Egypt's final poll kicks off

2005-12-01 13:09

Cairo - The final phase of Egypt's month-long parliamentary polls kicked off amid high tension on Thursday, with the Muslim Brotherhood and the country's judges determined to resist state interference.

Tempers flared as voters were again prevented from reaching polling stations in several constituencies and police pressed a wave of arrests of Islamists in the nine provinces taking part.

Police had detained more than 500 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood for the past three days, most of them local campaign managers or volunteers tasked with mobilising voters.

Abdel Moneim Abul Futuh, a senior Brotherhood leader, said: "The police are arresting them in their houses, in mosques, in the street and confiscating computer hard drives."

Underground experience

The group said more arrests were made on Thursday and added that an additional 300 supporters were still behind bars after similar raids carried out during the first two phases of polling.

The officially banned movement's long underground experience proved useful, as hundreds of others managed to slip through the net and continued preparations for the third phase.

But a reporter, near Mansura, said police were barring access to polling stations, sparking protests by Muslim Brotherhood supporters, in a repeat of scenes from the second phase.

The same situation was reported in al-Adwa, a village near the city of Zagazig, where the head of the Brotherhood's parliamentary group, Mohammed Morsi, was contesting a seat.

TV station camera crew held

Omar Mohammed Ahmed, 36, said: "They don't want anybody to vote for the Brothers."

A crowd of angry would-be voters started building up in front of a school sealed off by some 150 police equipped with tear gas canisters.

A camera crew from the Arabic news network, al-Jazeera, filming a polling station blocked off by police was detained on Thursday in Kafr el-Sheikh.

In last week's second phase, Muslim Brotherhood supporters and other voters were confronted at polling stations by phalanxes of riot police and thugs armed with machetes.

Islamist strongholds

But, Brotherhood spokesperson Issam al-Aryan predicted that the security crackdown would backfire. He said: "The Brotherhood will only benefit more from the protest vote."

Voting was taking place on Thursday in several remote regions of Egypt such as the Sinai Peninsula and Upper Egypt, but most of the attention focused on Islamist strongholds in the Nile Delta.

Campaigning under the slogan "Islam is the solution", the movement founded in 1922 made major gains in the first two phases of the election, winning 76 seats, five times their tally in the outgoing parliament.

With a success rate hovering about 70%, the Brotherhood could reasonably hope to reach the symbolic 100 mark as it was fielding a total of 49 candidates in the 68 constituencies taking part in Thursday's voting.

- AFP