How many civil society observers will monitor the upcoming elections? What is the process for receiving government approval for monitoring?
Firstly, I would like to point out that there are ten alliances of NGOs that have announced they will monitor the upcoming parliamentary elections. We cannot actually talk about a precise or fixed number of observers who will be doing monitoring, but we can give a ballpark estimate: the expected number of observers is between 12,000 and 13,000. The Egyptian Association for Supporting Democratic Development, which is the group I represent, has 5,000 observers, while the Ibn Khaldun Center has 3,600, and the Egyptian Alliance, which includes 120 organizations led by the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, has about 1,000. The other alliances do not have large numbers of observers, because they are monitoring various technical aspects of the electoral process such as the media, which do not require large numbers of observers. However, we will have at least 12,000 – 13,000 observers.
Regarding the second part of the question about how these organizations can carry out the monitoring process. First, there is Decree 4 (2007), which regulates the relationship between NGOs and the Supreme Electoral Commission, and which stipulates that NGOs have the right to monitor the electoral process by making a request to the commission to obtain monitoring applications through the National Council for Human Rights. These organizations also have the right to apply directly to the electoral commission, the commission being the only body that can issue these permits.
What has been civil society’s experience in attempting to monitor past elections?
Firstly, election monitoring is an old issue, going back to the 1960s, when it was brought up by the UN. Egyptian civil society has sought since 1990 to monitor elections, but it did not take hold definitively. In 1995, progress was made when the first pioneers in election monitoring in Egypt, Dr. Said el-Naggar and Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, formed what was called the Independent Egyptian Council for Monitoring Elections. This council at first faced very tough challenges from government agencies, but it was able at least to put together good, precise monitoring for 22 districts and average-quality monitoring for 50 districts, which was the first move civil organizations had made towards monitoring the electoral process in Egypt.
Monitoring for the 2000 parliamentary elections was not discussed nor was there any clear monitoring, but in 2005 the idea of monitoring gained traction through the efforts of different NGOs. A group of NGOs raised a lawsuit in the Administrative Court to demand their right to monitor, and to challenge a decision by the Supreme Commission that NGOs could only conduct monitoring by making a request to the National Council for Human Rights. The Administrative Court made an historic ruling in favor of civil society organizations’ right to monitor elections from inside and outside polling stations as well as in vote-counting centers. The ruling said that NGOs were independent legal institutions with the right to interact directly with electoral authorities without resorting to an intermediary, whether the National Council for Human Rights or anyone else. Then we suffered a setback when the government appealed this ruling and the Administrative Court reversed itself, saying that electoral commission decisions were not subject to appeal because they were decisions immune from the rule of law, whether they were about elections or any other topic. Still, this effort did have an impact in that it prompted authorities to acknowledge the principle of monitoring, and in 2005 NGOs did actually initiate a genuine elections monitoring process.
This has evolved from 2005 to 2010, since we have had three elections, namely the local elections in 2008 and the Shura Council midterm elections in 2007 and 2010, in addition to the constitutional amendment referendum in 2007. With the help of thousands of observers, NGOs monitored these elections and laid claim to their rights according to the law, which as we were just saying in Decree 4 (2007) regulates the monitoring process by regulating the relationship between NGOs and the electoral commission.
What was your experience with monitoring Shura Council elections in June 2010?
Compared to our previous experiences, the most recent experience (the June 2010 Shura Council elections) was actually very bad with regards to the interaction or the relationship between the NGOs and the various state agencies. For example, we had previously proposed that the electoral commission be in charge of issuing permits according to the law, since we face a number of problems related to cooperation with these government agencies. For instance, the requests for monitoring the elections are not opened by the electoral commission or the human rights council until a few days before election day. There is also a range of requirements for the monitoring application, such as providing the full name, ID card, national identification number, and photo for each monitor, as well as other complicated procedures. Nonetheless, the NGOs fulfill even the most complicated documentation and send them to the government agencies, either to the electoral commission or the human rights council.
