24 Apr 2008: ISS Today: Elections Without Competition in Egypt

24 April 2008: Elections Without Competition in Egypt

 

Earlier this month Egyptians voted in municipal elections for some 53 000 local councillors. The ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) claimed a resounding victory. Yet the interesting factor is why they won by such a huge margin. How many people actually voted is also an important question. In fact, the story of these municipal elections says a lot about the state of democracy in Egypt.

 

In early February president Hosni Mubarak announced that the long-delayed municipal elections would finally be held on the 8th of April, putting an end to rumours that the polls could be postponed for a further two years or until 2010. The elections were supposed to have been held in 2006.

 

Before and after the elections, the government, spearheaded by Mr Abdel-Salam El-Mahgoub, Minister of Local Development, maintained that the elections were very significant in many ways.  Firstly, members of elected local councils will in future “enjoy greater supervisory powers over executive councils in Egypt’s 26 governorates”, says the government.

 

Secondly, the government claims these elections are crucial due to their link to the 2011 presidential elections. The claim is that amended Article 76 of the Egyptian Constitution now requires that political leaders aspiring to run in the 2011 presidential elections obtain the signatures of at least 140 members of elected local councils (at the governorate level), with 10 signatures from 14 of the country’s 26 governorates.

 

This was the impression I had when I flew to Egypt five days prior to the vote, to observe the political situation in the country in the context of the elections. There was nothing to change this impression even two days after my arrival.  As I moved around, election posters were all over the place, with candidates from across the board urging people to vote for them come 8 April, all claiming they incarnate change and/or improvement. 

 

But then I had a conversation with a high-ranking official who made me doubt my optimistic assertions that this was a very important election for the citizens of Egypt.

 

It seemed as though, as the election day neared, the enthusiasm waned. I asked a taxi-driver on the eve of the elections who he was voting for. To my surprise, he knew not when the elections were taking place to start with – or he pretended not to know. Still, he seemed genuine in his ignorance of the matter. No wonder then that the turnout was very low.
The Cairo-based Maat Centre for Juridical and Constitutional Studies puts the figure between five per cent in some villages and just one per cent in cities and towns! Voter turnout is normally high in emerging democracies.

 

The low voter turnout is attributed to various factors. First, as the aforementioned official told me, politics is very centralised in Egypt and there is nothing to prove the claims of the Minister of Local Development about devolution of powers to local councils.

 

Secondly, the elections were organised in a very difficult social-economic environment. Just two days before the elections, scores of angry people took to the streets to protest against the rising cost of living and high prices of basic commodities in the country, particularly of a special kind of bread popularly called aish (food or livelihood). It must be acknowledged however that the government is doing its best to deal with this issue. After all, the problem is a global phenomenon that is not limited to Egypt. And the new price of the aish is just under three cents of a dollar.
The third factor that explains the low turnout is the claim by opposition parties that they were intimidated and that the bulk of their candidates did not have a chance to register. The ruling party was able to register a candidate for every single seat.

 

The banned but tolerated Muslim Brotherhood and other parties boycotted the elections, arguing that they were a travesty of the democratic process. Many independent analysts I spoke to confirmed these allegations. Moreover, most ordinary people I conversed with just did not see the point of going to vote for councillors they did not believe would do anything to alleviate their plight.

 

The White House put out a press release on these elections on 9 April which the American embassy in Cairo displayed prominently on its website in both Arabic and English. In unusual strong language towards a friendly regime like Mubarak’s in Egypt and confirming the allegations of the opposition, the document reads in part: “The United States is concerned by reports that Egypt’s April 8 local council elections were characterized by widespread electoral violations. We have been troubled by the reports of harassment, detaining, and arrests of opposition candidates and campaign workers in the run-up to the elections, as well as the allegations that large numbers of opposition candidates were prevented from registering.”

 

Unsurprising, the Egyptian government promptly rebuffed these allegations, claiming that the Americans do not understand the internal dynamics of Egyptian politics.

 

It is reported that the ruling party won with a stunning 97 per cent of the votes! With no official figures available at the time of writing, some put the figure at 0.5 per cent higher, while others put it at 99.5 per cent. The ruling party itself confirms this.

 

This seems plausible since the party had won 80 per cent of the seats unopposed, even before the elections took place. The ruling party fielded candidates for all 53 000 seats. A further 4000 or so members of the ruling party stood as independent candidates. The combined registered candidates of the 22 opposition parties that partook in the elections constituted only five per cent of the total number of seats.

 

This is why there really was no competition. Evidently, this does not bode well for the democratic process in Egypt. However there is something more important than elections and we do not want to reduce the discourse on democracy in Africa to what some have termed “electoral democracy.” Reference is made here to the need to respect citizens’ basic human rights with all that this entails. And this is what Egyptians need now more than anything else.

 

Issaka K. Souaré, Researcher, African Security Analysis Programme, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)

Â