CAIRO, 14 August 2005 — A top adviser to President Hosni Mubarak yesterday insisted Egypt will not allow international observers to monitor the country’s first multi-candidate election next month, reports said. “Egypt is not under the mandate (of other countries) to accept foreign observers to supervise its presidential election,” adviser Osama Al-Baz told reporters in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.
Egypt would adhere to principles of transparency for the Sept. 7 poll, which would be entirely supervised by justice and watched by the world’s press, Baz said. The electoral commission said Thursday that 13,000 officials would be charged with monitoring the poll.
In July, a group of 8,000 Egyptian magistrates threatened to boycott the presidential and November legislative elections unless there were guarantees of transparency. They are due to meet on Sept. 2 to make their final decision on election monitoring. Victory is seen as a foregone conclusion for Mubarak, who is facing nine other candidates in his bid for a fifth six-year term after 24 years in power.
Opposition leader Ayman Nour of Al-Ghad (tomorrow) party and Mubarak’s main rival in the elections yesterday said he is not planning to rule Egypt for more than two years if he wins. “If I win the elections next September I will only rule for two years... I have no intension of staying for the whole six-year term,” said Nour. “During those two years I will have an interim government that will draft a new constitution that will guarantee real political reforms, freedom of expression, cancellation of emergency law and the rights to form political parties.”
Nour told Arab News that if his party comes to power and a new constitution is proposed, it will give both party members and independents a chance to run in the next presidential elections and people will be allowed to choose who will rule and represent them. “Then if they decide to choose me again I will stay because it will be the choice of the people,” he added. Nour’s second rival apart from Mubarak is the leader of the oldest party Al-Wafd, Noaman Gomaa.
Candidates receive $500,000 each from the state budget to administer and finance their electoral campaigns, but Mubarak, Gomaa and Nour announced their parties will be financing their own campaigns. Mohamed Kamal, a member of the policies secretariat for the ruling NDP and in charge of Mubarak’s campaign, said that the NDP is not going to exceed the limit stated by the law as the media falsely reported.
