Carter Centre - How to Run a Proper Vote in Egypt.

[Hafiz]

Jimmy Carter may have been a one term President but his selfless work since makes him and his Centre a power-house in support of freedom and democracy:

The following is a press release from the Carter Center dated 14/15 January which is as sensible as it is clearheaded:

“Egyptians will go to the polls to vote on constitutional arrangements for the third time in less than three years. While The Carter Center supports the strong desire of Egyptians to move forward with a transition to an elected civilian government, the Center is deeply concerned about the polarized environment and the narrowed political space surrounding the upcoming referendum, as well as the lack of an inclusive process for drafting and publicly debating the draft constitution.

Despite these concerns, it is clear that many Egyptians view the constitutional referendum as an important opportunity to voice their opinion about the transition roadmap and the way forward. To increase the credibility of this process, the Center recommends that Egyptian authorities reverse the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition activists and rescind the recently enacted protest law[1] that severely restricts public gatherings and rallies, including for electoral campaigning. Restrictions on media outlets sympathetic to Islamists also should be lifted. While the fundamental freedoms of association and expression must be protected, it also is essential for all Egyptians to refrain from acts of violence, incitement, and intimidation, and that security forces refrain from the use of excessive force in the event of disturbances.

The Center also recommends that Egyptian authorities provide clear information about the parameters of the referendum, including what results or thresholds will constitute approval as well as what will happen if the referendum fails. . Further, the Center recommends the publication of rules to regulate campaign activities and spending, full access to all phases of the electoral process for all interested Egyptian citizen observer groups and party agents, and the implementation of procedural improvements identified in recent elections to safeguard the integrity of the polling process.

Most importantly, Egyptians should ensure that after the referendum is completed, genuine steps are taken to initiate and sustain an inclusive and meaningful dialogue on additional constitutional reforms and a broadly accepted framework for future elections.

The Carter Center has deployed election witnesses for most of Egypt's recent electoral processes, including the 2011-2012 parliamentary elections and the 2012 presidential elections. For the current constitutional referendum process, the Center deployed a small expert mission focusing on the broader legal and political context of the ongoing transition. The Center requested and the Supreme Commission for Elections approved accreditation's for a maximum of 10 international witnesses to carry out this work. Given its size, the Center's mission will not focus on witnessing voting procedures on referendum day. The Carter Center's electoral assessment and observation activities around the world are implemented in accordance with the Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation, which establishes guidelines for professional and impartial election observation.”

The point in para 3, that there be a statement ahead of the vote as to what would constitute a win, is interesting. Most countries require that constitutional changes be based on a majority of votes combined with other hurdles like turnout or majority of states (Canada, US and Australia) so that this current referendum is the crudest type of a simple majority of whatever turnout. Crude constitutions don’t encourage consensus but they do offer a winner take all result for a group which is considerably less than a majority of voters.

Egyptian governments take poor turnout as a given or as a sign of boycott but any country looking to build a democracy would have established an independent electoral commission,/statutory authority which would research low turnout and adopt measures to encourage more to vote. No such body seems to exist in Egypt or, if it does, is dominated by judges who have shown extreme partiality in the past 3 years. I guess there would be little appetite for a professionally run electoral body because it might motivate the masses and lead to a fair count. Rigging is a great way to look good whilst engineering the outcome. I wonder what the result would have been had 60% of more voted. A proper democrat would try to get a big turnout rather than run the country on a small support base.

The Carter Centre said that, in one of the previous elections, voters were deterred by excessive processes on the day to prove eligibility.

Of course the standard anti-Orientalist post modernistic school will say that all this Carter stuff is imperialist foisting of western models on non-Western societies. Sounds clever but freedom tends to be a universal desire and democracy is the best system yet found to deliver on that. Those who claim that it can't/shouldn't work in multi race/religion/language/impoverished/illiterate countries find India an inconvenient truth. In the Middle east a fraction of those differences are given as justification for rejecting democracy and embracing authoritarianism. If it can work in India it can work anywhere.

In this case al Ahram (or al Inane or al Partisan or best al Haram) and the government are issuing results ahead of time which is highly manipulative and improper (how does the Government have privileged access to the ongoing vote?) given that it might influence those who are yet to vote. If the announced 90% of 30% or so is the final result it will be a result starkly different to all previous elections in the past 2 ½ years where voting, with whatever turnout and whether there was a boycott or not, has been far less clear cut. A 90% vote in this case is just not credible.

The low turnout is very odd given the hysterical government statements about brother terrorism and how the army will save us all. Given this near state of emergency, well really a full state of emergency with the suspension of the courts for all but the high priority political trials,, you would have expected a big turnout to support law and order or at least the army’s version of this. The low turnout might make the army less cocky of the chances of Sisi getting the presidency. Has anyone announced they will stand against him?

I don’t know how the voting is done in Egypt but the example of Lebanon shows that you can have a system which looks good but is really a sham. In Lebanon there are no state printed voting forms (by purpose) and you vote using the voting slips printed by the various parties. So far not so bad. But not all the voting forms for party x are identical. Each group of forms contains its unique printed ‘hidden’ signature. You might ask what is wrong with this. Each group of forms bearing the same signature is given before the vote to a chief, capo, or religious leader in each electorate. Large sums of money are given in return for promises of specific numbers of votes and the sheiks delivery on this deal is proved when the votes are counted and numbers for each type of signature on each form is reconciled by scrutineers against the payments made.

Devilishly clever and a good way of ensuring that the investment in bribery leads to definite outcome. Never rely on a promise to vote a certain way.