Austin Bay Blog

Thre was little doubt that Hosni Mubarak would win the Egyptian presidential election. However, the question wasn’t simply “By how many votes?” A clean, fraud-less election would have been the genuine “win” for Mubarak. The idea: He knows he’s going to win, so play it straight.

I read somewhere before the vote that Mubarak’s total would be inflated by at least fifteen to twenty percent. CNN reports that –according to one Egyptian human rights group– the pre-election estimates weren’t that far off. Mubarak’s vote was probably boosted ten to fifteen percent. Mubarak’s political opponents are crying “Foul.”

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s main rival in presidential elections, Ayman Nour of the liberal Ghad (Tomorrow) Party, said on Saturday the official vote count was fraudulent.

The country’s biggest human rights groups estimated that 10 to 15 percent of the votes assigned to Mubarak were fraudulent but this would not affect his election victory, announced by the Presidential Election Commission on Friday.

Here’s Mubarak’s victory margin:

The commission said Mubarak won 88.6 percent of the vote, against 7.6 percent for Nour and 2.9 percent for Noman Gomaa of the liberal Wafd Party. The turnout was 23 percent.

Nour said the authorities excluded his representatives from the vote count in many areas and where they could attend they noticed serious discrepancies that suggested ballot stuffing.

Mubarak was going to get at least sixty percent of the vote in a clean election, and a clean election would have been a legacy. A cynic might argue, hey, the “vote inflation” was half of what was predicted. Why, Mubarak ran a cleaner election than those they have in New Jersey and East St. Louis. I know the Egyptian election isn’t even half-a-loaf; it is a couple of slices. But that’s the positive, slender as it may be– it’s a couple of slices that weren’t there two years ago.

The story describes an Egyptian “ballot stuffing” technique:

One of the most common forms of cheating in Egyptian elections is to take large groups of people around from polling station to polling station and persuade the officials to let them vote, even if they are not registered in that district.

Nour did not claim to have beaten Mubarak but said his share of the vote should be much higher.

Even the official count establishes Nour and his Ghad party, which received official recognition in October last year, as the main recognized opposition to the ruling party.

The election was a serious blow to Gomaa’s Wafd Party, which dominated Egyptian politics until the military overthrew the monarchy in 1952 and then reformed in the 1970s.

The LA Times makes a very similar point to the one I just made about Mubarak having the election won. The editorial lede is harsh but accurate– that the election is not a victory for democracy. The Times doesn’t see a couple of slices worth of change, only a fake election.

The LA Times’ lede:

FEW POLITICAL VICTORIES HAVE BEEN as sure as Hosni Mubarak’s. And while his return as president of Egypt represents progress because it came in the country’s first direct presidential election, it’s hardly a victory for democracy. The election also shows the difficulties inherent in U.S. policies in the region.
.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking in Cairo in June, confessed that the United States had “pursued stability at the expense of democracy in the region” and pledged that the U.S. would take “a different course.” But promoting democracy instead of preserving stability has proved just as difficult.

When Mubarak announced in late July that he would run in a real presidential campaign, it might have been a watershed moment for the United States. Egypt, its most stalwart Arab ally, was finally coming around to democracy.

But then came events that undermined what seemed like a positive step: security forces cracking down on peaceful public protests; the government disqualifying 19 candidates without explanation; state-run press and TV openly stumping for Mubarak despite rules requiring them to be neutral. Mubarak also refused international monitors for the election, disregarding U.S. requests. The result was an election under the watchful eye of the state, with voters filling out ballots as Mubarak supporters peered over their shoulders. The turnout was 23%, with fewer than one in four registered voters casting a ballot…

The conclusion:

The Egyptian election shows that the policy transition Rice hopes for — promoting democracy instead of just stability — is difficult to pursue, even between allies.

Now this is interesting: Google has Al Jazeera reporting on anti-government demonstrations in Egypt.

The A-J lede:Demonstrators have taken to the streets to protest election results and opposition candidates have alleged fraud after Hosni Mubarak was declared victor in Egypt’s first contested parliamentary elections.

Egyptian opposition groups staged a demonstration on Saturday, charging that a low turnout gave President Mubarak no legitimacy to govern the country.

Some 400 demonstrators marched in downtown Cairo, chanting anti-Mubarak slogans and waving banners.

“Mubarak is ruling Egypt with the approval of 19% of the electorate,” read one banner.

When will Al Jazeera note that Iraq’s January 2005 elections rate at least an “A-minus” when compared to every other election in the Arab world.