Cairo: President Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party swept the mid-term elections of the upper house of parliament amid an outcry from Islamists, who failed to win any seats.
The ruling party won 74, including 14 unopposed, from 88 seats up for grabs in the election, held on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the opposition parties of Al Tagmuh, the Nasserites, Al Ghad and Al Jeel got one seat each on the Shura Council, according to Intassser Nessim, the chief of a government-backed electoral commission. He told a press conference in Cairo yesterday there would be run-off votes on Tuesday for 10 other seats in five governorates. Eleven candidates from the ruling Party and nine independents are vying for the 10 seats, he added. Al Wafd, failed to win any seats.
The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's biggest yet banned opposition group, said it would help opposition candidate and former IAEA chief Mohammad Al Baradei collect signatures in his efforts to gather a million names to demand changes to the constitution and emergency laws, Reuters said.
Nessim put Tuesday's turnout at 31 per cent, while local monitor groups say only two to seven per cent of the voters cast their ballots due to what was described as violence and the police's prevention of voters suspected of sympathy towards Islamist candidates from reaching the polling stations. Police, meanwhile, said they had arrested 14 people suspected of rioting in the town of Qus after their independent candidate failed to win in the election.