Linked with our presentation of Bahey El-Din Hassan – Egypt.
Bahey eldin Hassan, Director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, CIHRS, presents the Provisional « Electoral » Conclusions:
The Majority of the voters (75% + almost 10 millions unregistered) have turned their back to the electoral process , they don’t believe in its integrity and fairness, whether parliamentary or presidential .
However, the political composition of the new parliament reflects the reality of half a century of political desertification of Egypt, and the dominance of religious discourse.
Politics were totally absent, programs were kept on the candidates desks and in newspapers , the content of the electoral campaign was mainly bribes, short term promises or long term empty promises, a seat in the paradise on the wings of Islam according to Moslem Brotherhood (MB), or « Quoran is the solution » according to some National Democratic Party (NDP) candidates.
However, the angels supported NDP and not MB in what so called » Night angels operations » , where they turned over some final counts , and made losers winners!
The electoral process is corrupted financially, and its voters lists were different from one party to another and from round to repeated round?!
Because of the common practice of violence by state bodies, NDP and MB gangs the voters didn’t have free will and in some areas were not allowed to go in.
The violence in 2000 parliamentarian elections was societal , this year is mainly a mix between paid and political/religious organized one. We witnessed the paid one during the May referendum, before and after, against the demonstrators in Cairo .
Civil society monitoring was selective in the polling stations and almost absent in the counting stations.
Court rulings were not respected at least on the first round.
The high commission of parliamentary elections should be questioned.
Several features are common between the presidential and parliamentarian elections of this hear, however the legitimacy of the fist one was not challenged because of the huge voting gap between the elected president and the second candidates, which is not the case in the last parliamentarian election . Hence, this elections should be repeated under the supervision of the judges club or the UN, and fully accessible to national and international monitors.
The large representation of MB will help to make the game open, in spite that NDP would not have a substantive obstacle to pass its policies and laws, because it has the necessary 2/3.
The new parliament will be worse concerning human rights. We should bear in mind that MB deputies were the only opposition group that supported NDP NGOs law 84/2002, in addition to their consistent leading role against freedom of thought, conscious and religion.
The new parliament would be the shortest in Egypt’s history, because of political and legal considerations
This election confirms clearly the absence of the government will for political reform.
This development supports the views of those who do not believe in a possible reform through the system.