Egypt's ruling party wins most seats in parliamentary vote
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Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) won the most seats in Sunday's first round of the People's Assembly elections, the High Elections Commission (HEC) said Tuesday night.
The NDP won 209 out of the 221 seats up for grabs in Sunday's vote, with opposition parties and independents securing five and seven respectively, according to the results posted on the HEC website.
The banned Muslim Brotherhood, whose candidates ran as independents, failed to win a single seat in the first round.
Another 287 seats of the new 518-seat lower house of Egyptian parliament will be contested in the Dec. 5 run-off elections, with the remaining 10 appointed by President Hosni Mubarak.
Around 5,033 candidates from some 19 parties and independents contested in Sunday's race, with about 800 for the NDP, according to the HEC.
Turnout was 35 percent and some 14 million voters cast their ballots, said HEC spokesman Sameh El-Kashef at a press conference late Tuesday.
Kashef said violence occurred in 16 out of a total of 254 constituencies on the election day and only a small portion of 89,588 ballot boxes were declared invalid due to complaints and irregularities. The discarded votes would not affect the overall figures, he added.
The Muslim Brotherhood won 88 seats, a fifth of the current 454-seat lower house, in the previous elections in 2005. The group, which was banned in 1954 by the Egyptian government, fears it might be completely excluded from the parliament although it still has some 26 candidates to run as independents in the second round.
In the mid-term elections of the Shoura Council (the upper house of Egyptian parliament), the Muslim Brotherhood won no seats, a signal that it could be politically marginalized.
During the electoral campaign, the group had claimed that hundreds of its members were arrested by police. The government closed a number of TV channels for alleged inciting of religious hatred or violence, which some analysts believed targeted the group.
The Egyptian authorities have denied any serious violations such as vote rigging in the polls, despite widespread allegations from opposition blocs such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the Al-Wafd Party and rights groups.
According to Egypt's health and interior ministries, some 21 people were injured in clashes between supporters of rival candidates at some polling stations on the election day and no poll-related deaths were reported.
Yet Egyptian media on Monday quoted rights groups as saying that there were eight election-related deaths.
Egypt rejected foreign monitoring of the polls, pledging the elections would be free and fair.
Fakhry Altahhtawy, professor of political science at Cairo University, told Xinhua late Tuesday that the elections were a test of the ruling party and political participation on the grassroots level.
He said the elections lacked direct judiciary supervision as no judges were deployed at polling stations, a violation of the constitutional amendments in 2007.
The vote would pave the way for the presidential elections next year, he added. President Mubarak has not said whether he would seek a new term. Senior officials of the ruling party have said the president would be the party's presidential candidate if he wants.
With a population of around 78 million, Egypt plays an important role in the regional affairs of the Middle East.
