Violations invalidate result: election losers

Three candidates knocked out of Egypt’s presidential election in the first round said yesterday that violations had rendered the result invalid, further challenging the legitimacy of the vote less than two weeks before the run-off. In a joint statement, the campaigns of third-placed Hamdeen Sabahi, fourth-placed Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh and seventh-placed Khaled Ali listed irregularities which included an allegation that the ballots of 1.5mn voters had been systematically rendered void. The criticism casts another shadow over the last stage of Egypt’s transition to civilian rule due to culminate with the army handing power to the new president on July 1. The June 16-17 run-off between Ahmed Shafiq, Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister, and Mohamed Mursi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate, is expected to go ahead regardless: the body overseeing the election has thrown out complaints. However, with demonstrators staging a third day of protests over the controversial outcome of the trial of Mubarak and his top aides, the fresh accusations of electoral fraud added to the doubts surrounding the already messy transition. The complaints were based on the official logs of the vote count which by law are distributed to the candidates, the statement said. It added that Shafiq’s voters had included hundreds of members of the security forces, who are not entitled to vote, and people listed as dead. Ballots cast in favour of Sabahi had been found loose outside polling stations in five provinces, it added. “After co-ordination, the campaigns of the three candidates declare the invalidity of the result of the first round of the presidential election,” the joint statement declared. Sabahi formally asked a Cairo court to suspend the whole election and order a re-run, a judicial source said, but the legal challenge was unlikely to disrupt the election timetable. International monitors received their accreditation too late to monitor most of the election campaign but gave guarded approval of the voting process despite several irregularities.