CAIRO: Electoral violations that were mainly limited to campaigning outside polling stations in the first round took a violent turn on the first day of the second round, leaving one candidate in hospital.
Yasser El-Rifai, who tops the Revolution Continues Alliance list in Sharqiya, was beaten by military police when he tried to enter one of the polling stations.
The officer in charge refused to notify the supervising judge, according to Wessam Atta, member of the political bureau of the Youth for Justice and Freedom movement, which is part of the Alliance.
“[The officer] said he only takes his orders from the armed forces authority,” said Atta, who was in Sharqiya with El-Rifai. After an argument between El-Rifai and the officer, the military police took him into the school and beat him, Atta told Daily News Egypt.
“Yasser was hospitalized in the intensive care unit as a result of the beating,” he said. The candidate was in a coma, but Atta said he spoke to him at 2 am at the hospital. “There is suspicion of head concussion or a blood clot in the brain.”
A report was filed to the police about the incident.
In Suez, supporters of the Egyptian Bloc said their headquarters were attacked on Wednesday when thugs attempted to burn it down using Molotov bombs.
“The Bloc is facing a fierce campaign against it,” Mahmoud Salem, head of the electoral campaign of the Free Egyptians Party (FEP), which spearheads the coalition that also includes the Egyptian Social Democratic Party and Al-Tagammu, told DNE.
Basel Adel, member of the political bureau of the FEP, claimed that supporters of the Bloc are being harassed by competing political parties.
"Most probably the attack on the headquarters in Suez is a result of these harassments. However, we still don’t have enough information about the attack and the amount of damage it caused," he said.
"It is true that we had some financial issues with some representatives and this is on its way to be resolved,” Adel said when asked if finances were a possible reason for the attack. “We have a large number of representatives we were unable to reach at the same time to pay them as agreed. However, this has nothing to do with the attack on our headquarters."
Salem added that one of the supporters affiliated to the Bloc was detained by security forces and that a car was about to run over another member as part of the aggressive campaign against them.
Activist Mohamed Abdel Fattah was detained Wednesday by military police while filming electoral irregularities in one of the schools and was accused of photographing military installations. The Bloc intervened on his behalf and he was released, Salem told Masrawy.com.
Salem claimed that flyers called upon Suez citizens to “unite against the FEP”, “because they will be asked about that before God."
In response to claims of friction between Al-Nour Party supporters and the Egyptian Bloc’s, Emad Abdel Ghaffour, head of Al-Nour Party, said, “Our orders and directions to all of our supporters are to be calm and not to respond to any provocation by any one.
“However, the nature of the competition causes tension, this is not a justification, but we tell our representatives to stay calm.”
Other violations included reports of judges swaying voters towards certain candidates or assisting them in the process.
Journalist Nashwa El-Hofy said she was held inside a school when she questioned a judge who was filling in ballots for voters.
The elections support unit at the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) condemned the detention of El-Hofy, who was working as a representative of candidate Amr El-Chobaky, an independent in the third constituency of Giza. The group said she was held at the polling station on Wednesday from 2 to 7 pm.
El-Hofy told the NCHR that throughout her tour in Uthman Ibn Affan School in Imbaba she noticed that the judge supervising electoral committees 155 and 156 at the school was filing the ballots himself in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) claiming that he is helping out voters who cannot fill their ballots.
When she inquired about the incident, the judge called the security and ordered her to be detained in the school yard, according to NCHR.
The elections support unit then contacted the Supreme Electoral Commission (SEC) and El-Hofy was released.
The FJP said Thursday that councilor Gehan Al-Batoty, head of 601-602 electoral committees in Al-Qawmya Preparatory School in Agouza, Giza, filed a complaint against Tarek Ismail, representative of FJP candidate Amr Darag, following an argument.
The argument ensued after Ismail noted irregularities in the polling station, the FJP said in a statement.
"One of the female voters was complaining that although she hasn’t voted yet, someone has signed in front of her name to prove she had," the statement said.
Al-Batoty filed a compliant against Ismail, who was taken to the Agouza Police Station. The representative would be questioned by the prosecution Thursday night, the statement added.
The NCHR said the main violation that occurred in the first day of the second round was the continuation of electoral campaigning on election day, which exceeded 60 percent of the complaints received by the operations room.
The main violators, according to the NCHR, were the FJP, the Salafi Al-Nour Party, the Egyptian Bloc and some independent candidates.
The unit received 105 complaints in the first four hours of elections on Wednesday.
"I believe the information the NCHR received is inaccurate. Even if we had some irregularities in this regard they will be very minimal compared to the FJP and Al-Nour," Adel said.
"We are still a new party after all and we don’t have the financial resources other parties have," he added.
Al-Nour’s Abdel Ghaffour said, “The directions we give to our supporters is to commit to the law, however some might break the rules and do some campaigning. We call upon the observers and such councils to tell us where these campaigns are specifically so we would refer who did them to investigation.”
