Egypt

Most voters who were allowed to participate in the 27 June by-election held in the Ramle district of Alexandria voted for the National Democratic Party (NDP). The by-election filled two seats left empty since the parliamentary elections of October/November 2000, when election results for this district were cancelled by court order shortly after they were announced. Then, the Moslem Brotherhood candidates had won a landslide victory over their main rivals - the NDP. This time Brotherhood supporters were often not allowed to enter voting stations, so the result was very different. The election was marked by widespread intimidation of voters at the polling stations by elements associated with the NDP, resulting in scuffles and injuries.

The star of both elections in the district was Jihan Al Halafawi, the nominally independent candidate running under the Brotherhood's slogan, "Islam is the solution," for the district's professional seat. In 2000, Al Halafawi - the first female Brotherhood candidate ever and the wife of Moslem Brother and former head of the Alexandria Doctor's Syndicate Ibrahim Zaarafani - had secured 3,800 votes. This time, she got about 400. Her main opponent, NDP candidate Sami Abdel Hamid Al Guindi, secured 5,951 votes in 2002 - as against only a few hundred votes in 2000.

The Brotherhood and NDP candidates running for the worker's seat faced a similar reversal of fortune, with the NDP's Gomaa Ibrahim Al Gharbawi crushing the Brotherhood's Muhammad Sayed Ahmad by 5,000 votes to 300. Last time around, Al Gharbawi got only a few hundred votes in 2000.

The Ramle district joins affluent residents who reside by the waterfront and along Horreya Avenue, with poor areas in the district's crowded southern sections. Part of the Brotherhood's popularity in the district, which has more than 150,000 eligible voters, is due to the social services it provides to residents in the area. For example, Mosaab Ibn Omeir Mosque on Mustafa Kamel Street distributes free medicines to the poor. Posters endorsing Brotherhood candidates are pasted on the walls outside the mosque. A decade ago, Brotherhood candidates - including Sayed Ahmad - won seats in the local council elections and embarked on a campaign of providing services to the district's large poor and working class communities. Ever since, the Moslem Brotherhood has had a large popular following.

This time, a combination of intimidation and security interference made sure of a victory for the NDP. Uniformed and plainclothes security forces came en masse, surrounding all of the district's 38 polling stations and preventing voters from entering them. On election day, they rounded up and detained 200 people, including Al Halafawi's legal team. Nine women were arrested but released later that day. According to Interior Ministry sources, prosecutors later charged 104 of the detainees with illegal assembly, attempting to disrupt the political process, resisting authorities and vandalizing polling sites or vehicles.

Moreover, twelve Brotherhood campaigners were arrested prior to the elections and charged with belonging to an illegal organization and possessing literature inciting against the regime - including "The Great Day in Jihad," which calls for the overthrow of the Government. Prosecutors also charged some members of the group of 12 with planning to sabotage public transportation on election day. The Brotherhood had its own list of electoral abuses. It accused the ruling party and the security forces of buying the election and preventing registered voters from entering the polling stations to cast their vote. For a rumored LE20 per vote, workers were collected from factories and transported to polling stations to mark their ballot for the NDP. "I passed through all the polling stations inside the district. I did not see a woman or man cast a vote with my own eyes," said candidate Halafawi. "No one was allowed to enter the polling stations to vote in the entire district. The votes that were recorded and the results that were announced were for certain polling sites where the state apparatus worked to benefit the NDP. Anyone who insisted on voting was arrested."

Journalists covering the day's events were also targeted by what appeared to be NDP hired hands. Female thugs attacked Associated Press journalist Sarah Al Deeb, and an NDP aide confiscated the notes of a Cairo Times journalist while he was interviewing a voter. Security forces even detained the journalists and camera crew of Abu Dhabi TV and the German television channel ZDF and confiscated their footage. However, the Qatari news channel Al Jazeera managed to photograph and broadcast scuffles between security forces and voters.

Halafawi claimed that the NDP won the election by fraud at four to six polling stations. "When the votes were tallied, many ballot boxes came in completely empty," she said. Sitting Brotherhood MP Hussein Muhammad Ibrahim, from Alexandria's Mina Al Basl district, called for institutional guarantees other than judicial supervision of voting, which was introduced by court order during the last general election. "Democracy died today," Ibrahim said. "There needs to be an independent commission responsible for elections from A to Z... But judicial supervision! The judge is sitting inside the polling station, with no power over the outside." Ibrahim claims that NDP supporters were smuggled round the security cordons and cast ballots under false voting cards forged by the Ministry of Interior.

"This round of elections allowed security forces to concentrate their forces in one district," said Muhammad Mursi, Brotherhood MP from Zagazig. He is not convinced that a court challenge will change matters. "The People's Assembly will approve the election results," he predicted. "Objections to the elections will go before an Appeals Court, which writes a report, not a ruling. The People's Assembly will simply ignore the report." Nevertheless, taking the matter to the courts may throw light on election irregularities.