CAIRO: Voter turnout was moderately low Wednesday in Aswan in the first day of run-offs over two single winner seats contested by four candidates.
One independent candidate, Mohamed El-Omda, is contesting the professionals seat, competing with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) candidate Abdel Razik Hassan.
FJP candidate Mohamed Aboul Ela is contesting the workers seat against candidate of the Salafi Al-Nour Party Faragallah Gadallah.
Independent monitor Anton Abdel Malek told Daily News Egypt that the four candidates committed violations by distributing flyers in front of and inside the polling stations, a practice that was reportedly prevented by security in the first stage.
FJP’s operations room complained that its monitors were denied access to some polling stations by judges, especially in Al-Atmour School and the Agricultural Monitoring polling stations.
The operations room also reported that FJP monitors were kicked out of some polling stations by judges because they did not carry the proxies signed by their candidates.
"Turnout is naturally low in the run-offs," Abdel Malek said, adding that people usually get more excited in the first round, but in the second round enthusiasm wanes especially that the competition turned almost in favor of the Islamists.
Results of the first round were in favor of the FJP who won two out of four seats in the party lists, with the remaining two going to Al-Nour and the secular Egyptian Bloc spearheaded by the Free Egyptians Party.
Qena Administrative Court ordered the Supreme Electoral Commission (SEC) to cancel the results of the party lists and redo the vote after accepting an appeal by Al-Ahrar Party, which was mistakenly written as Al-Ahrar Al-Masreyeen on the ballots.
The court saw that voters might have mixed it with the Free Egyptians Party, thus affecting the final results of the party lists.
No official decision was issued by SEC to implement the court order until press time.
