Monitors Call on Mubarak to Dissolve Parliament after Reports of Mass Rigging

Monitors Call on Mubarak to Dissolve Parliament after Reports of Mass Rigging
Amid reports of violence and fraud, numerous organizations including the Egyptian Human Rights and election monitoring groups did their best to record any violations and irregularities during Egypt’s round two of voting held on Sunday.

Similar to the first round of the polls, numerous cases of ballot stuffing, interference with monitors, and early closing of polling stations were reported by the Egyptian Association for Supporting Democratic Development (EASD) and the Egyptian Association for Community Participation Enhancement (EACPE).
 
This prompted the election coalition to call upon President Hosni Mubarak to dissolve the incoming parliament; describing the elections as illegitimate because of the fraud and irregularities. The coalition stressed that Mubarak should use his constitutional powers to dissolve the newly-elected parliament.
It maintained that transparency standards were largely disregarded adding that rigging and forging the citizens’ will had become the law regulating the election. The coalition also called for an amendment to Egypt’s election law in an effort to ensure "minimum standards of transparency and fairness" in elections. This includes occurrences before the elections as incidents of repression were reported with arbitrary arrests of opposition members. The Muslim Brotherhood was in fact largely targetted by the regime and nearly1500 of its supporters were rounded up.

In what can be labelled as nothing short of a hypocritical statement,  Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif  asserted the elections were the best in Egypt’s election history. He did, however, promise that his government would investigate fraud allegations, adding that election officials assured the few reports of violations had been dealt with and had no effect on the results.

According to analysts the outcome will mar the government’s legitimacy as next year the country faces a critical presidential election with controversy over Mubarak grooming his 47-year-old son Gamal for presidency despite denials by both.

The latest elections revealed that, in reality, when the democratic push comes to shove, the ruling regime undoubtedly was bound to slam on the brakes against democracy, for fear they may one day be toppled if people had a real choice.