EgyptElections: Campaign: Military govt tries to steer revolutionaries to self-defeat

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URLs for various press reports follow, which I had commented on adequately, but which text has somehow gone missing.   Try clicking up these reports for yourself, if you're interested.

The date of the election is November 30, 2k11!

A last minute message from We are all Khaled Said page on Facebook:

After a long struggle Egyptians abroad have won their right to vote but until this moment, only 314497 have registered online to vote from abroad. The government estimates that there are 8 million Egyptians living and working abroad. At least half this number have the right to vote.

If you are an Egyptian living abroad, please register online to vote at the elections 2011 governemnt website. YOUR Vote COUNTS.

Register Online to be able to vote from abroad in the Egyptian national elections starting on 28th November.

Here's the website's Arabic-language mass-educational video:


Massive demonstration in Cairo's Tahrir Square - CNN.com

Cairo (CNN) -- Tens of thousands of Egyptians turned out in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday to protest plans for a constitution that would shield the military from public oversight.

The throng, dominated by Islamist parties but also including secular forces, comes ahead of upcoming parliamentary elections set to begin on November 28.

Egypt has been ruled by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces since the departure of President Hosni Mubarak earlier this year. The military said it wants to transfer power to a civilian parliament and president.

But protesters are upset about proposed principles for the constitution, in which the military's budget would not be scrutinized by civilian powers. They worry that the military would be shaped as a state within a state.

The outpouring reflects the power of Islamist forces in Egypt, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party.

Egypt court permits members of Mubarak's party to run in upcoming elections - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

A top Egyptian court on Monday overturned a decision barring members of President Hosni Mubarak's former party from standing in a parliamentary election that starts later this month.

Read more ... click the time-stamp below .... 

PoliticsLibya: War: Arab Revolutions and Govts support generally but some suspicious of Western colonialism

Guardian (Mar20,2k11)

Libya: the Arab view

Compared with the war in Iraq, regional reactions to western involvement in Libya have been cautious and muted

Martin Chulov with additional reporting by Enas Ibrahim

• guardian.co.uk, Sunday 20 March 2011 17.30 GMT

Update:  We Are All Khaled Said the famous Egyptian revolution's news disseminator:  has tweeted another Guardian story:  Mohamad Nabbous was the first voice I heard on Free Libya Internet station on 17 Feb. He spoke for all Libyans & encouraged them to stand up for their rights & protest peacefully before Gaddafi's forces opened fire on them. He risked his life to spread international awareness about Libyans struggle just like I tried to do for Egypt on this page. Mohamad was killed in battle on 19 March.

Mohammad Nabbous, who set up an independent internet TV station in Benghazi, has been killed

Many Gulf states that condemned the war in Iraq have no reservations about coalition attacks on Gaddafi's forces. Photograph: Sipa Press / Rex Features

Egyptians strongly endorsed amendments to the country's constitution yesterday as aftershocks from the Arab spring revolts rumbled into the furthest reaches of the region.

More than 77% of the estimated 14 million-plus people who voted supported changes that will provide a blueprint for parliamentary and presidential elections to be held within the next six months.

Voting was mostly problem-free across the country, a significant result in a country that is emerging from more than three decades of dictatorship, when elections merely served to rubber-stamp ousted president Hosni Mubarak's rule, and voter turn out was low.

Elsewhere in the Arab world, tentative calls for democratic freedoms were met with force in both Saudi Arabia and Syria. In the Syrian town of Daraa, a second day of clashes with state security officers reportedly left one protester dead, in addition to the four reported killed yesterday.

A council building in the centre of town was burned down during the clashes. Some reports claimed it was a local headquarters of the Baath party, however they could not be verified.

In Saudi Arabia, where demonstrations are banned, protesters tried to force their way into the interior ministry in Riyadh demanding the release of prisoners who they said had been detained for up to two years without trial. Around 15 people were arrested, but no serious violence was reported.

However, the spectre of protests in the Saudi capital is something the Islamic kingdom's leader, King Abdullah, has been trying to avoid as he battles to contain an uprising in Bahrain on his northern border. The Saudi government holds grave fears that the Shia protests in Bahrain could stir unrest in eastern Saudi Arabia, which is home to most of the 12% Shia population.

Bahrain's rulers yesterday claimed to have uncovered a plot involving outside powers – an implicit reference to neighbouring Iran. The government asked Iranian diplomats to leave the tiny Gulf state and later called Lebanon's Hezbollah a terrorist organisation that was destabilising the region and impinging on Bahrain's sovereignty.

The unusually vehement tones underscore the sensitivity in the Gulf, where all the petro-states have been under pressure from their citizens to introduce widespread reforms.

Bahrain is in its second week of a three month period of martial law, which was introduced after weeks of violent clashes between citizens and riot police. The clashes have taken on a sectarian tone that the kingdom is anxious to play down.

Meanwhile, in the south of the Arabian Peninsula, the embattled leader of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, yesterday sacked his cabinet in the latest of a spate of moves designed to cling on to power. The clean sweep came two days after a massacre of more than 40 unarmed pro-reform protesters in the capital, Sana'a, which has drawn widespread condemnation and placed further pressure on Saleh to step down after more than 30 years in office.

The attacks on Libya have left the Arab world largely mute, unlike the opposition voiced before the last western assault on an Arab capital eight years ago.

Amid unrest and rebellion across the Middle East, a clear distinction has been made between the invasion of Baghdad and the bombing of selected targets in Libya. The former was widely condemned by many states that have had no such reservations about the bombing of Gaddafi's forces by US and European planes.

A key reason for that appears to be the west's stated desire not to overthrow Gaddafi but to leave his fate to be determined by Libyan citizens.

