Islamist parties take the lead in preliminary election results

Vote counting was briefly interrupted at the Gezira Youth Center in Cairo late Tuesday. (Daily News Egypt Photo/Hassan Ibrahim)

By   Heba Hesham and Mai Shams El-Din /Daily News Egypt

CAIRO: Preliminary results showed Islamists taking the lead in the first phase of Egypt’s parliamentary elections, with fierce competition between two main coalitions and with the liberal Egyptian Bloc. The Supreme Electoral Commission (SEC) postponed announcing results of the first round of People’s Assembly elections to Thursday night instead of Wednesday as planned. While the SEC is yet to finalize vote counting in some areas, initial indications show that Islamist parties won the majority of seats around the nine governorates of the first phase. As expected, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) seems to be winning big in the nine governorates, followed by the Salafi Al-Nour Party in the Delta governorates, and the secular Egyptian Bloc in Upper Egypt. Essam El-Erian, FJP vice president, said the party is the main political power that believed the revolution will not achieve its goals unless the entire population participates, and not just the revolutionaries. "We were honest enough to deal with the people not the media like other parties," he said. Under ousted president Hosni Mubarak’s regime, the Muslim Brotherhood was the biggest and strongest opposition bloc, with grassroots support stemming from its charitable projects throughout the country. Executive Director of the Egyptian Democratic Academy, Hossam El-Din Ali told Daily News Egypt that FJP’s sweeping success in the nine governorates was expected considering their history and organizational capacity nationwide. "The competition is between Al-Nour and the Egyptian Bloc to follow the FJP," Ali said, adding that the latter’s chances are higher in Upper Egypt and upper class districts of Cairo. "This is simply due to the fact that those areas would never vote for religious parties. In the upper class districts, people are less affected by religious propaganda, while in Upper Egypt, Copts tend to vote for the Egyptian Bloc more than any Islamist parties, of course," Ali explained. The Egyptian Bloc includes the leftist Al-Tagammu, the Free Egyptians Party founded by Coptic business mogul Naguib Sawiris as well as the Egyptian Social Democratic Party. By governorate In some Cairo districts, independent candidates were taking the lead. Prominent liberal politician Amr Hamawy won the professional seat in the fourth constituency, a cluster of upper-middle class districts. The FJP candidate Khaled Hassan will go in a runoff against on former NDP member Hesham Soliman on the workers seat. In the nearby third constituency, Al-Adl party candidate Mostafa Al-Naggar was in the lead but expected to go on a runoff against Salafi party candidate Mohamed Youssry. Independent Candidate Gamila Ismail, backed by the Revolution Continues Coalition, was also leading the vote in Cairo’s sixth district, but she might have to wait for the runoffs to secure her place. The trickling vote counts showed a lead for the FJP in the electoral lists, especially on the first and third districts. The Egyptian Bloc was leading in the second and Al-Nour led the fourth. The Revolution Continues Coalition and the Al-Wafd made minimal gains on the Cairo lists. According to an FJP statement, the governorate of Fayoum witnessed the highest voting rate for the party, followed by the Red Sea, Cairo and Assuit. In Alexandria, FJP led, followed by Al-Nour then the Egyptian Bloc and the Revolution Continues coalition. Results of individual seats showed higher probabilities for run-offs, but will be predominantly won by Islamists, especially FJP’s Moustafa Mohamed who is running for the workers seat in the first constituency. Al-Nour candidate Abdel Moniem El-Shahat is slightly leading the vote but will see a run-off with independent candidate Hosni Dowidar, backed by the FJP. Independent candidate Tarek Talaat Moustafa, a member of the dissolved National Democratic Party, is slightly leading the vote against Councilor Mahmoud El-Khodeiry, but both are expected to go to run-off. The individual electoral system is first past the post, meaning a candidate has to secure 50 percent plus 1 of the votes to win. The hardline Salafi movement, which believes in strict interpretation of Islam, also said the results were expected. "These indications are normal because Egyptians are religious deep inside and trust the Islamists, despite the campaigns of intimidation against us," said Yousri Hammad, spokesman of Al-Nour Party. In Damietta, the vote was led by the FJP, while Al-Nour and Al-Wasat Parties were competing for second place. In Luxor, one seat went to FJP, one to Al-Nour, one to the Egyptian Bloc, and one more seat was won by Al-Horeya Party, an offshoot of the dissolved NDP. In Kafr El-Sheikh, the FJP led the vote followed by Al-Nour. Similarly in Port Said, FJP led followed by Al-Nour, Al-Wafd and the Egyptian Bloc. In the Red Sea, FJP led the vote followed by the Egyptian Bloc. In Assiut, FJP was in the lead followed by the Egyptian Bloc in some constituencies and the Building and Development of the Jamaa Al-Islamiya, which is sharing a unified Islamist party list with Al-Nour. Post results  Political analyst Emad Gad explained that Islamists will be faced by tribalism and large Coptic communities in Upper Egypt. "Tribalism plays a major role in the voting decisions of Upper Egyptians, and we will see this more clearly in other stages … in governorates dominated by tribalism like Sohag and Qena," Gad said. Away from the gains and losses, others were worried about the race itself and the impact of the process on society. Abdel Aziz Al-Nahas, member of liberal Al-Wafd party which was previously part of the Democratic Alliance with the FJP, said that mixing religion with elections and the political process will fragment the country's unity. From the revolutionary youth, Yasser Al-Hawary, member of Youth for Justice and Freedom Movement, which is part of the Revolution Continues alliance contesting the elections with relatively little gains, said the religious polarization will bring dangerous consequences to Egypt. But this criticism was not directed to Islamists alone. "There was clear interference from the Church directing Copts to vote for the Egyptian Bloc because it includes a party founded by a Copt: Sawiris. The Church did not commit to separating religion and politics, yet the participation of Copts is a very healthy phenomenon," Hammad said. The Free Egyptians Party had issued a statement before election day urging Copts to liberate themselves from the guardianship imposed on them by certain institutions and asked them to vote for the candidate they deem more suitable and not to mix politics with religion. The statement was a response to reports of the Church allegedly calling on Copts to vote for certain candidates, in accordance with their faith. Al-Nahas said urging Copts to vote for the Egyptian Bloc coupled with violations by Islamist parties would drag the country into sectarian war. "The Church is not supporting the Egyptian Bloc, these are all rumors spread by Islamists when they were expecting Christians to vote for them," Ihab El-Kharat, representative of the Egyptian Democratic Party in the bloc, said in a conference Wednesday. Although Copts registered a high turnout in the first parliamentary elections post-Mubarak, Islamists are making the biggest gains in the areas where they voted. "Islamists in general won seats in places where there is a huge electoral capacity for the Egyptian Bloc because of many violations committed by buying votes, campaigning outside polling stations and presenting gifts," claimed Emad Gad. On the same token, Ali said that the MB’s strong religious campaigning will counter any kind of Coptic mobilization to vote for the Egyptian Bloc. "The violations committed by MB were more apparent in places controlled by the bloc and this will cause many problems when it comes to the complaints by different parties against the MB", he said. –Additional reporting by and Omnia Al Desoukie in Cairo and Abdel Rahman Youssef in Alexandria.