Egyptians vote in rare contested election
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-09 23:27

But there were also allegations of irregularities that could not be immediately verified. In the Nile Delta district of el-Bagour, an NDP stronghold, opposition candidate Mohammed Kamil told The Associated Press that polling station officials had failed to make booths available and were watching voters mark their ballots to intimidate them into voting for the ruling party.

Mubarak cast his ballot in a school in the upscale Heliopolis district of Cairo after a meeting at his nearby palace with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The president was accompanied by his wife and son Gamal, who has played a major role in directing the ruling party's campaign.

In a televised speech Tuesday night urging people to vote, Mubarak pledged the elections would be "fair and free." Previous legislative elections have been marred by widespread reports of fraud and voter intimidation. They have produced parliaments with little space for the opposition. After the 2000 legislative elections, the ruling party held 88 percent of seats.

Ruling party representatives have said they would like to see the opposition better represented in the new parliament, but nobody expects the National Democratic Party to lose its majority.

"The regime can tolerate an opposition, but not a strong opposition which will threaten it," Khalil al-Annani, an analyst with the local International Politics journal, told AP. "Its main concern is survival, not change."

The majority of the candidates are independents; 300 others are from various opposition groups, and 150 are supported by the Muslim Brotherhood.

This election has engaged the full range of Egypt's political organizations, some of which boycotted both a May referendum on a constitutional change to the election laws and the presidential elections.

The biggest change in these elections came Sunday when a court overruled the Electoral Commission and granted civil society groups the right to station monitors inside polling stations.

A judicial panel that reviewed the September presidential polls pointed to secrecy and a lack of checks and balances surrounding the counting of ballots.

In that election, Mubarak faced opposition candidates for the first time but still easily won his fifth six-year term. Previous elections were yes or no referendums that have kept him in power since 1981.