Despite its flaws, Egyptian election offers some hope Low turnout, fraud charges marred vote, but it gave a voice to long-silent citizens
Charles Levinson
The San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Cairo -- At dusk on election day, the police station in the sprawling Cairo slum of Imbaba was overflowing with students protesting their exclusion from the voter rolls.
"I've been trying to vote since 10 a.m.," said Ali Omar, 20, a business student at Cairo University. "They say I'm not registered to vote, but four days ago, I went to the police station to register and they said I could vote with my ID card. Today when I tried to vote, they said I couldn't."
Like Omar, many young Egyptians were eager to participate in the first competitive presidential election in their country's history, only to be turned away from successive polling stations.
To no one's surprise, President Hosni Mubarak cruised to an easy victory in Wednesday's election, winning a fifth six-year term with a landslide 88 percent of the vote. His closest competitor, Ayman Nour of the liberal Tomorrow Party, received just 7.6 percent. Until this year, presidential candidates ran unopposed, and voters could cast only yes-or-no votes on the incumbent.
Debate is now raging about how free, fair and transparent the vote was. The government claims that Egypt is witnessing the beginning of a long-awaited democratic dawn, "a victory for reform," in the words of Mubarak's campaign manager, Mohamed Kamal.
Nour, who was briefly imprisoned before the vote on what he insisted were trumped-up forgery charges, claimed there had been widespread fraud. "The results have nothing to do with reality," he said at a news conference Saturday.
The candidate who came in third, 71-year-old Noman Gomaa of the Wafd party, also cried foul.
About 1,000 activists rumbled through downtown Cairo on Saturday denouncing the elections.
Voter turnout -- just 23 percent -- has been dismissed as a dismally low figure that will deprive Mubarak of the mandate he was seeking. Still, it was the highest credible turnout figure in the history of Egyptian elections. And the simple fact that the government released a plausible figure is a departure from the past.
After a half-century of authoritarian rule, a prevailing culture of fear backed up by periodic crackdowns on opposition activists has succeeded in depoliticizing large swaths of the country.
Adel Abdel Malek, a 23-year-old cab driver, said he wanted Ayman Nour to win but didn't vote.
"After Hosni Mubarak wins, they'll come and see that I voted against the president; they can arrest anyone," he said. "The government is like that in our country. We're all afraid. If we weren't afraid, then no one would vote for Mubarak."
In the past month, Mubarak seemed to be sending the unprecedented message that it was finally OK to stand against the government. During the abbreviated 19-day campaign, the state-controlled media devoted air time and column inches to the opposition for the first time in recent memory. The 10 presidential candidates toured Egypt freely, unburdened by the traditional phalanxes of security forces. In stump speeches, they railed against the president.
Omar and his franchise-seeking peers who spent hours in muggy, unfriendly police stations searching for their names on antiquated census rolls are one sign that a political opening may have begun. On some level, traditionally apathetic Egyptians have begun to trust in the fledgling democratic process, even if it is chaotic and frustrating.
"It's the first time I feel I have a voice in the country," said Omar, who after six hours of waiting, finally obtained a voting card from the captain on duty, not long after foreign journalists stopped by the police station. "My vote has importance and can contribute to a candidate's success or failure. My vote can affect something."
The Bush administration issued a guarded statement of support Saturday that said, "We expect it will be part of a process of continuing political reforms and that the flaws that were visible in this election will be corrected for November's parliamentary election."
Vote buying, voter intimidation, missing indelible ink and repeat voting are among the flaws documented by independent election monitors, who charged that many voters were intentionally disenfranchised or misinformed about voting procedures.
Egypt's voter rolls are famously outdated and widely believed to be stocked with dead voters and repeated names. Millions of young voters, often university educated and more likely to vote for the opposition, have never been added to the lists. The government's election commission refused to tackle the issue in the weeks leading up to the vote, despite numerous calls to do so.
"I think the government did that intentionally," said Sherif Mansour, who coordinated 2,200 election monitors from nongovernmental organizations. "That way the only organized party able to win is Mubarak's party, who has all this information, and he has the chance to organize his supporters."
