EGYPT: PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS PREVIEW # 3

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 CAIRO 008392 SIPDIS NSC STAFF FOR POUNDS E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/01/2015 TAGS: PGOV KDEM EG SUBJECT: EGYPT: PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS PREVIEW # 3 REF: A. CAIRO 8274 ¶B. CAIRO 8112 Classified by ECPO Minister Counselor Michael Corbin for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). -------------- Summary -------------- ¶1. (C) A key member of the ruling NDP's leadership recently defended the party's slate of candidates for the People's Assembly elections, which will be held in three stages, starting November 9 and concluding December 7. Many have assailed the NDP for favoring "old school" party veterans over younger reform-minded members, women, and Christians. The performance of NDP nominees will be a critical test of the success of Gamal Mubarak's efforts to reinvent the party. Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is fielding 150 "independent" candidates, is impressing observers with its organization and its apparently effective efforts to reach out to communities and run strong issues-based campaigns. A quick look at a number of races where the MB is competing fiercely is illustrative of the flavor of this elections season. The question of electoral fraud, which has tainted parliamentary elections in the past, continues to loom, but most observers believe fraud, to the extent it occurs, will be more subtle than in previous elections. The Chairman of the Parliamentary Elections Commission formally announced on October 31 that the Commission had approved the use of transparent ballot boxes. End summary. -------------- NDP Rebuts Criticism of Candidate Slate... -------------- ¶2. (C) Political Scientist Mohammed Kamal, widely recognized as the principal spokesman for Gamal Mubarak's reformist circle within the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), defended the party's new slate of parliamentary candidates at an October 30 evening forum which also featured representatives of the quasi-liberal Wafd and leftist Tagammu parties. Poloff attended as an observer. Kamal was repeatedly challenged by his fellow panelists, and audience members, who argued that the party's slate, which features many party veterans and notably few young, female, or Christian candidates, was inconsistent with the NDP's professed "new thinking" and commitment to reform. Kamal insisted that much thought had gone into the new list, and that the candidates the party settled upon were picked, primarily, for their ability to win. "Like any other party, in any democracy, we seek to win as many seats as possible...this is only natural," Kamal asserted. -------------- ...but Stops Burning Bridges -------------- ¶3. (C) In many constituencies, the NDP candidates' most serious challenges will come from fellow party members running as independents after they failed to secure the party's nomination. The NDP is gambling that its candidates will fare much better against independent opponents than it did in 2000, when only 38 percent of the party's nominees won. (Most of the victorious independents promptly rejoined the party, allowing the NDP to preserve its overwhelming parliamentary majority.) Although senior NDP official (and President Mubarak's Chief of Staff) Zakaria Azmy was quoted in mid-October as vowing that independents who ran against NDP nominees would not be welcome to rejoin the party, the party appears to be walking back from this hard line. At the October 30 forum, Mohammed Kamal "clarified" the party's policy on independents who run against NDP nominees: "They will all be considered 'children of the party' and welcomed back," Kamal asserted, "unless they defect to another political party, at which point they will be considered ex-NDP members." ¶4. (C) Comment: The NDP's adjustment of its attitude towards independent members is of course pragmatic but may also reflect concerns that the party's new candidates will not perform as well as they hope. Should independents again outperform NDP-anointed candidates on the scale they did in 2000, many will conclude that Gamal Mubarak's four year effort to retool and streamline the party has been a failure. End comment. -------------- Muslim Brotherhood Pulling Out All Stops -------------- ¶5. (C) Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood (MB),which is fielding 150 nominally independent parliamentary candidates, is the opposition force everyone is watching. The MB's leadership has predicted it will win 90 seats, and even establishment/anti-MB contacts are predicting that the brothers will double their current representation from 15 to 30 seats. (Note: There are 444 elected seats in the People's Assembly. Ten more are appointed by the President. End note.) In the Cairo area, where the first of three rounds of elections will be staged on November 9, MB candidates are contesting half of the 28 seats allocated to the capital area. MB candidates' black banners, bearing the "Islam is the solution" slogan, stand along those of other candidates in virtually every traffic circle and intersection. ¶6. (C) A western academic contact and long-term