Egyptian military delays election as opposition mounts
Egypt’s ruling military council issued a new election law by decree Wednesday, overriding objections from the youth groups that spearheaded the mass movement against the dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak and retaining many of the antidemocratic provisions under which the old regime regularly rigged elections. - Most significantly, the decree postpones the general election scheduled for late September, although a military spokesman claimed that voting for two houses of parliament would be completed in three stages by the end of this year. The election of a new president to replace Mubarak would be put off until next year, effectively leaving the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces in control, with the military’s top officer, Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, a longtime Mubarak crony, as de facto head of state.
There are a number of flagrantly antidemocratic electoral provisions. More than one-fourth of the upper house will be appointed by the next president rather than elected. Half the seats in the lower house will be reserved for independent candidates, rather than those running on party lists, ensuring the influence of wealthy individuals, many of them connected to the military, with the means to carry out vote-buying on a large scale. That provision also opens the door for former officials of the Mubarak regime to return to power as “independents,” despite the dissolution of the ruling National Democratic Party, the political machine through which the Egyptian military ruled for many decades.
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