The real problem is that, as happened in the (2010) Shura Council elections, we often do not obtain permits allowing our observers to be present on the scene, particularly inside the polling stations. The decision we were talking about earlier (Decree 4/2007) says that observers are not allowed into the polls or vote-counting centers unless they have a permit and also the permission of the head of the voting center, and the electoral commission grants NGOs permits in only a tiny percentage of cases. In a best case scenario, the percentage of permits granted does not exceed 10 percent of the requests made, and even these are sometimes granted the night before the elections for remote provinces like Marsa Matrouh and Aswan. We assume that the electoral commission is fully aware of the fact that the NGOs will be unable to distribute the permits in time. We have actually had a very bad experience with the commission and the National Council for Human Rights. We, as our own NGO and also as an umbrella organization of NGOs, condemned these actions and held press conferences to expose the commission’s behavior, announcing that we would not work with it at all in the last elections, and refusing to accept the permits granted because they gave us 160 permits out of 1,500 requested. We announced in a statement before the voting process was underway that the commission had not been neutral and that it had impeded civil society’s monitoring efforts.
What are civil society concerns regarding monitoring this year’s parliamentary elections?
The sources of concern regarding monitoring the elections are not merely expectations or fears, but rather are based on our actual experiences on the ground in trying to monitor elections. As we were saying earlier when discussing bureaucratic problems and the electoral commission’s lack of cooperation as the body responsible for managing this process, we expect to face major challenges. For instance, one of the most important challenges is the NGOs’ lack of basic information related to election logistics. Until quite recently, nobody in Egypt knew what the exact date for the elections would be, until the president issued a presidential decree calling on voters to head to the polls on November 28. However, the decree does not include details such as when candidate registration will open and close or where candidates will submit their registration paperwork. Will it be in the security directorates as it is now, or will it be in the courts, as the opposition parties have requested?
The second issue is the start date of the electoral campaigns. We also do not have an end date for the electoral campaigns. Campaigning everywhere in the world ends at least 48 hours before voting starts, but we do not have a set time for the end of campaigning, which varies from local elections to Shura Council elections to constitutional amendment referenda. We do not know the number of polling locations or their addresses so that we can send observers there. This is a challenge. The lack of this information is very difficult, and we cannot talk about serious, effective monitoring giving meaningful feedback unless we have the logistical information. The third issue is administrative challenges; there are problems for instance with the voter rolls. The NGOs, independent candidates, and political parties do not have the authoritative lists with the number of voters, their addresses, and their contact information in the various districts. These authoritative lists are given only to the ruling party’s candidates, and consequently as observers and NGOs we cannot say whether these rolls are correct or not, particularly as there are a number of problems that happen on election day due to conflicting names and errors, Egypt being known for the similarity in people’s names.
The fourth issue is the security challenges that observers face on the ground. Many times, security forces will block observers from entering the polling places, and in some cases observers have been assaulted by security or had their materials for the monitoring process seized. Sometimes some observers are detained. It is true that they are released the same day, but after the end of voting or the vote count, so that there is no longer any value in having observers present.
Another serious issue is that in order for us to give genuine, positive feedback on the electoral process to the Egyptian and international public, the observers must have the right to be present inside the polling places and vote-counting centers. Unfortunately, in most cases we are not able to do so, sometimes because of security and other times because of the sub-committee chairs, and so the observers do their jobs from outside. Monitoring from outside is not the same, as we cannot say whether balloting was secret or not, whether there was pressure on voters from the election committee chairs or from security to cast their votes for one candidate over the others, or for a certain party, etc. Is phosphorus ink provided or not, was it used properly or not, does the committee compare the ID cards with the voter cards to establish voters’ identity or not? We cannot ascertain any of these matters, though they are pivotal and at the heart of a transparent, clean electoral process.
The last parliamentary elections in 2005 showed various developments, including a sharp rise in poll violence, wherein the security forces and ruling party candidates would employ groups of thugs to confront voters supporting the candidates who were politically stronger. Those thugs would also intimidate observers and prevent them from carrying out their work. There were also extraordinary developments in vote-rigging, which our observers are unable to monitor, such as with what in Egypt are called “revolving” pre-marked ballots. So these are all challenges we faced in previous elections and which give us real grounds for the concern we feel. So can NGOs in Egypt truly monitor the upcoming elections or not?
What do Egyptian NGOs think of the possibility of international observers?
