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).

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Summary
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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.

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A Sour History
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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.

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Lopsided, but for Whom?
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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.

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A Messy Election Day
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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.

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A Strange Outcome
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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.

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Revenge Deferred
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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.
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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