However, as the air campaign entered its second day, cracks began to appear in the regional solidarity on show last week when the Arab League voted in support of military action to protect civilians.

Read more of this superb overview by clicking the live-link just preceding or the green blog-entry headline above. - Politicarp

PoliticsEgypt: Referendum: What's ahead for Egypt on March 19?

Election Guide (Mar12,2k11)


refWrite is prepping readers for the vitally important parliamentary elections in Egypt, scheduled for Mar19,2k11.  Please read this info. - Politicarp

Country: Egypt Official Name: Arab Republic of Egypt Election Type: Referendum Date: March 19, 2011 Source for election date

At stake in this Referendum:

• A referendum to change 
• the current constitution of Egypt.

Description of government structure:

• Chief of State: President Mohamed Hussein TANTAWI 
• Head of Government: Prime Minister Essam SHARAF 
• Assembly: Egypt has a bicameral Parliament consisting of the Advisory Council (Majilis Al-Shura) with 264 seats and the People's Assembly (Majlis Al-Sha'b) with 518 seats**.

Description of electoral system:

• The President is elected by absolute majority vote through a two-round system to serve a 6-year term.*
• The Prime Minister is appointed by the president with the approval of the parliament.
• In the Advisory Council (Majilis Al-Shura), 176 members are elected by absolute majority vote through a two-round system to serve 6-year terms and 88 members are appointed by the president to serve 6-year terms. In the People's Assembly (Majlis Al-Sha'b), 444 members are elected by absolute majority vote through a two-round system to serve 5-year terms, 10 members are appointed by the president to serve 5-year terms and 64 members are reserved for women to serve 5-year terms.**

* A national referendum in May 2005 approved a constitutional amendment that changed the presidential election to a multicandidate popular vote. Previously, the president was nominated by the People's Assembly and the nomination was validated by a national, popular referendum. Candidates may run with a party or as independents. Each registered political party is allowed to field a candidate if they have been licensed for at least five years and hold at least five percent of the seats in the lower and upper houses of parliament. In order to qualify as an independent, potential candidates must collect 250 signatures from elected officials. These officials can be from both the national and municipal level.

** Every district contains two seats and electors are given two votes. At least one seat in each district is reserved for a worker or farmer. If no candidate receives an absolute majority in the first round, a second round is held one week later. This round will contain the top 4 vote-getters, provided 2 are workers and/or farmers. If the two top candidates in the first round are not workers or farmers, the top candidate is elected, while a new simple majority poll is held a week later among the top workers and farmers. In the women's tier, every governorate is one electoral district and elects two women, at least half of whom must be workers or farmers, except for the governorates of Cairo, El‐Daqahilia, and Sohag which are divided into two electoral districts, each of which elects two women members

Main provisions in the Referendum:

• Changes to the Egyptian Constitution.* The proposed changes would shorten the presidential term from four to six years, while creating a two-term limit. It would also make it eaiser run for president by lowering the eligabity to either collecting 30,000 signatures from at least 15 provinces, or from 30 members of a chamber of the legislature, or nomination by a party holding at least a seat in the legislature. It would also make it more difficult for the government to declare and renew a state of emergency.

* Complete text of the proposed changes in English and Arabic can be found in the "of interest" section in the top right of this page.

Population, but no figures for number of registered voters:

• Population: 80,471,869 (July 2010 est.)

Last Updated on 03/04/2011

-- Election Guide materials posted by Politicarp

PoliticsEgypt: Transition: New leader steps in, Mubarak retreats, Army in control

Developments in Egypt include the appointment of old-pro Omar Suleiman as 'vice president' (acting prez); he promptly met with with a delegation heavy with Muslim Brotherhood reps, and select leaders of the 5 youth movements who organized and conducted the protests.  Hardliners, including much of the youth movement, want Mubarak to resign and leave town and country now; Suleiman may be temporarily suitable as negotiation partner, without an Egyptian head of state, mostly becawz the opposition forces need a contact point with the Army (Christian Science Monitor, Ariel Zirulnick).

Vice President Suleiman has now met with opposition leaders, the outcome of which has been a revision of the revolution's primary demand that Egypt's official President, 82-yr old Hosni Mubarak, leave office immediately (so, Egypt woud be without an official head of State), and preferably leave the country altogether.  Here seems to be the revised stance:

The shift by opposition leaders followed the clearest signals yet from the Obama administration that its call for a quick transition in Egypt did not include a demand that Mubarak step aside before elections this fall (Washington Post, Feb7,2k11, Craig Whitlock and Griff Witte).  

I have felt, at my safe distance and lack of depth-involvement, that there's a kernel of wisdom in not knocking Mubarak from the throne of his dictatorship, leaving zero continuity between old and the new which is coming but which coud be worse than at present, were the resulting vacuum to be filled by the Muslim Brotherhood (sharia law, etc).

Among those who joined for the first time in talks with Omar Suleiman ... were leaders from the banned Muslim Brotherhood movement, along with a loose coalition of political parties, intellectuals and protest organizers. Suleiman said the government would agree to consider broad changes, including constitutional amendments and a possible end to Egypt's three-decade-old state of emergency. ...

In a television interview, Suleiman made it clear that the government's willingness to consider the changes was based on an expectation that Mubarak would stay in charge during a drawn-out transition to a new government ... in September.

"If President Mubarak would say that 'I'm leaving now,' who would take over?" Suleiman said on ABC. "I think with this atmosphere, that means that the other people who have their own agenda will make instability in our country."  

The political desire of the mass of demonstrators nevertheless seems not to have been much met, as the experience of unfettered revolutionary action seems to have expanded the desire of a broad spectrum of participants.  The net result is that there is a difference between the leadership which has met with Suleiman,  and the now more-than-ever revolutionary motivation of a large sector of the crowds on the streets.

-- Politicarp