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Election rules slammed by civil society groups

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The issuing of rules and directives for the upcoming Egyptian presidential elections by the Presidential Election Committee (PEC) on 28 August has enraged both the judges and civil organisations hoping to supervise the poll on 7 September. According to Nasser Amin of the Arab Center for Independence of the Judiciary and Legal Profession (ACIJLP), the committee has left the names of the 500 most outspoken judges off the list of those supervising the election. “He made up a list of judges without them,” Amin said. The 500 not included were among those who participated in a 13 May meeting of the Judges’ Club that threatened to boycott elections if the government didn’t make certain guarantees that they would be free. On 2 September, the Judges’ Club will meet again to finally decide on their participation in elections. “If the committee’s decision is not changed,” said Amin, “I think the judges’ will make a serious move,” like boycotting the elections. In the months leading up to the election, the US government has called for international monitors to be present. Egyptian government officials such as the Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif countered that there was already sufficient judicial supervision as well as civil society monitoring groups. The committee, which was formed by the amendment to the constitution allowing multi-candidate presidential elections and is charged with overseeing the process, announced that no NGO monitors would be allowed in the 9,737 polling stations. The US government, does not appear to be satisfied with this move and has reiterated its call for civil monitoring. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack on Monday said observers were a common feature of elections. "We urge the Egyptian government to allow in election monitors, election observers," he said. Dozens of NGOs, including the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR), the Ibn Khaldoun Center of Saad Eddin Ibrahim, the ACIJLP and the Group for Democratic Development have formed various monitoring associations and trained hundreds of poll observers. Officials from the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), however, have maintained that no matter what the judges’ decision, there will still be “a judge in every polling station,” according to NDP media coordinator Mohammed Kamal. The head of the PEC, Mamdouh Marei, announced that he had over 13,000 judges at his disposal, so more than enough to cover the necessary polling stations. Amin, however, said this number is a major exaggeration and is not counting actual “sitting judges” that preside over courts. “Most of the 13,000 Marei is talking about are not judges, they are members of the prosecution office and employees of the judicial system,” whom he says lack the independence of the judges. According to the decision of the Supreme Constitutional Court, which Marei heads, a judge can be defined as an employee of judicial institutions, including prosecutors and lawyers in the government legal department. Marei was appointed to head the Supreme Constitutional Court in 2003 by the president. He was originally a relatively unknown judge. According to Amin, however, he was involved in supervising the 1995 and 2000 elections and at the time was accused of turning a blind eye to electoral fraud. Reservations about the current monitoring system are widespread among non government organisations. On Monday, the EOHR released a report also casting doubt on the efficacy of the system of election supervision as well as the independence of the PEC, which the report described as showing “a lot of arbitrariness and a lack of transparency.” The EOHR report also criticised media bias in among state-owned newspapers in favor of the incumbent, President Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled the country for the past 24 years.

This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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