CNN.com - Inside the Middle East

April 9, 2008

Egypt: The Election That Wasn't (Continued)

--By CNN's Aneesh Raman

Something’s off when the hardest things to find on election day are voters. And in Cairo, throughout the morning, across various polling sites, we saw just a handful.

President Mubarak called an election but in the end, it seems, almost nobody came. Its no secret why - as we entered those empty classrooms with empty ballot boxes, we passed a series of posters for candidates, suggesting an actual choice was being offered.

(Photo Ben Curtis/AP)

But that wasn’t the case. About 70 percent of the races for the 52 thousand seats on various municipal councils had only one party running – President Mubarak’s ruling NDP party.

The country’s main opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood, saw over a thousand members arrested in the build up to this election, others were disqualified, and ultimately the Brotherhood decided to boycott the vote. That meant most Egyptians knew the results of this election well before the first votes were even cast. And we've heard complaints that sounds like anything but democracy to the majority of Egyptians desperately looking for help with rising food prices and stagnantly low wages.

Later in the day we went to a few main squares to ask Egyptians themselves what the felt about the election. “I wont vote because nothing changes,” Refat told me. “It’s always the same and just look at the country and our lives, both are going from bad to worse.”

Ali told me, “Democracy is just a word here. President Mubarak’s party will win. There’s no real opposition so I wont waste my time and vote when we already know the results.”

President Mubarak is a close ally of the United States. And many within Egypt feel the West has failed in exerting real pressure on this country to open up it’s political process and move towards a real democracy. The reasons are varied but none of them justify, critics say, what amounts to silence by the world over a government in Egypt rolling back the rights of its citizens.

If you recall Aneesh, September 2005 there was lection .President Hosni Mubarak has faced a multi-candidate ballot. In previous votes, the dictator employed a yes or no plebiscite to rubberstamp his 24-year rule. The official campaign has demonstrated, however, that the election is entirely fraudulent, and in no way represents a step toward genuine democracy, as the Bush administration maintains.
Most candidates in Tuesday's municipal election stand unopposed after a severe government crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood left few able to run in the opposition.
Ninety percent of its candidates are standing unopposed, according to party members, in a poll whose importance stems from a 2005 constitutional amendment requiring presidential candidates to secure the backing of councillors.

aneesh somebody said "Demand the ballot as the undeniable right of every man who is called to the poll, and take special care that the constitutional rule and principle, by which majorities alone shall decide in elections, shall not be violated".

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