People's eyes guarantee the integrity of the elections

Maat Foundation has started implementing an ambitious program to support popular oversight of the elections. It will be implemented during the period from January 1, 2010 to June 30, 2012, through which the mid-term elections for the Shura Council and the People's Assembly elections of 2010 will be monitored, as well as the presidential elections of 2011 and finally the local elections of 2012.

The program “Supporting Popular Oversight” is considered an extension of Maat’s previous activities in this field and based on it, and a direct response to the data that came out of the evaluation of these projects. During the year 2008, the Foundation implemented the Voter’s Voice project to monitor the past local elections in an innovative manner that depends on the voter himself, and before him. During 2007, it implemented the Monitoring for Participation project to monitor and evaluate the performance of civil society organizations' observers on the Shura Council mid-term elections.

The program, which is divided into four time phases, is based on a full partnership with 35 NGOs in various regions of the Republic, in addition to relying mainly on influential popular parties (the voters themselves - influential popular leaders in the local community - volunteers and activists in NGOs working in the targeted districts - bloggers Internet activists).

The first phase of the program began with the signing of cooperation protocols with the umbrella civil organizations in the targeted governorates (7 organizations), each of which will undertake to assemble 4 organizations in each governorate and raise their capabilities to work in the field of electoral monitoring and qualify them to implement the various activities within the framework of the program.

It is expected that by the end of the program, more than 35 constituencies will have the capabilities and mechanisms that enable them to completely self-monitor the elections, and this will implicitly reduce the cost required for civil organizations to monitor the general elections to a minimum in the future and overcome a major reason of the weak returns of this This type of oversight, in addition to activating and institutionalizing the participation of active and influential societal parties in supporting the integrity of the elections after they have been absent from this field for many years, which is ultimately in favor of the integrity of the electoral process as a whole, which is expected to witness a noticeable improvement after the end of the proposed program.

It is expected that there will be a systematic evaluation for each stage of the program so that mistakes can be avoided and shortcomings can be faced and at the same time maximizing the positives. Maat will also be keen on the participation of specialists and stakeholders in the evaluation processes in order to expand the scope of support for the proposed program.