SOHAG: Thousands of voters lined up Wednesday outside polling stations in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Sohag, where queues outside centers selling butane gas cylinders were also long.
Elections for the party lists in the second constituency were postponed to be held with the run-offs on Dec. 20-21 after a court order reinstated candidates removed from the list.
The Supreme Electoral Commission (SEC) ordered the ballots for lists be reprinted to include these candidates.
In Sohag, 300 individual candidates are contesting five seats while 30 party lists are competing over 20 seats.
Voter turnout on Wednesday was lower than the long queues seen in the first phase of the parliamentary elections in November.
Voters interviewed by Daily News Egypt said the economy was their top concern, saying their vote will go to candidates that can help develop the governorate’s economy and increase its income.
“Neither the Muslim Brotherhood nor the Salafis will help us out. Where were they when we couldn’t find a gas cylinder? We still have this problem,” said Ibtesam Sami, as she headed to her polling station early in the morning.
In front of the Girls Institute polling station, two supporters of the Salafi Al-Nour Party sat around a small table, guiding voters to their stations. Representatives of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, were campaigning in other districts in Sohag, telling voters to vote for the party’s candidates.
“I will vote for Al-Nour; I want an Islamic Egypt,” Emad El Din, a shopkeeper, told DNE. He added that other parties barely have any presence on the street.
“Those people are funny — they think the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis will bring Islam. If they only knew that being a sheikh does not necessarily mean that you know how to run a country,” said Mohamed Taha, a tuk-tuk driver in Gerga, Sohag.
Mohamed Hegazy, a candidate contesting one of the single-winner seats with Al-Wasat Party, said that unlike what many people expect, the hardline Islamists will not garner a high number of seats in Sohag, after the “radical” approach they used following their victory in the first phase of elections.
All those interviewed by DNE agreed that neither the parties nor the individual candidates have so far provided any programs on which people can base their vote.
According to activists, this shows that the vote is based on tribalism when it comes to individual candidates and religious preference when it comes to lists.
“It’s always either FJP, Salafis or, unfortunately, the ‘felool’ [remnants of the old regime]. They are the only ones who can reach people,” said Amin Hegazy, member of the Revolutionary Youth Coalition in Sohag.
“Take, for example, the Salafis — there is a mosque in every district; they use it to reach out to people. But what did the liberals do?”
Members of the Revolutionary Youth Coalition in Sohag believe that Egypt’s liberals, including the Egyptian Bloc and others like the Revolution Continues Alliance, have given candidates from the dismantled National Democratic Party and Islamist parties more opportunity to campaign through their weak presence.
Stepping in
At the Girls Institute polling station, the supervising judge asked a party representative to leave the room after a voter complained that the representative repeatedly asked the voter to choose Al-Nour.
Similar violations were reported around Sohag.
“The committees are quite organized but it’s the party’s delegates who have been telling people what they should do,” said El-Amir El-Ansawy, a candidate representative in Gerga, the second Sohag constituency.
In the same polling station, posters and flyers dotted the school’s walls, with a banner for Al-Nour covering the school’s name.
“I am happy with these elections. More people than last time, barely any violations, and there are hardly any thugs like 2010. Yes, there are violations by the parties but we [voters] know who we will vote for before we leave our homes,” said Mohamed Abbas, a voter in Gerga.
