[liberationtech] Egyptian Parliamentary elections this weekend

[Robert Guerra]

For those of you who don't already know... Egypt will have its parliamentary
elections this Sunday. Given the internet is a far freer space for
discussion, it will important for groups like this to be on standby to
monitor the situation and, if needed, work with regional and national
partners to provide assistance should issues arise.

Below are some background articles that might be of interest.


regards

Robert


Volunteers go hi-tech to map Egypt election irregularities

President Hosni Mubarak's regime has rejected US calls to allow foreign
observers at Egypt elections this weekend. But volunteers, armed with
innovative software, are undeterred.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/1122/Volunteers-go-hi-tech-to-map-Egypt-election-irregularities


Egypt's Election Turns Into a Battle of Multiple Ushahidis
http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/egypts-election-turns-battle-multiple-ushahidis

Crisis Mappers' Anahi Ayala Iacucci reports that at least five instances of
the Ushahidi crowd-reporting platform have sprung up in the run-up to
Sunday's parliamentary election in Egypt, and Evgeny Morozov has poked fun
at the fact that one of them happens to be the doctrinaire Islamists in the
Muslim Brotherhood. But one person who thinks that's a terrific turn of
events is Patrick Meier, Ushahidi's director of crisis mapping and strategic
partnerships.

Egypt’s Unobserved Elections

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=41993

As Egypt heads toward elections for the lower house of parliament on
November 28 and the presidency in 2011, Cairo’s officials have got their
story straight and they are sticking to it: this proud nation needs no
international observation of its elections, which will proceed according to
well-established laws and constitutional precepts.  There is just one
problem with this story, which is the history of past elections in the
country: rigged and often violent.  In fact, Egyptians’ sense of trust in
formal politics (never great) has deteriorated to the extent that several
opposition parties will boycott and those that will participate are
suffering from internal rifts because many of their members do not want to
legitimize the existing system.

Assuming there will be no international observers to provide a window into
the elections, how can Egyptians and outsiders tell how fair they were in
the end?  One of the most important signals will be whether the Higher
Electoral Commission extends credentials to the 14,000 or so Egyptian civil
society activists seeking to monitor the elections. They have undergone
rigorous training since a much more modest monitoring effort in 2005 and now
are pressing for full access to the voting and counting processes.  In the
June 2010 elections for the small upper house of parliament, the electoral
commission gave credentials to only a small percentage of civil society
monitors at the eleventh hour (a major impediment in a country as large as
Egypt) and then failed to instruct poll workers to let monitors in.  Whether
that was incompetence or deliberate obstruction, the media spotlight on the
November 28 elections is too bright for the electoral commission to get away
with that again.

Violence has also been a major factor in previous Egyptian elections and
could be this time as well.  The Ministry of Interior has in the past
surrounded certain polling places—where a prominent pro-government candidate
faced a strong opposition competitor— with security cordons, leading to
violence as voters attempted to get in.  Thugs working for the security
services or hired by specific candidates have intimidated and physically
(including sexually) assaulted voters, monitors, and journalists while
police looked the other way.  Will the orders be any different this year?

New measures specifically targeting Egypt’s largest opposition group, the
Muslim Brotherhood, also raise doubts about how fair and competitive the
elections will be.   The Brotherhood, a banned organization, may run
candidates only as independents but in 2005 they campaigned openly, using
the slogan “Islam is the solution,” and contested almost one-third of the
parliamentary seats. Now the Egyptian government has outlawed the slogan,
police authorities are systematically rounding up supporters of the
movement, and the electoral commission has denied registration to
one-quarter of the Brotherhood’s proposed candidates.

The government meanwhile has registered all of the hopefuls of co-opted or
weak secular opposition parties, while newer and more independent secular
parties (such as the liberal Ghad and Democratic Front parties) are
boycotting. This faces the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) with a
dilemma: it needs to win at least two-thirds of the parliament, but it also
wants to create the image of real competition.  With the Brotherhood on the
run and more credible secular parties boycotting, a strong electoral showing
by captive or weakened parties such as the Tagammu and the Wafd would be a
sure sign of electoral meddling.

Media coverage is emerging as another major issue in light of recent
measures by the government, like requiring satellite television channels to
get official clearance before reporting live from anywhere in Egypt. The
government also has stipulated that cell phone providers get a similar
clearance before sending aggregate text messages to their users, a technique
that has been increasingly used by the opposition to mobilize supporters and
reach out to the public. And in spite of the diversity of the media
landscape in Egypt, with its mix of public and private ownership, initial
reports by Egyptian NGOs following media coverage and reporting in the
lead-up to the elections have indicated a clear bias towards the ruling
party and its candidates.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to look for on November 28 will be the
U.S. reaction to Egypt’s elections. Washington tried unsuccessfully to
persuade President Mubarak to accept international election monitors and to
lift the state of emergency under which Egypt has been ruled for three
decades.  The administration should keep in mind that showing U.S. support
for political reform and human rights in Egypt has value even if
Mubarak—aged 82 and ailing—continues to stonewall.  The Egyptian public
follows every utterance from Washington, trying to determine where Obama
stands.  And Mubarak’s successor, perhaps yet to be determined, is on the
scene and undoubtedly also listening to every word, trying to gauge whether
external actors support Egyptian citizens’ demands for democratic change and
to what extent he will need to accommodate them.
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