[liberationtech] Egyptian Parliamentary elections this weekend

Wed Nov 24 11:59:26 PST 2010

A deployment of Ushahidi was passed along in the Iranian GM community in the
lead up to various protests last year. It only ended up being used to link
to English BBC articles after the fact. Everyone knew there would be
violence, what would more reports do? (other than possibly expose people
using SMS.)

While it's great that there are multiple instances and I appreciate that
you've compiled the list, it's fairly apparent that right now they are just
being used to geomap official/crafted information. They've been interesting
to watch for the past couple weeks, but it'll be important to see if either
of these have their own life other than the formidable resources of the
press department of the Muslim Brotherhood.

On the other hand, this disaggregation is disastrous for the layperson
Egyptian. Which group do I trust?

CDA

On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 9:29 AM, Patrick Meier (iRevolution) <
patrick at irevolution.net> wrote:

> Thanks, I'd like to add one more:
>
>
> *Quick, Stop All Ushahidi Deployments in Egypt! *
>
> Has the world gone crazy? There are now at least five Ushahidi deployments
> in Egypt. Somebody stop this proliferation before things really gets out of
> control. This is ridiculous, who knows what could happen!
>
>
> http://irevolution.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/quick-stop-all-ushahidi-deployments-in-egypt
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 6:17 AM, Robert Guerra <rguerra at privaterra.org>wrote:
>
>> 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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