adminThe army, which took over after Mubarak was ousted, remains in charge until a presidential election in mid-2012, but parliament will have a popular mandate that the military will find difficult to ignore as it oversees the transition.
“I’m 61 years old and I’ve never voted before. I came here today as I couldn’t vote yesterday because of the crowds,” said Azza Mohamed at a busy Cairo polling station.
“Everyone who votes today knows their vote won’t be lost,” she said, on the second day of the second round of a complicated multi-phase election that will last into January.
Before Egyptians rose up in January to topple Mubarak 18 days later, the president’s National Democratic Party (NDP) swept to assured victories in elections littered with abuses.
“I can choose the person that I want to represent me. The NDP used to control the country. Now our views will steer the parliament,” said 24-year-old Nesma Medhat, another Cairo voter.
Parliament’s prime job will be appointing a 100-strong assembly to write a constitution defining the powers of the president, parliament and perhaps the army in the new Egypt.
The ruling army council fuelled suspicions it wanted to hang on to power, even after a new president was elected, when its cabinet proposed inserting articles in the new constitution that would have shielded it from civilian scrutiny.
That sparked more than a week of violent protests in Cairo and elsewhere in November in which 42 people were killed.
Candidates seeking to run in the presidential election will need the support of 30 members of parliament or 30 000 citizens, according to a draft law reported by state news agency MENA.
The draft also allows any party with at least one elected seat in parliament to field a candidate, MENA said.
The new rules, referred to the army’s newly appointed consultative council, will replace Mubarak-era regulations that effectively ruled out any realistic challenge to his rule.
As in the first round, Thursday’s voting was mainly peaceful, but independent monitoring groups reported infractions such as campaigning at polling stations. The army, which is guarding polling stations, promised to confront such practices.
The election committee has pledged to combat abuses but says these were not widespread enough to discredit the result.
Official results are expected tomorrow or Sunday, but parties are likely to estimate their performance before that.
Islamist-led party lists secured about two-thirds of votes in the first round of the election. However, the Islamists are a broad and divided camp, which analysts say gives liberals a chance to make their voices heard in the new assembly. — Al Jazeera.
derick.khumalo
Online Reporter