On the second day of parliamentary elections, representatives of the Egyptian Social and Democratic Party (ESDP) across different voting committees monitored promotion for candidates, and distribution of drugs and money to voters, among several violations.
Mostafa Al-Badry, chief of communications for southern Cairo at the ESDP told Daily News Egypt: “The violations are expected to increase in the next phase; no one is willing to abide by the laws.”
“The voters turnout is very low, even below 1%,” he added. The misleading promotion behind this parliamentary elections, its role and expectations, affected the number of voters, he suggested.
In Qena, the operations room of the party monitored candidates’ lobbying attempts on voters, in addition to 10 buses transferring voters, and distributing Tramadol pills and funds among voters.
Other governorates that saw attempts to lobby votes included Assuit, Giza, Minya and Sohag. Ballot boxes in the fifth polling station in Assiut were detected uncovered.
Mona Gad-Allah, one of the candidates from the Free Egyptians Party also working in the media committee told Daily News Egypt: “The turnout was very disappointing; we expected a low turnout but not to that extent.”
“The short duration of the campaigning period ahead of the elections was the main reason behind people’s unawareness and their low turnout,” she added.
Gad-Allah is running for an individual seat in the Gamaliya constituency. While surveying citizens after the first day, trying to find out why nobody went to vote, Gad-Allah said they agreed it is not worth their time or effort, because they do not know the candidates well.
Among the irregularities witnessed were the delay in opening the polling stations, and the absence of judges.
The Beheira governorate ranked as the top governorate with delays in the voting process due to the late arrival of judges, with judges arriving past 9:30 am across 19 polling stations. Sohag also witnessed a delay in opening one polling station, whereas in the Al-Badrasheen constituency, no judges attended in four polling stations on Monday.
Meanwhile, the Conference Party’s operations room monitored a woman from Al-Nour Party in the Salloum governorate dressed in niqab, trying to cast votes for other citizens.