resident of Egypt is convinced the MB will easily outperform any other opposition grouping in the parliamentary races. He recounted to poloff the scene at an October 29 MB rally he attended in Madinat Sayf, an improvished community in Giza province, about 50 KM south of Cairo. According to the contact, more than 4000 supporters turned out for the rally - with minimal supervision from local police. Our contact, accompanied by several western journalists, was quickly greeted and "spun" by MB "handlers" who had been designated to court foreign media. ¶7. (C) MB campaign materials distributed at the rally had been tailored for that particular constituency - methodically listing local economic and environmental problems and specifying steps the candidate would take to address each of them. This pattern, our contact noted, was being repeated by MB candidates in constituencies across the country. "The MB will do well because they are out on the streets, courting the people, especially in marginalized areas," he opined. -------------- Constituencies to Watch -------------- ¶8. (C) Among the interesting races involving MB candidates that we are watching are: -- Kerdasa, a neighborhood in Giza, not far from the pyramids. MB candidate Abdel Salam Bashandy has been endorsed by community leader Youssef El Mandouh, a former NDP official. His opponent, NDP member Khalid Tamer, is a political novice. -- Agouza, an urban district on the west bank of the Nile, near the elite Cairo neighborhood of Zamalek. MB candidate Hazem Abu Ismail is running against NDP candidate Amal Osman (one of 6 women nominated by the ruling party this year). Hazem is the son of an MB member who served in parliament in the 1980s. Contacts in the neighborhood give Osman (who is also Deputy PA speaker) a leg up in the race -- given her "generosity" to the voters, particularly as election day approaches. -- Al Arish, North Sinai, where authorities appear nervous about the campaign of MB candidate Abdel Rahman Shorbuggy. Shorbuggy appears to be riding a wave of local anti-GOE sentiment prompted by the mass arrests in Al-Arish in late 2004 in reaction to October 2004 terrorist attacks. Authorities broke up a late October campaign rally staged by Shorbuggy in Al-Arish, and tore down banners and placards bearing his name. Shorbuggy himself told the press he was surprised by the size of his rally - more than 2000 locals showed up - a huge gathering in this normally sleepy seaside city. -- Port Said, where MB candidate Akram al-Shaer is the incumbent. Shaer reportedly enjoys considerable popularity in the community while his opponent, NDP nominee (and municipality chief) Mahmoud Meniawy, has been described as "unknown" to local voters. -- Mallawi, in Minya province, 200 KM south of Cairo, where supporters of MB candidate Bahaa Eldin Attia have had several street fights/clashes with NDP incumbent Omar el-Kashef. In recent clashes, Attia's thugs have greatly outnumbered Kashef's and observers believe the incumbent is now on the defensive. -- Damanhour, a Nile Delta city 50 KM southeast of Alexandria, where NDP candidate Mustafa Fiqqi, the chairman of the PA's foreign affairs committee is running for a seat for the first time. Fiqqi was one of the 10 MPs appointed to their seats by Mubarak in 2000 - this is the first time he is seeking election. Fiqqi's opponent is former MB member of parliament Gamal Heshmat, who was removed from his seat in 2003 as the result of a court decision based on a legal technicality. Many believe Fiqqi, well known in Cairo as a prominent member of the NDP's reform circle, will be hard pressed to defeat Heshmat's substantial local support base. -------------- To Fix or Not to Fix -------------- ¶9. (C) In recent conversations, a number of our contacts have made the point to us that the GOE is unlikely to pursue "traditional" forms of electoral fraud, such as ballot-box stuffing and substitution. Other tried and true tactics such as police blockage of access to polling stations, and deployment of thugs, may be less evident in the November elections, we often hear. Significantly, on October 31, Minister of Justice Mahmoud Aboul Leil, Chairman of the Parliamentary Elections Commission formally announced that the GOE would use transparent ballot boxes (which reportedly have three glass and three wooden sides) for the coming elections. This decision had been previewed last week by the Minister of Interior (ref A). ¶10. (C) Many observers believe the GOE nonetheless intends to fix races in strategic constituencies, particularly those where the MB is running strong, most likely by ensuring that a "trusted" or "reliable" judge is assigned to supervision duty in the district in question. In these cases, the "trusted" judges will simply sign off on doctored results, according to the scenario. A senior judicial contact of the Embassy added credence to this theory when he told poloff, on the margins of a mid-October event at the Ambassador's residence, that a "reliable" Ministry of Justice official had been placed by Egyptian State Security in a key position, which determines assignments of judges to particular constituencies, and that State Security was dictating through this person which judges should go where. RICCIARDONE