International monitoring is not actually a new idea to Egyptian society. Two years after the 1995 elections, which had widespread cases of voter fraud, the topic of seeking help from international observers was raised. There was political debate on the idea, and I remember that the Egyptian Association for Supporting Democratic Development prepared a comprehensive report in one of its publications on the political forces and NGOs’ attitudes. Representatives of the Wafd Party, the Labor Party which was present at the time, and the Nasserist Party--as well as Ma’moun al-Hudaibi, the official spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood--were in favor of international monitoring, and argued that international monitoring was unrelated to the question of infringement on national sovereignty, and that international monitoring was the only solution to confront the violations that are commonplace in Egyptian elections. Replying to Egyptian officials who considered calling for international monitoring to be a type of treason, they said: “Those committing treason are those who betray the will of their people, not those who call for international monitoring.”
So international monitoring has been on the table in Egypt and calls for it have growing lately, also due to the widespread fraud in the 2005 elections, particularly in the third round, as well as in the local elections, Shura Council elections, and the constitutional referenda. All of this generated concern among the observers, because the local observers alone cannot guarantee clean elections, so the idea of seeking help from international observers gained ground. Those supporting the idea of international monitoring within NGOs and political organizations are taking several points into consideration, as the questions of human rights and electoral fairness are no longer local issues but rather have become international issues. Egypt is committed to international conventions, treaties, rules, and standards that guarantee fair elections, and these rules onto which Egypt has signed internationally have become part of domestic law, so we are talking about domestic law, not international pressure.
So the issue of international monitoring no longer constitutes any infringement on national sovereignty. The second argument is that the presence of international observers will provide strong moral support for the local observers who are deployed, and the third argument is that even if fraud does take place, the presence of international observers keeps instances of fraud in check. I believe that this is an important and valid point of view, and some even believe that international monitoring would give the Egyptian government evidence that it can hold clean elections. Some also think that the government need not fear international monitoring if its procedures for guaranteeing fair elections are solid. However, if the government is considering manipulating the electoral process, then the other side has the right to use what it can to confront this manipulation.
Still, it is government officials who are rejecting the idea of international monitoring and labeling it as an infringement on national sovereignty and a type of intervention in domestic affairs, even though Egypt, whether through NGOs or government officials, has itself participated in monitoring various elections, in the United States, earlier in Britain, and before that in a number of Arab and African countries. None of the officials in those countries said that observers constituted a violation to national sovereignty. So this is no longer a convincing reply.
Regarding the political parties and other actors that reject international monitoring, they do not reject the principle but rather argue that international observers will be too few to handle the thousands of polling places in Egypt or that the observers might not understand the nature of the vote-rigging methods or the overall climate in which the elections are taking place, with the role of money and other evolving forms of fraud. Those rejecting international monitoring are talking about the logistical problems, not the principle, and are worried that the presence of international observers—in limited numbers and unable to know what is happening in the electoral process--will lead to the elections being given a clean bill of health.
So in sum, the idea of international monitoring is very much welcomed right now.
How do Egyptians in general regard election monitoring?
Election monitoring in Egypt so far has not brought about a fair electoral process, and the basic idea of monitoring is to guarantee fair elections. We are doing monitoring to see how the government officials run this electoral process and how voters and candidates interact with this process. Will it be according to the rules and laws in place in Egypt or not? Will the media stay neutral or be biased in favor of a candidate or party? Will the rules by which the elections are held meet international standards for fair elections or not?
This is what we are doing, but so far this has not contributed much to guaranteeing fair elections, but at least the role of surveying and documenting the violations that take place in the electoral process is clear. Consequently, we have succeeded in reporting on the violations which take place in small, obscure districts to the local public and the international public. I believe that this is the main accomplishment so far for NGOs in election monitoring.
There are other encouraging developments as well: some candidates who appeal election results, arguing that the vote was rigged against them, present to the courts data and reports published by the NGOs, some asking that we sign and stamp documents for it to become legal evidence in the case. Even if that is not correct (procedurally), candidates’ awareness of the monitoring role has evolved, while our documentation of the violations that take place has started helping candidates in election appeals. I imagine that with the evolution of the climate of political and democratic reform, domestic monitoring will become fully capable of certifying elections: saying either that the violations that took place were not widespread and hence did not detract from the elections’ legitimacy, or else that the breaches were too extensive and so we cannot certify the elections. The state or government would then be in a dilemma at home and abroad, which is the goal or the main idea behind monitoring. We have not yet reached this point, but I think we are continually evolving in this direction.
Arab Reform Bulletin Editor Michele Dunne conducted this interview in Washington, D.C. on October 21, 2010. Paul Wulfsberg translated the interview from Arabic.