Visits to polls on election day showed that Mubarak did not need to resort to widespread fraud to secure a victory. Many Egyptians are grateful to him for keeping the country free of the wars and tumult that have befallen much of the Middle East. The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights estimated that fraud accounted for perhaps 10 to 15 percent of Mubarak's votes -- nowhere close to enough to change the outcome.
"I'm 67, and I'm retired and I need security," Abdel Aziz Mohamed said Wednesday outside a Cairo polling station. "Of course I voted for Mubarak. We can't bring someone into rule who doesn't know a thing."
Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party is well funded, and as organized as it has ever been. The party ran a massive get-out-the-vote campaign, coordinated by 500 campaign workers manning a huge phone bank at its campaign headquarters. Each of the 10,000 polling stations around Egypt had Mubarak campaign staff on hand to assist voters.
By contrast, the opposition was able to send representatives to only a handful of polling stations. Mubarak's two main rivals never stood a chance. Nour, the 40-year-old political upstart at the helm of the new Tomorrow Party, is full of youthful exuberance, but his organization lacks the structure and base needed to compete on a countrywide scale. Gomaa is an uncharismatic political boss whose once-mighty Wafd Party is now emaciated.
The Muslim Brotherhood, arguably the most potent and best organized opposition force, remains illegal and was not allowed to field a candidate.
"Part of the responsibility has to be on the opposition powers," said Edward Walker, U.S. ambassador to Egypt from 1994 to 1998 and now director of the Middle East Institute in Washington. "If they can't organize and they can't put up attractive candidates and develop a message that galvanizes the people, they aren't going to succeed."
Opposition parties have begun gearing up for November's parliamentary elections, which are considered a more accurate gauge of the government's commitment to reform and will provide a playing field where opposition candidates stand a better chance.
"Ruling parties don't give up power voluntarily," Walker said in a telephone interview. "They have to be defeated at the polls, and they have to be defeated by a better organized, more charismatic leader, a better campaign and even better shady tactics -- whatever it takes."
Charles Levinson
The San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Cairo -- At dusk on election day, the police station in the sprawling Cairo slum of Imbaba was overflowing with students protesting their exclusion from the voter rolls.
"I've been trying to vote since 10 a.m.," said Ali Omar, 20, a business student at Cairo University. "They say I'm not registered to vote, but four days ago, I went to the police station to register and they said I could vote with my ID card. Today when I tried to vote, they said I couldn't."
Like Omar, many young Egyptians were eager to participate in the first competitive presidential election in their country's history, only to be turned away from successive polling stations.
To no one's surprise, President Hosni Mubarak cruised to an easy victory in Wednesday's election, winning a fifth six-year term with a landslide 88 percent of the vote. His closest competitor, Ayman Nour of the liberal Tomorrow Party, received just 7.6 percent. Until this year, presidential candidates ran unopposed, and voters could cast only yes-or-no votes on the incumbent.
Debate is now raging about how free, fair and transparent the vote was. The government claims that Egypt is witnessing the beginning of a long-awaited democratic dawn, "a victory for reform," in the words of Mubarak's campaign manager, Mohamed Kamal.
Nour, who was briefly imprisoned before the vote on what he insisted were trumped-up forgery charges, claimed there had been widespread fraud. "The results have nothing to do with reality," he said at a news conference Saturday.
The candidate who came in third, 71-year-old Noman Gomaa of the Wafd party, also cried foul.
About 1,000 activists rumbled through downtown Cairo on Saturday denouncing the elections.
Voter turnout -- just 23 percent -- has been dismissed as a dismally low figure that will deprive Mubarak of the mandate he was seeking. Still, it was the highest credible turnout figure in the history of Egyptian elections. And the simple fact that the government released a plausible figure is a departure from the past.
After a half-century of authoritarian rule, a prevailing culture of fear backed up by periodic crackdowns on opposition activists has succeeded in depoliticizing large swaths of the country.
