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Deaths, Injuries And Arrests Accompany Egyptian Legislative Vote
by Mona Salem
CAIRO (AFP) - One person was killed Wednesday, several others were injured and 247 were arrested Wednesday in incidents surrounding the third and final round of a month of parliamentary elections in Egypt, police said.
The vote was held under a nationwide security clampdown by a government that democracy activists say is "nervous" about further Islamist gains.
President Hosni Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) has already secured a majority of seats in parliament, but Islamists running as independents have won 16 seats, a much larger gain than expected.
Reporters and Islamist campaigners said uniformed police and security troops were preventing people from voting in Cairo districts where Islamist candidates were standing, in some cases using tear gas.
Meanwhile, police said 200 supporters of candidate Khaled Hammuda, a member of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood who is running as an independent, were detained in the southern province of Assiut.
One person was shot dead and another four wounded at a polling office near Cairo after a dispute broke out between relatives of different parliamentary candidates, police said.
Tawfiq Mohamed Nasser, relative of a candidate for the NDP, died after being shot by a relative of the other candidate, an independent, in Mazghuna, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Cairo, the police said.
Nasser's death brings to nine the total number of fatalities since the three-phase legislative election began on October 18th.
Dozens of people have also been wounded in election-related violence since then.
In a separate incident, 56 people, including 16 children, were treated in hospital after having been overwhelmed by teargas fired by police to disperse voters in the Shubra district of northern Cairo.
Police also said 22 supporters of Islamist candidates were detained in the Kerdassa area southwest of Cairo, Hawamdeya, south of the capital, and in Shubra.
One person was wounded and 10 arrested when voters invaded a polling area after forcing a police barrier allegedly set up to prevent supporters of Wafd candidate Mahmud Farid Hassanein from voting near Tukh, just north of Cairo.
Another 10 people were arrested during clashes between police and residents who protested the police had prevented them from voting in Bassus, north of the capital.
Foreign and Egyptian journalists were attacked by unidentified men and women in civilian clothes, while an Egyptian cameraman for Qatar-based Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel was seen being beaten by police wielding metal bars.
Islamist MP Mahfuz Hilmi, who won his seat in the second stage of elections, alleged that the government has been "hiring heavies" who use "swords and knives" to stop people from voting for Islamist candidates.
Armored trucks were also deployed in downtown Cairo.
Some 160 seats to the 454-member People's Assembly were being contested on Wednesday, with voting in eight governorates including the capital. Final results were due November 15th, a day after the third-stage runoff vote.
Some 282 seats have already been decided in a voting tour of the rest of the country over the past three weeks, 233 of them going to the ruling NDP and 16 to Islamist politicians.
Members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, which cannot field candidates on its own ticket, have 14 of those seats, ensuring their return to parliament for the first time in 10 years.
Around a dozen other seats have been taken by the three main legal opposition parties: the liberal Wafd party, the Arab Socialist Nasserite movement, and the Marxist Tagamu party, while a score of independent winners have not declared any affiliation.
Analysts attributed opposition gains to the presence of members of the judiciary monitoring the voting, which they say has encouraged voters to cast their ballots and ensured greater regularity inside polling stations.
Voting has been divided into three stages, on a geographical basis, for the first time to ensure compliance with a law passed in July that requires a member of the judiciary to be present at polling places.
A total of 444 seats are decided by elections, while the president fills the remaining 10 by appointment.
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