Breaches and irregularities in the election process prevailed on the two days of voting, creating fears and raising doubts on the screening process. In Eastern Cairo, participants and committee delegates were alarmed that not all voting polls had judicial supervision, and that the police and the army dealt with manipulations leniently. Thus, many delegates spent the night in front of poll stations in fear of any forging of ballots. EgyptVotes investigated the elections process and procedures taken by candidates to protect ballot boxes, hours before the results of the individual seats were announced.
Lack of trust in the police and the absence of judicial supervision
Eastern Cairo division saw a huge brawl take place between a supervising judge and the Deputy of Ain Shams police station. In effect, junior officers refused to deliver the ballot papers to the election committee in solidarity with their commanding officer, resulting in a voting delay until six in the evening on the first day of voting.
"We went down to the elections although we doubt the integrity of the police as we know their crooked ways," Sherine Abd el-Malek, a student at the Faculty of Arts, said, "I believe there's a deal between them [the police] and the Islamists to manipulate votes at night, particularly since candidate reps were prevented from spending the night at the screening location, confirming the lack of trust on both sides."
Salafists take refuge in the Quran, while judges do so in the army
Counselor Yousry Abd el-Karim, a member of the Supreme Committee for Elections, finds that fears of electoral fraud and manipulation of ballot boxes are unfounded, especially as the army announced they would secure the ballots. Major General Hamdy Badin released statements vowing to do so until the end of the first phase of the elections after announcing the results, while allowing candidate reps to spend the night in front of locations where ballot boxes are stored. He stressed that Egyptian citizens must have faith in the integrity of the Supreme Committee for Elections and the Armed Forces.
Delegates from Islamist groups did share this sense of trust, said Mohamed Abdel Rahim, a representative for Khaled el-Zakla, a candidate of Nour Party. "The ballot boxes were in the protection of the armed forces personnel, candidate delegates, and watch-dogs from anti-fraud organisations," said Rahim. Yet he shied away from his previous statement about trust adding, "We also spent the night there discussing politics and reciting the Quran."
People's committees return
"The real crisis is the lack of confidence in the army, police, security forces and absence of judges from varying poll stations, the matter that raises much suspicion," said Mohamed. However, he argued that the matter fell to the hands of citizens that did not belong to any political party, some of whom decided to spend the night by ballot boxes, considering it, as Mohamed said, "a matter of life or death."
*Uncredited pictures provided by the journalist.
