AN EPIC PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE IN THE NILE DELTA

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 CAIRO 008822 SIPDIS NSC STAFF FOR SINGH E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/22/2015 TAGS: PGOV KDEM EG SUBJECT: AN EPIC PARLIAMENTARY BATTLE IN THE NILE DELTA REF: A. CAIRO 8786 ¶B. CAIRO 8745 Classified by Michael Corbin for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). -------------- Summary -------------- ¶1. (C) One of the most closely watched races of the second round of People's Assembly elections pitted Gamal Heshmat, a popular local Muslim Brotherhood candidate, against Mostafa Fiqqi, a prominent member of Gamal Mubarak's circle of "reformists" in the ruling NDP, in the gritty Nile Delta city of Damanhour. The city saw an intense campaign period and pitched battles on election day between "NDP thugs," the MB youth who seemed to outnumber them, and apparently spontaneous acts of local violence against buses suspected of carrying outsiders in to vote for the NDP. The highly controversial result, which was certified as a lopsided victory for Fiqqi, is widely believed to have been falsified. Heshmat is reported to be working to restrain his supporters, some of whom are said to be ready to take to the streets. While the Damanhour race, and several others we have seen so far, appears to be a clear-cut example of a fabricated NDP victory, it does not necessarily fit a wider pattern. The MB have prevailed on many other electoral battlefields this month, having already secured 46 seats, with more than half of the seats still to be decided in runoffs on November 26 and the third stage of elections, which begins on December 1. End summary. -------------- A Sour History -------------- ¶2. (C) One of the most closely watched races of the second stage was held in Damanhour, the seat of Beheira province, about 50 miles southeast of Alexandria. The race for the "professional's" seat pitted the very popular MB Gamal Heshmat against prominent NDP reform figure Mostafa Fiqqi. Heshmat was elected to the People's Assembly in 2000, and served until a late 2002 court ruling nullified the 2000 election results, prompting an unusual by-election in January ¶2003. According to multiple accounts, on the day of the by-election, January 8, 2003, the city was virtually locked down by 66 Central Security Force squadrons, which allegedly refused entry of most Damanhour residents to the polling stations, while dozens of buses brought in voters from other districts. ¶3. (C) In the end, according to official results, Heshmat lost to Wafd Party member Khairi Kilig by a vote of 16,862 to ¶965. (In the 2000 race, Kilig lost with 3,657 votes to Heshmat's 16,862.) The unusual by-election and its strange result raised eyebrows even in establishment circles in Cairo, and prompted howls of outrage from Heshmat's supporters and the MB organization, but Heshmat himself vowed he would stand again in 2005. ¶4. (C) In the summer of 2005, the NDP's Mostafa Fiqqi, Chairman of the People's Assembly's Foreign Affairs Committee, announced that he would compete for one of the seats in Damanhour. Fiqqi, a former diplomat and a rising star in the NDP's "reformist circles" had served in parliament for ten years, but had never been elected -- he was one of the ten MP's appointed to the People's Assembly by President Mubarak. Fiqqi told a contact he was determined to get an elected seat in 2005 to shore up his credibility in the next parliament. -------------- Lopsided, but for Whom? -------------- ¶5. (C) A western journalist contact who spent several days "embedded" with the Heshmat campaign told us that the MB candidate's many supporters in the town were still smarting from his unusual 2003 ouster and determined to send him back to parliament. Dueling campaign rallies attended by our contact in the final days of the campaign foreshadowed what would apparently be a lopsided battle: More than 6,000 people rallied in support of Heshmat on November 25. At the event, an MB poet read a satirical verse mocking Fiqqi as an out-of-touch carpet bagger pursuing a quixotic mission. Fiqqi's own rally on the same day was a comparatively subdued affair which attracted only a few hundred supporters. The conventional wisdom in Damanhour, expressed by several contacts, was that "Heshmat owns this town," and that "Fiqqi is perceived as an outsider. He can not win." For his part, Fiqqi vowed in public remarks that if there was any fraud in the coming election, he would resign. -------------- A Messy Election Day -------------- ¶6. (C) The overwhelming popular support for Heshmat in Damanhour was clearly in evidence during poloff's November 20 visit to the city. At five polling stations we visited, Heshmat's supporters were out in force. MB supporters at several polling stations told us similar stories of "NDP thugs armed with swords" who had been "let out of jail" to intimidate MB voters. Several Egyptian and western journalists we met in Damanhour confirmed these stories, noting that two flashpoints had been the Abdel Moneim Riyadh school and the