Word: mubarak
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...returns from Wednesday?s election indicate that Mubarak won hands-down, but the importance of the country?s first-ever multiparty presidential vote was that after decades of authoritarian rule, Egyptians were actually offered a choice of contenders for the top office. (Mubarak?s four previous six-year terms were affirmed by referendum rather than in competitive elections.) Although the turnout was low, many like Badawi sought to make full use of the newly sanctioned right to cast ballots for an opposition candidate. Instead of receiving the 99% or so approval he routinely received in the referendums on his presidency...
...Still, the irregularities steadily reported throughout the day - from ballot stuffing to vote buying to intimidation inside polling stations - cast a pall over Mubarak?s majority. Repeated cries of foul play raised questions about whether the crucial elections for Egypt?s 454-seat parliament, due to be held in the next two months, would be an honest contest. After most of its monitors were barred from observing Wednesday?s post-election vote count, Egypt?s Independent Committee for Election Monitoring (ICEM) declared: ?No election can be called free, fair and transparent if voters have been denied the right to monitor...
...Mubarak?s Minister of Information, Anas al-Fiqi, acknowledged problems but stressed, ?We have to agree that we are seeing an experience that we can build on.? Many Egyptians were heartened that the balloting was relatively free of violence compared to elections as recently as 2000, when security forces clashed with supporters of the banned Muslim Brotherhood trying to vote for likeminded candidates running as independents. But independent monitoring groups and officials of Nour?s Al Ghad party sharply criticized the way the election was conducted. ?We?ve recorded lots of violations, major violations against the voting process, against...
Iman Badawi trudged up two flights of stairs inside the ramshackle Helwan School for Girls, looking for the classroom that had been turned into a polling station. The 42-year-old former teacher said she was certain that President Hosni Mubarak?s ruling party would rig the vote as it had done in past elections. Nonetheless, she took her 10-year-old daughter by the hand, entered the room and cast her ballot for opposition candidate Ayman Nour. ?I brought my daughter to show her the importance of participating,? Badawi said outside the school in Helwan, an industrial city...
...After Mubarak's speech at Abdeen Palace, a man who told me he was a teacher discreetly slipped me a tiny piece of paper and then walked back into the crowd, like a spy in a cloak and dagger operation. "Pass this message," it read in scribbled red ink. "There is no democracy in Egypt and there is no dignity for the human being in this country. Those people inside the rally own Egypt, but those outside are the powerless. Signed, An Egyptian Citizen." Such clandestine protests are no longer all Mubarak has to contend with, however. Even his very...