20101128
africanews

Egypt is on high security alert on the eve of a parliamentary election scheduled for November 28, after activists clashed with police at the end of a tense campaign.

Thousands of activists demonstrated in support of their candidates throughout the Nile Delta and in the south of the country as campaigning for the vote came to an end on Friday, according to security officials.

Reports say activists of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood – Egypt’s largest opposition group - clashed with police in the southern Bani Suef governorate, and at least 15 protesters were arrested.

Abdel Moneim Abdel Maqsud, a lawyer for the Islamist group, said 22 of its members were arrested on Friday across the country.

Observers say the Brotherhood is expected to win less than the fifth of parliamentary seats it captured in the 2005 election, after some 1,200 of its supporters were arrested in the weeks before the vote. Most of them have been released.

The Brotherhood is fielding 130 candidates for the 508 elected seats after more than a dozen of its candidates were disqualified by the election committee.
The group registers its candidates as independents to circumvent a ban on religious parties.

Rights groups say the election has already been compromised by the arrests of opposition members and campaign restrictions on their candidates.
Amnesty International called on Egyptian authorities to safeguard the rights of voters in the election.

The government however insists the election will be fair and the electoral committee says it granted more than 6,000 permits to local civil society groups to monitor the vote and the ballot counting.

His 81 years were celebrated in July with great pump with the launch of his biography Droit Au But (French for "Straight to the Goal"), a dream he longed cherished.