Witnessing Egypt’s polls worldwide

Election eve has had Egyptian security force on high alert with 22 Muslim Brotherhood members arrested nationwide on Friday. So far the security has hauled in over 1300 MB campaigners, supporters, candidates, children women and men were victims of the arbitrary arrests.

The recent campaign trails have witnessed violent clashes and fierce crackdown on the group rendering the run up to elections anything but free.
Unjust court sentences, storming of MB privately owned establishments and thwarting of campaigns have laced the lead to elections in addition to the cancellation of elections in 24 of 254 districts after court orders to reinstate disqualified candidates were ignored.

The Brotherhood has faced the brunt of the vendetta despite officials vowing that elections would be free. Since its win in 2005 of one fifth of the seats which wasn’t met with lightly by the NDP, officials have been quoted promising the group would not repeat its win.

The group has reported that many its supporters are rounded up each day as they put up posters and hand out fliers. The Brotherhood is fielding 130 candidates for the 508 elected seats after more than a dozen of its candidates were disqualified by the election committee. The public prosecutor is currently investigating complaints by the ruling Party that even more MB candidates should be disqualified because they are misrepresenting themselves as independents.

According to Rights groups the election has already been compromised by the arrests of opposition members and campaign restrictions on their candidates. Because of these rights groups expect voter turnout to be low as usual, where elections are often marred by violence and ballot fraud in Egypt.