CAIRO, (Reuters) – Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood said yesterday a “rigged” election had all but wiped out its presence in parliament, virtually eliminating opposition to President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling party before next year’s presidential vote.
Opposition charges of ballot stuffing, bullying and other trickery marred Sunday’s election, which the government said was fair. Official results are due today.
The outlawed but partly tolerated Brotherhood held a fifth of seats in the outgoing lower house. The Islamists, who run as independents, are the main rivals of Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP) which has swept elections for decades.
None of the Brotherhood’s 130 candidates won in the first round of voting for the 508 seats at stake, Saad al-Katatni, the head of the Islamist bloc of 88 seats in the outgoing assembly, said. Only a few had progressed to a run-off on Dec. 5.
“There was rigging and we filed an appeal about the voting procedure,” he added, referring to the loss of his own seat in Minya, south of Cairo, which he won in 2005 with 35,000 votes against the 12,000 won by his closest rival.
