About the Center
Search
Center News
The 2005 Egyptian Parliamentary Elections
Samer Shehata
Published in 2006
[No download available]
Karl Marx famously wrote that history repeats itself; “the first time a stragedy and the second as farce.” Marx was correct, but in the case of Egypt’s recent parliamentary elections, tragedy and farce occurred simultaneously. The death of at least thirteen people as a result of election related violence was undeniably tragic. Most of those who died lost their lives at the hands of government security forces. Central Security (al-Amn al-Markazi), used mainly for domestic repression, fired rubber bullets, US-made tear gas and, in some cases, live ammunition into unarmed crowds gathered in front of polling stations waiting to vote.
There is nothing quite like witnessing government soldiers physically prevent fellow “citizens” from entering polling stations, citizens who want nothing other than to cast ballots for the candidates of their choice. In some cases men and women used ladders to scale the walls of polling stations, sometimes enteringthrough bathroom windows, simply to get to the ballot box.
The other tragedy, of course, was the integrity of the elections. Voting took place over the span of an entire month and involved three separate phases of voting in three different sets of governorates. This was ostensibly to allow judges to supervise the electoral process. But holding the elections over the span of a month also created opportunities for fraud; it allowed the regime to change tactics in subsequent phases and use greater coercion after the ruling party’s initial poor performance. Spacing the voting over different days also permitted the regime to concentrate its security forces in areas where elections were taking place, in order to influence electoral outcomes.
In addition to what I have described above, voting was marred by numerous irregularities, making the elections, at times, farcical. For example, widespread “vote-buying” occurred, especially during the first phase of voting and was well documented by the Egyptian media, including state television. Pervasive mistakes in voter registration lists were yet another problem. Thousands of fictitious names appeared on voter rolls, along with the names of the dead. Names were also frequently missing or listed incorrectly, preventing thousands of citizens from voting. This was, in fact, my own experience. Although I voted in the presidential election in September, during the parliamentary elections my name appeared incorrectly in the voter registration lists (as Sami instead of Samer) and I wasn’t allowed to vote. Countless other irregularities and legal peculiarities also contributed to the, at times, comic nature of the elections.
Despite the parliamentary elections being both farcical and tragic, however, they also proved to be historic with the Muslim Brotherhood securing 88 seats in parliament, the largest number any opposition group has won in recent memory. The banned but tolerated group which held only 15 seats in the last parliament is now the largest opposition bloc in the People’s Assembly. The Brotherhood’s electoral performance is even more remarkable when one considers the group only fielded around 150 candidates, giving it a much higher success ratio than the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), which ran 444 candidates in all 222 constituencies. Moreover, despite widespread vote-buying, the use of thugs, and the excessive amounts of spending by some candidates—ills which plagued the elections—it would be difficult, based on my own close observation of the elections, to accuse the Brotherhood of any of these violations.
Brotherhood candidates and supporters also faced considerably more obstacles than other opposition candidates, making their electoral success even more impressive. This included the arrest of their members, the prevention of voters from entering polling stations in neighborhoods considered sympathetic to the organization, and allegations by some Egyptian judges of outright fraud in favor of NDP candidates in several districts (e.g. Dokki, Damanhour, Zagazig and Mansoura).
For those of us concerned with the democratic process and not its outcome, however, the 2005 elections were also extremely disappointing. In addition to the problems mentioned above, the final phase of voting on December 1 (and the run offs on December 7) witnessed the massive deployment of Central Security forces in front of many polling stations with the sole purpose of preventing voters from casting their ballots. This was the regime’s rather ham-fisted attempt to limit further electoral victories by the Brotherhood after their early and unexpected success.
While the Brotherhood was the big winner in the elections, the secular opposition parties and the NDP were the big losers. The parliamentary elections should serve as the official death certificate of the opposition parties, none of which managed to secure the five percent of seats mandated by the amendment of Article 76 of the Egyptian Constitution required to nominate a candidate in future presidential elections. This will undoubtedly cause its own problems in the years to come. The abysmal performance of the legal opposition parties, without exception, should signal the urgent need for internal reform within these organizations.
The NDP must also be considered among the election’s losers. Despite securing the overwhelming majority of seats in the Assembly, the government’s resort to heavy-handed tactics in the second and third phase of voting casts serious doubt about its commitment to political reform. The NDP leadership must realize that the use of such tactics only hurts the party and scenes of Central Security forces preventing men and women from entering polling stations only strengthens sympathies for the opposition, especially the Brotherhood.
The biggest loser of all in the 2005 parliamentary elections, unfortunately, was the democratic process. The integrity of elections, after all, is not determined by how many opposition candidates win or the composition of the parliament; it is about process rather than outcome. The conduct of the elections should lead all observers—political parties, NGOs, the Muslim Brotherhood and the international community—to the conclusion that future elections cannot take place in Egypt without international monitors and observers. Otherwise, neither Egyptians nor the international community will take them seriously. And Marx’s statement about history repeating itself, first a stragedy and then as farce, will prove true once again.
Related Content
No related content exists for this item.