Turnout in the first leg of Egypt's first free election in six decades was an unprecedented 62 percent, the head of the election committee said on Friday, far higher than in the rigged polls under deposed President Hosni Mubarak. Abdul Moez Ibrahim acknowledged a number of violations in the balloting on Monday and Tuesday, notably campaigning outside polling stations, but said these did not affect the results.
Ibrahim joked that the turnout was the highest in any Egyptian election "since the pharaohs". It was even greater than in the "forgeries of the past elections", he added.
"The blood of martyrs has watered the tree of freedom, social justice and the rule of law. We are now reaping its first fruits," Ibrahim said in tribute to more than 850 people killed in a popular revolt that toppled Mubarak in February.
Protesters were out again in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday to mourn the deaths of 42 people killed last month in demonstrations demanding the generals who took over from Mubarak hand over to civilian rule immediately. "Without Tahrir, we wouldn't have had these elections," said Mohamed Gad in the square that cradled the revolt. "God willing, the elections will succeed and the revolution will triumph."
But many of the young people who took to the streets early this year now fear their revolution risks being stolen, either by the army rulers or by well-organised Islamist parties.
RUN-OFF VOTES Ibrahim announced the results of only a handful of clear-cut victories for individual candidates, with most going to run-offs next week, and gave no figures for party lists in the polls, in which Islamist parties are expected to come out on top.
He said four individual candidates, two of them from the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), won more than 50 percent of votes to gain outright victory out of 56 seats contested. The rest will require a run-off. In Egypt's complex election process, staggered over three phases in six weeks, two-thirds of the 498 seats up for grabs are allocated proportionately to party lists, with the rest going to individual candidates.
The Muslim Brotherhood, banned but semi-tolerated under Mubarak, says its FJP expects to win 43 percent of party list votes in the first stage, building on the Islamist group's decades of grassroots social and religious work. But the Brotherhood's website also forecast that the Salafi al-Nour party would gain 30 percent of the vote, a shock for some Egyptians, especially minority Christian Copts, who fear it will try to impose strict Islamic codes on society.
Nour said on Thursday it expected 20 percent of the vote. As in Saudi Arabia, Salafis would want to bar women and Christians from executive posts. They would also ban alcohol, "un-Islamic" art and literature, as well as mixed beach bathing. If implemented, such curbs would wreck Egypt's vital tourism industry, which employs about one in eight of the workforce. More secular-minded Egyptian parties, some of which were only formed after Mubarak's fall, had always feared that they would not have enough time to put up a credible challenge to their experienced and better-funded Islamist rivals.
The liberal multi-party Egyptian Bloc has said it is on track to secure about a fifth of votes for party lists. The youthful activists who launched into politics after the revolt that toppled Mubarak on February 11 made little impact in the polls. Former US President Jimmy Carter said staff of his Carter Center, which monitors polls around the world, had seen "enthusiastic participation ... and a largely peaceful process", but called for more steps to ensure integrity and transparency.
Ibrahim, the top election official, said: "There have been some negative observations ... in the election, but none of them affect the integrity and the fairness of the election." He listed violations including campaigning outside polling stations, long queues, late arrival of ballot papers and a few of the supervising judges, and failure to stamp some ballots.
POINTERS TO CHANGE The world is watching the first post-Mubarak election for pointers to change in Egypt, the most populous Arab nation and one hitherto seen as a firm US ally committed to preserving its peace treaty with Israel and fighting Islamist militancy.
The United States, which still gives Egypt about $1.3 billion a year in mostly military aid, has urged the ruling generals to step aside swiftly and make way for civilian rule. Islamist electoral success in Egypt would underline a trend in North Africa, where moderate Islamists have topped polls in Morocco and post-uprising Tunisia in the last two months.
Egypt's ruling generals, who have promised civilian rule by July, have said they will keep powers to appoint or fire a cabinet, even after an elected parliament is installed. The Brotherhood's FJP seemed to back away from a statement from its leader that the majority in parliament should form a government, saying discussion of the issue was premature.
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