Adel Abdel Malek, a 23-year-old cab driver, said he wanted Ayman Nour to win but didn't vote.
"After Hosni Mubarak wins, they'll come and see that I voted against the president; they can arrest anyone," he said. "The government is like that in our country. We're all afraid. If we weren't afraid, then no one would vote for Mubarak."
In the past month, Mubarak seemed to be sending the unprecedented message that it was finally OK to stand against the government. During the abbreviated 19-day campaign, the state-controlled media devoted air time and column inches to the opposition for the first time in recent memory. The 10 presidential candidates toured Egypt freely, unburdened by the traditional phalanxes of security forces. In stump speeches, they railed against the president.
Omar and his franchise-seeking peers who spent hours in muggy, unfriendly police stations searching for their names on antiquated census rolls are one sign that a political opening may have begun. On some level, traditionally apathetic Egyptians have begun to trust in the fledgling democratic process, even if it is chaotic and frustrating.
"It's the first time I feel I have a voice in the country," said Omar, who after six hours of waiting, finally obtained a voting card from the captain on duty, not long after foreign journalists stopped by the police station. "My vote has importance and can contribute to a candidate's success or failure. My vote can affect something."
The Bush administration issued a guarded statement of support Saturday that said, "We expect it will be part of a process of continuing political reforms and that the flaws that were visible in this election will be corrected for November's parliamentary election."
Vote buying, voter intimidation, missing indelible ink and repeat voting are among the flaws documented by independent election monitors, who charged that many voters were intentionally disenfranchised or misinformed about voting procedures.
Egypt's voter rolls are famously outdated and widely believed to be stocked with dead voters and repeated names. Millions of young voters, often university educated and more likely to vote for the opposition, have never been added to the lists. The government's election commission refused to tackle the issue in the weeks leading up to the vote, despite numerous calls to do so.
"I think the government did that intentionally," said Sherif Mansour, who coordinated 2,200 election monitors from nongovernmental organizations. "That way the only organized party able to win is Mubarak's party, who has all this information, and he has the chance to organize his supporters."
Visits to polls on election day showed that Mubarak did not need to resort to widespread fraud to secure a victory. Many Egyptians are grateful to him for keeping the country free of the wars and tumult that have befallen much of the Middle East. The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights estimated that fraud accounted for perhaps 10 to 15 percent of Mubarak's votes -- nowhere close to enough to change the outcome.
"I'm 67, and I'm retired and I need security," Abdel Aziz Mohamed said Wednesday outside a Cairo polling station. "Of course I voted for Mubarak. We can't bring someone into rule who doesn't know a thing."
Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party is well funded, and as organized as it has ever been. The party ran a massive get-out-the-vote campaign, coordinated by 500 campaign workers manning a huge phone bank at its campaign headquarters. Each of the 10,000 polling stations around Egypt had Mubarak campaign staff on hand to assist voters.
By contrast, the opposition was able to send representatives to only a handful of polling stations. Mubarak's two main rivals never stood a chance. Nour, the 40-year-old political upstart at the helm of the new Tomorrow Party, is full of youthful exuberance, but his organization lacks the structure and base needed to compete on a countrywide scale. Gomaa is an uncharismatic political boss whose once-mighty Wafd Party is now emaciated.
The Muslim Brotherhood, arguably the most potent and best organized opposition force, remains illegal and was not allowed to field a candidate.
"Part of the responsibility has to be on the opposition powers," said Edward Walker, U.S. ambassador to Egypt from 1994 to 1998 and now director of the Middle East Institute in Washington. "If they can't organize and they can't put up attractive candidates and develop a message that galvanizes the people, they aren't going to succeed."
Opposition parties have begun gearing up for November's parliamentary elections, which are considered a more accurate gauge of the government's commitment to reform and will provide a playing field where opposition candidates stand a better chance.
"Ruling parties don't give up power voluntarily," Walker said in a telephone interview. "They have to be defeated at the polls, and they have to be defeated by a better organized, more charismatic leader, a better campaign and even better shady tactics -- whatever it takes."
