Voters scuffle with police on final day of Egypt's elections

Police clashed with voters who were struggling to enter a cordoned-off polling station in an opposition stronghold in the Nile Delta city of Zaqaziq today as Egyptians voted in the final day of their staggered legislative elections, which have been marred by violence and state interference.

While voting proceeded normally in some places, police blocked access to the polling station in Zaqaziq’s Nasiriyah district, where a Muslim Brotherhood candidate was favourite to win.

A group of about 25 women managed to push through the police line, provoking more police officers to rush up and hold them. Some officers beat the women with sticks.

“Nobody is entering here,” a police officer bellowed to the crowd, which continued to push and shove. The polling station doors were closed.

The scene was typical of the confrontations that have occurred with increasingly regularity during the past four weeks of voting as the Brotherhood has won far more support than pundits expected. The government has responded by arrest hundreds of Brotherhood campaign workers and blockading polling stations in districts where the Islamic movement is strong.

The Brotherhood has 35 candidates standing in today’s runoffs for the remaining 127 of the 444 elected seats in parliament. Polling is taking place in nine provinces where no candidate received more than half the vote in the third round of polling on December 1.

So far in the elections, the ruling National Democratic Party of President Hosni Mubarak and its allied independents have won 222 seats. The Brotherhood has taken 76 seats, more than five times its number in the outgoing parliament. True independents have won two seats and other opposition parties have taken 11.

Judges have set aside the outcome in three constituencies, leaving six seats undecided in regions where voting was deemed too fraudulent or violent to let stand.

In the outgoing parliament, the NDP had 398 seats, the Brotherhood controlled 15 and true independents 23 and opposition legislators held 16.

The Muslim Brotherhood calls for implementing Islamic law but has long been vague about what this means. It campaigns for headscarves for women and against immodest dress, for example, but it insists it stands for a more moderate version of Islam than that followed in Saudi Arabia.