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Brotherhood wins 8 parliament seats { October 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1332745http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1332745
Egypt Brotherhood Wins 8 Parliament Seats
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood Wins at Least 8 More Parliament Seats, According to Partial Results
By MAAMOUN YOUSSEF
The Associated Press
CAIRO, Egypt - The Muslim Brotherhood won at least eight seats in the second round of Egypt's parliament elections as the Islamic group continued its strong showing despite widespread violence that marred the voting, according to partial results announced Monday.
The wins bring the Brotherhood's total so far to 42 seats, a large jump from the 15 it had in the outgoing parliament. The Muslim Brotherhood is Egypt's largest Islamist group, although it is officially banned.
According to partial results, the ruling National Democratic Party won three seats, Brotherhood candidates won eight and other independent candidates won nine. Many of the non-Brotherhood independents will likely join the NDP after their victories.
The remaining 16 races will have to go to a run-off, due to be held Saturday, because no candidate got at least half the vote, the election commission said.
President Hosni Mubarak's NDP won 112 seats in the first round, held on Nov. 9 with a subsequent run-off. In all, 454 places in the parliament are up for election in the three-stage process.
Widespread violence marred Sunday's voting as clashes broke out nationwide between Brotherhood supporters, ruling party supporters and police. At least one person was killed in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria and police used tear gas to break up rioting in the Nile delta.
Tensions were considerably higher than in the first round, likely fueled by the Brotherhood's surprising victories then.
In a report released late Sunday, the independent Egyptian Organization for Human Rights described "ascending violence and thuggery" by NDP supporters against Brotherhood candidates and their backers. Voters were being intimidated in both Alexandria and Ismailia, both strongholds of the Brotherhood, the group said.
Police and Brotherhood supporters exchanged accusations over who started the melees.
In Fayoum, a region south of Cairo for example, Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mustafa Awadallah accused the government of hiring provocateurs to cause trouble outside polling stations to create a pretext for closing them early.
"This is unbelievable government terrorism," Awadallah said. "This government is just incapable of practicing democracy. They never learn. They should simply leave office."
But Ibrahim Hammad, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, accused the Brotherhood of starting trouble, hiring street toughs to intimidate voters and attack supporters of other candidates.
Rioting was widespread in Damanhur, a Nile delta town 85 miles north of Cairo. Gamal Hishmat, a Brotherhood candidate there, blamed police and the NDP.
"We are facing a corrupt oppressive government and an unarmed people confronting it with stones. We are witnessing an uprising in Damanhur," he said.
Some 2,000 voters were blocked from casting ballots in the city when police cordoned off polling stations before closing time, said Hishmat's nephew, Mohammed, who works as one of his campaign workers.
Attackers stabbed a Brotherhood campaign worker in the neck in a polling station near Damanhur, the Egyptian rights organization said.
The Damanhur races were not among those where results were announced Monday.
Hundreds of people were arrested, mostly Brotherhood members detained for inciting violence and rioting, the Interior Ministry said. The Brotherhood put the number at over 300, including two women.
At least one man was killed in clashes in Alexandria, identified by police as a driver for an independent candidate.
The Brotherhood spokesman in Alexandria, Ali Abdel Fattah, said men had opened fire on the group's backers in a downtown polling station, killing one man and wounding several other people. But that reported death was never confirmed.
In the Suez Canal city of Ismailia, witnesses said a Brotherhood candidate's brother was shot and wounded by the cousin of an NDP candidate at one polling station. Four other people were wounded in fighting in the city, according to Ismailia's health department.
Sunday's violence was in sharp contrast to the first round of voting Nov. 9, which passed in relative peace and saw the banned Brotherhood double its representation in parliament in that round alone.
While prohibited from formally becoming a political party, the Brotherhood fields candidates as nominal independents whose sympathies are widely known by voters.
The Brotherhood calls for implementing Islamic law but is vague about what that means. It advocates the veil for women and campaigns against perceived immorality in the media. But the group insists it represents a more moderate face of Islam than that followed in deeply conservative Saudi Arabia.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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