As Egypt courts cancel election in several districts
Egyptian parliamentary speaker Fathi Surour warned on Friday, two days ahead of an election overshadowed by a crackdown on Islamists that U.S. pressure on Egypt for political reform could lead to a religious state, as Egyptian courts ordered the cancellation of Sunday’s parliamentary election in 24 districts.
"If there is any U.S. pressure on Egypt, it might possibly turn the situation from a separation of state and religion into a religious state," Surour, a senior member of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), told AFP.
Washington is growing increasingly critical of its ally after the arrests of more than 1,000 Islamist opposition supporters in the run-up to Sunday’s parliamentary poll, and has unsuccessfully pushed Egypt to allow international monitors to observe the vote.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition group, runs its candidates as independents to circumvent a ban on religious parties.
At least 1,200 of its supporters have been arrested since October and it is expected to win fewer seats than the one-fifth of parliament it captured in the last election five years ago.
Surour said he made similar comments to a group of visiting U.S. foreign policy experts earlier this month.
Legitimacy of the Egyptian government
One of them, Robert Satloff, is a member of the Working Group on Egypt, comprised of foreign policy experts who have consulted with President Barack Obama’s administration on Egyptian political reforms.
Satloff told AFP after meeting Surour that Washington, which had initially distanced itself from the robust democracy advocacy of Obama’s predecessor George W Bush, wanted to ensure that Egypt’s government had legitimacy.
"The U.S. has an interest that the political process is open and transparent. We are eager for the Egyptian government to be as legitimate as possible," he said.
Analysts say Cairo, one of the top beneficiaries of U.S. foreign aid, has used the threat of Islamists sweeping to power to ward off pressure to lift political restrictions in the NDP-dominated country.
Michele Dunne, a former State Department diplomat who is also a member of the Working Group on Egypt, says U.S. officials are increasingly inclined to view the scenario of Islamists sweeping to power in Egypt as a hollow threat.
"It has come up in meetings when Mubarak meets with members of Congress," said Dunne, who is also a Middle East expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
"The idea of the Brotherhood sweeping to power is a straw man and people in the Obama administration see that," she said.
The Brotherhood won most of the seats it contested in 2005, but analysts say that result was partly due to protest votes against the NDP, which has dominated parliament for more than three decades.
Cancellation of election
Egyptian courts, meanwhile, ordered the cancellation of Sunday’s parliamentary election in 24 districts after orders to reinstate opposition and independent candidates were ignored, a judicial source said on Friday.
Administrative courts ruled on Thursday that the election could not be held in 12 districts in the Nile Delta governorates of Kafr el-Sheikh and Qalyubiya and in two districts in the southern governorates Sohag and Assyut, he said.
An Alexandria court cancelled the vote in 10 of the Mediterranean coastal city’s 11 districts on Wednesday.
Earlier, the High Elections Commission had ignored court orders to reinstate opposition and independent candidates.
The court orders will probably be suspended as the ruling National Democratic Party contests them.
Each of Egypt’s 254 districts returns two representatives to parliament.
Many of the candidates whose applications were rejected by the election commission, which is largely appointed by the NDP-dominated legislature, belong to the Muslim Brotherhood. Others are independents.
The banned Islamist group has 130 candidates registered as independents left in the race for parliament’s 508 elected seats.
On Thursday, public prosecutor Abdel Maguid Mahmud ordered an investigation into NDP complaints that Brotherhood candidates should be disqualified because they are misrepresenting themselves as independents.