district of Abu Reesh, each in the poorest sections of the city. ¶7. (C) At Abdel Moneim Riyadh school, a journalist eyewitness told us, NDP thugs carrying knives, "swords," and sticks found themselves outnumbered by MB supporters who routed them after a brief street fight. An Egyptian journalist working for a western wire service told poloff on November 21 that she had interviewed several of the "NDP thugs," one of whom proudly showed her his release papers from jail, dated November 20. The subject was "clearly high on drugs," she claimed. Several journalists we met in Damanhour separately insisted that the thugs were prisoners on interim release. One showed poloff pictures he had taken of the thugs, posing with clubs, and one holding a can of beans marked as Ministry of Interior prison rations. ¶8. (C) Several western journalists were present at a polling station in Abu Reesh, Damanhour, where a sunset standoff took place when a pro-MB crowd demanding entry to a polling station confronted police and poll workers who had closed the site down. Convinced the site had been closed to allow officials to manipulate the results against the MB, members of the crowd began to shout "they (the police) are occupiers! Treat them like the Israelis!" prompting others in the crowd to throw stones at police vehicles. Police responded by firing tear gas, dispersing the crowd. ¶9. (C) According to numerous sources, locals also stoned buses entering Damanhour if they bore license plates from neighboring provinces, suspecting they were transporting outsiders to vote for Fiqqi. A journalist told poloff she had seen one such attack, in which a bus with Manoufiya license plates turned around and made a hasty retreat out of Damanhour after its windshield was shattered by a hail of rocks thrown by local MB supporters. -------------- A Strange Outcome -------------- ¶10. (C) Just before midnight on November 20, we heard from a police source that "Heshmat definitely won the race." On the morning of November 21, contacts in the domestic monitoring community were reporting that Heshmat's victory had been massive. Kifaya, the Egyptian Movement for Change, posted on its website a report that Heshmat had received 34,000 votes to Fiqqi's 8,000. However, by mid-morning on November 21, our western journalist contact told us his MB "friends" in Damanhour were telling him that the electoral commission would "invert" the results, giving Fiqqi more than 20,000 votes and Heshmat well below half as many. ¶11. (C) Egyptian media began to report Heshmat's "loss" by midday on November 21 but Al-Jazeera continued to report the Heshmat's victory as of late afternoon. "There is no way Fiqqi beat Heshmat," our journalist contact asserted, "if they let Fiqqi win, that town will launch an intifada." Throughout the day, the parliamentary elections commission trickled out results of various second stage races (including 12 outright MB victories, up from 4 outright MB victories on day 1 of the first stage) but remained silent on the Damanhour race. By early November 22, al-Ahram, the leading pro-government daily, reported that Mostafa Fiqqi had won the seat in Damanhour with a total of 22,982 votes. The report declined to mention Heshmat at all. -------------- Revenge Deferred -------------- ¶12. (C) Our journalist contact who had "embedded" with the Heshmat campaign the previous week has since returned to Cairo but continues to work the phone with MB contacts in Damanhour. He related that many of Heshmat's supporters had wanted to take to the streets to "retaliate" against the GOE's "injustice," but Heshmat himself had been exerting efforts to restrain his angry supporters. This restraint, our contact believed, was exemplary of the MB's discipline as an organization. -------------- Comment ¶13. (C) The circumstances of Heshmat's defeat are very similar to first-round episodes in the greater Cairo districts of Dokki and Nasr City, where popular MB candidates fell to prominent NDP figures in spite of strong evidence, and widespread public perception that the MB candidates had won those seats. At the same time, Heshmat's case, and the cases in Dokki and Nasr City, are not reflected in the overall trend of MB victories in this year's legislative elections. Reporting from domestic monitors has so far alleged only isolated cases of outright vote-rigging. The MB won 12 seats outright on November 20, three times as many as it won on the first day of stage one and have already secured, overall, 46 seats in the next parliament (they held 16 in the outgoing parliament),with this year's elections not yet half over. It may be that Heshmat's loss, and the two in the first round, are isolated instances in which well-connected, if unelectable, NDP figures were able to use their influence to ensure their fraudulent victories. Even if the Damanhour, Dokki, and Nasr City races do indeed prove to be exceptional, however, the GOE's critics are likely to seize on them as emblematic of the persistence of the "old ways" of rigging elections as Egypt tries to move toward a new democratic era. End comment. RICCIARDONE