On the night of the seventh of September 2005, the first presidential elections in Egypt has ended, and our association has observed, analyzed and studied the elections, through the monitoring of twenty distributed constituencies all over the country, a sample representing all of Egypt, including countryside and urban regions, north, south and amid of the country, border governorates, coastal governorates and Suez channel cities.

The election process had many diversities and differences in the performance of the same authorities in the different places, a prominence of roles of authorities and a retreat of roles of other authorities that we were used to its presence in such occasions.

One of the most significant roles, a role that will remain in the nation's memory for a long period of time, is the role of the Egyptian judges in the election operation, starting from their role in the administration of the committee of the presidential elections, and that Counsel / Mamdouh Marei, who was said to have played the role that the Ministry of Internal affairs have played in the previous elections, preventing huge number of judges who are different in opinion from participating in managing the election process, he also ordered the prevention of the Egyptian civil society enterprises from their constitutional right in the monitoring of the elections. The role of administrative prosecution and the governmental royal, that was clearly conspiring with the violations that took place in favor of the National Party candidate, and not committed to the rules and the laws organizing the election process. And lastly the honorable and tentative role of the most of sitting judges who maintained the committees’ administration that they managed according to the rules and the laws, starting from opening the election boxes and the reception of the electors, until the completion of the sorting operation and the declaration of the election results.

The initial indications of results of observation, follow-up and analysis are as follows:

The election campaign:

Our observers concentrated on a quantitative and qualitative observation and analysis for the election campaign of the candidates, where other supervisory institutions – who are members in the coalition – were concerned with the supervision of the election campaign in different mass media. Our observers have noticed those observations:

·        The excessiveness in the election campaign of the National Party candidate that by no means matched with the election campaign of other candidates. The election campaign of the rest of the presidential candidates gathered only what counted about 8% of the election campaign of the National Party candidate.

·        The election campaign presented to the National Party candidate from the members of the current People's Assembly and Shura Council, the supporters of the National party, businessmen and merchants, counted more than 90% of the party’s total election campaign.

·        The National Party supporters showed their names, jobs and their party and social position many times using not only speeches but also huge pictures, in their election campaign and support of the National Party candidate, that seemed as if they were the candidates themselves, and that there is an election battle between them.

·        The election campaign of the supporters of the National Party candidate from the business men was immense, containing the election constituencies they were used to engage their parliamentary elections in.

·        The administrative and local authorities forced junior and mid-sized shop owners of different kinds to participate in the election campaign by placing signs to the National Party candidate, or else they would be exposed to different administrative penalties like the occupation of the road and other forms of violations that are probably disregarded.

·        Only few supporters of other parties’ candidates worked on the election campaign publicly in favor of the candidates of their parties, fearing their exposure to punishment, and those who did mention their names were harmed.

·        The election campaign of all candidates continued till the Election Day, all election campaign forms in favor of the National Party candidate were made inside the election committees in the Election Day itself.

The elections and the state institutions:

·        The wide use of the state authority, influence and capabilities in favor of the National Party candidate; forcing employees and workers to participate directly in the election campaign, the use of vehicles belonging to the governmental organizations and institutions to transfer electors and election campaign items... etc.

·        The influence of senior state employees, the ministries deputies, the boards of directors’ presidents and the public managers to force their employees to vote in favor of the National Party candidate.

The role of the official religious institutions:

·        As Islamic religious and Christian leaders, the declaration of the Al Azhar Imam and the Orthodox Church pope to their support of the National Party candidate was a political bias not proper from religious commands.

·        The bias of the Orthodox church, through the support of the priests and their call for voting in favor of the National Party candidate, during the lessons and the prayers in the last week before the elections.

·        The Ministry of Endowments – through mosque imams – didn’t directly call to voting in favor of the National Party candidate, as most of the imams – in prayer speech on Friday 2 September – only invited citizens to participate in the elections as their duty, while only small group of them requested people to vote in favor of the National Party candidate.

The role of the media enterprises:

Please return to the report of Cairo center of the human rights studies, and also Al Mahrosa center of researches and studies in this regard, as both are members in the coalition, and have prepared specialized reports regarding the role of the media enterprises.

