Egyptians Vote in First Competitive Presidential Poll

Voters made their way through the heat to rundown schools and empty clinics Wednesday to cast ballots in Egypt’s first multi-candidate presidential election, touted by the government as an important step toward democracy.

But hours before the polls closed, reports of campaign violations and fraud had begun filtering into Cairo. Some election observers were beaten or harassed, and voters were coerced, bribed and denied privacy to fill out their ballots, independent monitoring groups said. Results are due later this week.

Fathi Mohammed Mahalawy spent two hours Wednesday morning trying to talk his way into a polling station in the governorate of Kalubeya, where he was supposed to monitor the vote on behalf of the leading opposition candidate, Ayman Nour. By law, each of the 10 candidates could post an observer at every polling station. But a clutch of plainclothes and uniformed policemen turned Mahalawy away. He wasn’t even allowed to vote.

“This election is not going to be clean; look what’s happening,” said Mahalawy, 62, pacing dejectedly on a dirt road outside the maternity clinic that served as a voting center. “The ruling party has cooked a meal that’s only for them.”

Opposition groups and many ordinary Egyptians have long dismissed Wednesday’s multi-candidate vote as a hollow exercise designed to give Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak the sheen of a democratically elected leader. Mubarak, 77, who has ruled the nation for almost a quarter of a century, is expected to win an additional six-year term. In the past, Egyptians voted in referendums in which Mubarak was the only candidate.

In recent weeks, Mubarak’s campaign in Cairo has taken pains to distance itself from the government and to stress that the election would be free and fair. On Wednesday, both Mubarak’s spokespeople and the election commission played down reports of fraud.

“I’m sure there will be mishaps here and there,” said Mohammed Kamal, a campaign spokesman. “But in general I think the picture will be positive.”

With about 36 million registered voters and nearly 10,000 polling stations, it was difficult to cobble together a cohesive view of voter turnout or voting patterns. But visits to voting centers in Cairo and beyond gave a series of chaotic snapshots of Egypt’s first foray into choosing a president from a field of candidates.

Confusion reigned among many would-be voters. People did not seem to know which identification cards they needed and where they could vote, leading many, including self-professed Mubarak supporters, to be turned away.

“Although I’m crippled, I wanted to vote,” said Hussein Shibini, 80, using his cane as he left a polling station. He had been denied a ballot because he didn’t have the right documents among the papers he cradled inside a plastic grocery bag. “I did my best to elect Hosni Mubarak. He’s the only one that’s fit to lead this country.”

Hours before the polls opened, the election commission announced that Egyptian monitors would be allowed to enter the voting rooms.

But the election commission had long resisted efforts to let in the monitors, and the late decision came with a price: The judges and police assigned to polling stations didn’t seem to know whether the monitors were permitted inside. Neither, for that matter, did the monitors themselves.

“I don’t know what to think, because how many decisions have we had in the last 48 hours?” said Ghada Shahbender, the spokeswoman for the independent monitoring group Shayfeencom. “The ambivalence itself has been disturbing.”

The ruling party ferried voters to the polls in public buses and bribed them with packets of food or a few dollars, the monitoring groups alleged. Some voters were forced to fill out their ballots in front of the judges, the groups said.

Some polling stations failed to open on time or lacked curtains to provide privacy for voters, said monitoring groups. Some didn’t mark voters’ fingers with indelible ink to keep them from voting twice. And some even lacked ballot boxes, Shahbender said.

At the rural polling station where Mahalawy was turned away, the “judge” in charge was actually a prosecutor who refused to give his name. He looked to be in his 30s, wore an outsized necktie and sat staring at a pair of ballot boxes with slits on top and padlocks on the lids. Inexplicably, more than a dozen other men had joined him in the room, sitting on chairs ringing the walls.

The prosecutor said that the men were government employees. “They’ve been sent here today,” he said. He wouldn’t say who had sent them, or why, only that it wasn’t his choice.

He said he didn’t know why the opposition candidate’s monitor wasn’t allowed in. In practice, only members of Mubarak’s ruling party and the police could decide who entered that particular polling station to vote, and who was turned away.

Asked whether he was a member of the ruling National Democratic Party, a man who was overseeing the voting lists at the door smirked, dropped his eyes and said no. His colleague turned in astonishment. “You mean you don’t have an NDP card?” he asked incredulously. “Shut up,” snapped the first man, “or you’ll get us into trouble.”

At that point, a plainclothes policeman who had been listening ordered reporters to leave the polling site. At a school across town, another “judge” who turned out to be a prosecutor denied entry to journalists.

Despite the election’s flaws, some observers said the novelty of being able to choose among competing candidates for president had brought a new, uncertain political climate to Egypt.

In downtown Cairo, an anti-Mubarak rally of a few dozen people gradually grew and spread Wednesday until about 1,000 demonstrators were marching through the baking streets. In a rare show of restraint, the security services didn’t bother to surround, arrest or beat the demonstrators.

Among the marchers was businessman Ahmed Sheemi, who wore the logo of the Kifaya, or Enough, movement. For Sheemi, a brand-new member of the group, the final straw came when he tried to vote for Nour but was barred from entering his polling station.

“I watched Kifaya protests on Al Jazeera for a year and I’ve always been too afraid to join them,” he said. “But today I had enough.”

Even as he marched, Sheemi was marveling at his decision. He had never planned to join a political movement.

“I will do anything,” he said, “to see Mubarak leave his throne.”

Times staff writers Hossam Hamalawy and Jailan Zayan contributed to this report.