Tag: mubarak

Stuffing ballots

Posted on By 3arabawy

Here’s a video of government officials in Belqas, stuffing ballots in yesterday’s glorious referendum:

Also, the Sandmonkey called in to say he was so excited about the carnival of democracy the country is witnessing, so he voted three times yesterday in three different polling stations.

UPDATE: And here’s another monitoring report:

The Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights
The Second Report: March 27, 2007
Referendum Day: Half a Kilo of Meat is the Price for Egypt’s Future
“Half a kilo of meat for each vote,” NDP members announced from cars in El-Gazar Kafer, Banha and Qalubeya, in order to increase the number of voters on the referendum. Despite their efforts, the poling places were quiet all day in Cairo, Giza and Qalubeya.
Many indicators recorded by ECWR’s poll monitors showed that the opposition’s boycott succeeded. Voting was extremely light, despite a big effort by the NDP to bring voters to the polls using all the state’s resources.
The results of monitoring were as follows:
Cairo Governorate:
Women and men civil servants were taken by government buses displaying the banners of the schools voting, such as:
– Omr Ebn Abdel Aziz primary school, El-Mahata street, bus no 90879
– El-Tarbya El-Fekraya school, Mansour street 90873, El-Tegara school, Ragheb Street, Bus no 92389
– Men and youth were gathered in El-Khoulfa’a El-Rashdeen Preparatory School for Boys in Roksy by representatives and members in NDP and were cheering the NDP
– Many buses took men and women in district 24, polling place 1061 in Helwan, which showed a higher number of voters in comparison to other polling places

Giza Governorate:
– ECWR monitors reported bussing of voters from the media collage and the University Student Housing in government buses no 50233, 50234, and 10725 in Giza
– The NDP took control of the Aziz El-Masry school, where women voters’ numbers reached 56 and men’s 500 by 11:45 am
– Women were gathered by force to vote in El-Sadat preparatory school
– El-Saf Preparatory School for Boys and El-Saf Preparatory School for Girls showed very little voting
– Female and male teachers were gathered from El-Omranya School, and from private schools such as Al Zaied in bus no 582 and the El-Fada’al Islamic privet school in buses no 13339 and the Nile Private School in buses no 298. Also the ballot box in El-Omranya School was marked as full although there were very few voters
– 2000 students (most of them female) were gathered to vote in El-Saadaya school in Giza and El-Basaten El-Zera’aya polling place and they stayed in the polling place for one hour
– The NDP gathered women to vote in the polling places for people from other governorates (wafideen) in the El-Khadawy Secondary School no 62, and did not require them to mark their fingers with ink
– Women were gathered by local council members in bus no 1720 to vote in El-Omranya distract, Osman Ebn Afan polling places and El-Omranya in Sharkaya
– There was little voting in polling places 9, 11 and 12 in El-Nagah El-Fekraya school, and El-Kadasya Primary School in El-Moatamdaya. 6 out of 15 polling places didn’t open until 12 pm and they closed early at 3 pm. These places received only 1200 to 1400 votes.
El-Qalubeya Governorate:
– El Ghazl and El-Naseeg Investing Company gathered 30 voters to vote in a private car no 51743
– Civil servants were gathered to vote in front of the 15 May School. El-Tara’a Preparatory School for girls has 4 polling places for women and there was light voting in front of the supervisors of the polling places
– In Banha, the El-Kadima School for Boys and Girls in El-Gazar Kafr, polling place no 99, the polling place closed at 5:45 pm and the supervisor refused to allow ECWR to monitor or to enter the poling place and said the voting was finished
The New Gamgara School polling place was closed at 6 pm, and the polling place at Mohammed Abdou School closed also closed at 5 pm and they started counting the votes at that time.

US anti-Mubarak protests

Posted on By 3arabawy

Today, activists demonstrated in DC and NYC on behalf of the detainees in Egypt, and to express their opposition to Mubarak’s dictatorial constitutional amendments.

Here’s a report about the NYC demo, from activist and friend Shehab Ismail…

Around 20 people gathered today in front of the Egyptian consulate in New York to protest the proposed constitutional amendments. Rime Nagib and I arrived in front of the Egyptian consulate at noon. We spent the morning making banners. On the banners we wrote “No to constitutional amendments”, “Proposed constitutional amendments greatest erosion of human rights in 26 years-Amnesty International”, “Goodbye Mubarak”, and in Arabic
“يسقط لا مؤاخذه السيد الرئيس المبجل حسني مبارك”, “لا للتعديلات الدستورية المقترحة، لا لنظام مبارك القمعي، يسقط “سيادة”الرئيس” “لا لتقنين تزوير الانتخابات، لا لتقنين قمع الأجهزة الأمنية للمعارضة”
The banners also had inverted Egyptian flags and a No Mubarak signs.
The protest was not led by any specific political organization, rather it was planned by a group of activists who first met each other in the protest in solidarity with Egyptian judges last year, which also took place in front of the Egyptian consulate. For many of the protesters, this was their first experience at a demonstration.
The protest was for the most part silent, but there were so many fruitful discussions among the protests about the significance of the proposed amendments and their impact on political rights and the opposition in Egypt. We agreed that the amendments is a huge step backward for democracy in Egypt, and that they pave the way for more rigged elections, military tribunals, as well as human rights abuses such as infinite detentions by national security forces.
Towards the end of the protest, an Egyptian woman came out of the consulate and she started commenting about how “unpatriotic” the protest is. We suspect that she works at the consulate. Her argument, which was for the most part confused, is that Mubarak is our best option. She also said that what Egyptian society needs is an “ethical” change, not a political one. She said Egyptians live in a blissful state under Mubarak and that he knows Egypt best. In short, her argument was that Egyptian people are the problem not the government. She was quite angry. Protesters gathered around her trying to discuss her claims, but she dismissed most of our arguments as misguided.
The protests started talking to Egyptians who were entering the consulate. In fact one man who was waiting for his family inside decided to join the demonstration. Later he even encouraged his wife to join but she hesitated.
People in the protest were from very different backgrounds, including grad students, professionals, human rights consultants. Most of the protesters were Egyptians or Egyptian Americans.

UPDATE: Here’s a video of the NYC sit-in…