The role of the security institutions:

·        In general, the security in the cities was characterized by non offensive intervention in the elections like their presence inside the election headquarters, but – at the same time – they totally neglected any violations carried out by the National Party candidate supporters, whether harassing other candidates delegates – if present – or the electors who voted for other candidates, even practicing election campaign inside the headquarters of the election committees and  adding cards to the election boxes.

·        As for the countryside and distant headquarters – like Al-Wadi Al-Jadid and North Sinai – the security performance did not differ from the cities a lot except for the direct intervention that sometimes took place in the election process and the direct and clear bias to the National Party candidate.

The electors’ participation ratio in the voting:

According to the observers notes in the different governorates, the signing in the electors lists and by questioning some judges from the committees presidents who accepted the cooperation with the monitoring authorities from civil society institutions and with the exclusion of the offensive states of the forgery, we reached what follows :

First:

In the election committees headed by judges, order and discipline were enforced; no electors from governmental authorities, organizations, companies or enterprises were allowed to vote in the urban headquarters, the participation ratio ranged between 5 to 8%.

Second:

In the disciplined committees, containing electors from organizations and governmental authorities, participation ratio ranged from 15 - 20%, according to the ratio of number of those electors to the total recorded number in the committee, where the collective transfer took place to those electors from their work places to their corresponding voting committees using their departments and tourist transport vehicles.

Third:

The ratio of the participation in the countryside is in general higher than that in the urban regions.

Fourth:

In other, uncontrollable committees that did not consider rules and laws, and that allowed some offensive forms of forgery from the National Party supporters whether by filling election boxes with cards, or by permitting immense numbers of unknown citizens to vote without  election cards and sometimes without personal identity cards. The voting ratio in these committees sometimes exceeded 50%.

Some offensive violations form:

·        The presence of many of the election committees inside police stations headquarters, thus violating law.

·        The presence of the electors lists outside some of the committees with policemen and National Party members only.

·        The vote of out-comers in some of the committees by identity cards only, thus violating law.

·        Doubts were raised by the delay of the starting time of some committees.

·        The collective voting in some of the governorates by unknown persons to the constituent (Suez city for example).

·        The officials of some election committees for ladies directed the illiterate electors to place their print in the place corresponding to the National Party candidate.

·        Delegates of the National Party candidate sometimes accompanied the electors during the voting process in some of the committees, not respecting the voting secrecy.

General notes:

·        The National Party main battle was not with the competing candidates, but with the participants’ ratio where the main challenge to them was to raise the participation ratio to 50%, which couldn’t be achieved except in limited committees, by the means already mentioned.

·        A side struggle was noticed on the sidelines of the elections process between the competitors from the National Party supporters on the nomination of the party to them in the coming parliament elections, where mutual insulting and fighting inside the committees headquarters took place as they were competing to prove who is most loyal to the party and most suitable to gather crowds in favor of the party candidate in the presidential elections.

·        Most of the judges’ performance was respectful, considering rules and laws. Also one must take into consideration the insufficiency of their number which limited their ability to cover a suitable ratio of the committees.

·        Most of the judges allowed the presence of observers of the civil society inside the election headquarters and facilitated their task, some of them allowed the attendance of observers during the voting operation itself, at the same time the weakness of other committees presidents was noticed from the administrative prosecutions and governmental royal, whether regarding their ability to control committees, or their commitment to rules, laws, impartiality and fairness.

·        All of our observers noticed the wide-ranging use – from the National Party candidate supporters – to the state capabilities and in particular the use of the general vehicles and vehicles belonging to governmental companies, corporations and administrations in collective transfer of their working electors as well as the governmental authorities to their election headquarters and the assurance of their voting for the party candidate, as well as threatening those who won’t vote for the National Party candidate.

·        Most of the preliminary results highlighted the advance of the National Party candidate on the rest of the candidates, El Ghad party candidate follows him, then EL Wafd Party candidate, taking into consideration the means of voting and violations that took place during the election process whether with the collective voting or with the addition of cards in favor of the National Party candidate which made the difference in the ratios a lot higher than the true difference.

Friday, 9 / 9 / 2005