciary. General Guide / Muhammad Mahdi Akef decided to hold a press conference at the group’s headquarters on February 21, 2008 during which he announced the Brotherhood’s participation in the local elections despite the loudness of voices within the group such as Dr. Jamal Heshmat expecting no The success of any Brotherhood candidate in the localities due to organized fraud, and the group announced that it had prepared 10 thousand candidates who would be paid in the localities with 20% of the required seats, which is a percentage in which the group moves during all the past elections to confirm its slogan (participation ineffective) and reassured large sectors inside and outside The country has indicated that it does not seek to rule (now), which is a message that the group has failed despite its many attempts to deliver it, especially since the brotherly approach The utilitarianism based on striking all civil forces seeking public action, which the group followed during the People's Assembly elections by dropping it and its participation in the conspiracy to overthrow the symbols of the opposition has created hostility and lack of confidence in the sincerity of its message, which has made it very clear that it addresses the outside more than it addresses internally, which certainly explains the reason for the pressures. And the violations that their candidates met, who only 5774 of whom were able to present their papers before, 498 of them with a percentage of 3.8% of the total candidates, after many difficulties that reached to the beating of Ali Mahmoud Abdel-Latif Qutb, son of the Brotherhood MP in the People's Assembly from Beni Suef governorate and raiding houses in Kafr Kufr The sheikh and the relatives of the candidates were arrested until the matter came to the siege of the Naseer Sons Mosque to arrest the Brotherhood leader Dr. Ibrahim Al-Atwi, and it is the siege that was ended after stones were thrown with the people and the Brotherhood’s candidates were arrested after they submitted their papers. Their number reached 831 due to the localities, including 187 candidates, to spark demonstrations and protests. In Gharbia there are 5,000 demonstrators, and Kafr al-Sheikh 900 demonstrators and 500 protesters and a desolate of 700 demonstrators, until the matter came to storming 1000 people, it was said They belong to the group of Basyoun City Council in Gharbia and smash its doors and windows.

The Brotherhood relied on filing cases before the administrative courts of the judiciary in which they objected to preventing them from nominating, bringing the number of lawsuits filed by the Brotherhood to 3,912, of which the judgment was issued in 2664 of them in favor of the group’s candidates by enabling them to nominate or have their names listed in the electoral lists.

The Administrative Judiciary Court in the Eastern Province issued a ruling to list 250 candidates in the lists of candidates, and in Cairo it ruled to list 38 candidates, and in Shebeen al-Kom it ruled to list 107 candidates and issued another judgment to list 219 candidates, and in Port Said to list 33 candidates, and in Alexandria the listing of 509 candidates in Beheira and 94 candidates in Alexandria and Assiut, listing 67 A candidate on the lists of candidates in Sohag.

In addition to the Brotherhood’s nomination of some detainees in the localities, 42 detainees in Alexandria filed a case before the Administrative Court to enable them to nominate themselves.

The state demonstrated its decisive stance against the Muslim Brotherhood when announcing the news that two candidates for the group had won by acclamation in the Nozha and Peace Department in Cairo, as the National Party did not complete its list, as the response was soon announced by announcing that the National Party had completed the papers of 980 candidates in Cairo, including two candidates for the Promise and Peace to nullify the sponsorship that was announced. Which prompted the candidates Sheikh Abu Bakr and Eng. Hakim Al-Ra’i to file lawsuits before the State Council against the Cairo Governorate and the Ministry of Interior under numbers 25571-25701 due to the legal override by adding candidates to the National Party after the nomination and appeals door closed and the Cairo governorate approved for recommendation.

The violations that the Muslim Brotherhood is suffering from is a reaction to the state of anxiety caused by the group by presenting itself on the basis that it is the alternative to the existing ruling system, as well as its controversial political program due to its hostility to many political and social forces in society and its approach based on achieving the organization’s own interests. At the expense of parties, we do not say close to them, but at least they do not have a quarrel, which made them alone and we cannot support them in an equation that the Brotherhood wanted in this way without awareness of what this might lead to harsh consequences that may be upon them.

Which obliges the group to have an objective dialogue and to present evidence that proves its peaceful approach to the rotation of power and its ability to objectively deal with other political forces and its adoption of the citizenship methodology as a basis for dealing with thorny files that the group has failed to deal with until today even if all of them do not in any way justify the acceptance of any violation. You may exercise against it.

Eleventh: Civil society organizations continue their participation in the political reform process by playing their role in monitoring local elections in a natural extension of their experience based on monitoring all Egyptian elections, as 15 Egyptian organizations announced that they would observe, either individually or through coalitions and monitoring networks, assessing the amount of funding provided. It has about 3 million dollars after many skirmishes and disputes due to what was said to be an agreement between the government and one of the donors to prevent its funds from human rights centers in the context of striking one of the centers for its clear positions against the executive authority, but the matter was soon overlooked, even if it placed a heavy burden on the monitoring authorities. The local authorities, which have always been accused of lack of impartiality and objectivity in the censorship process and their approach to fabricating reports, which was the reason for the Maat Center, One World Foundation, and the Association for Human Development to implement the (Censorship for Participation) project to monitor the performance of observers and address deficiencies in order to reach a local code of honor for oversight. The election.

In human rights circles, the disagreement over the usefulness of censorship is clearly evident as the party opposing it believes that censorship will not be of use and that it will give legitimacy to the violations that the electoral process will witness, encouraging voters to vote, and this presents a false image of public opinion at home and abroad by participating in a process that cannot be We call it elections, and on the other hand, the second party sees that even if there are formal acts of censorship, it does not condemn all its workers because there are serious forms of censorship that take place in Egypt, especially since the idea of censorship has become credible and has an impact on the local and international levels, so there is a big difference between a political party declaring about Elections fraud and that the judgment on the electoral process is issued by a human rights organization that does not seek power and is considered a neutral party.

Despite all this, the biggest challenge for monitoring organizations remains in their ability to prepare and qualify their observers to play their role in an impartial and effective manner during an electoral process that is the most complex and the most numerous among its candidates, which is the local elections, which is a challenge despite its difficulty, but civil society organizations have already faced many of their ilk

And she succeeded in overcoming it.

 

 

Cairo 3/29/2008