Cablegate: Domestic Election Monitors Gearing Up

This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 CAIRO 006200

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE

NSC STAFF FOR POUNDS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PREL KDEM EG
SUBJECT: DOMESTIC ELECTION MONITORS GEARING UP

REF: A. CAIRO 5051 AND PREVIOUS
B. CAIRO 4170

Sensitive but unclassified. Please protect accordingly.

1. (SBU) Summary: Egyptian civil society is preparing to
monitor the upcoming presidential and parliamentary campaigns
and elections. USG funding is playing a key role in this
process. Many challenges remain, but available information
suggests that the upcoming elections will receive more
scrutiny than any previous Egyptian elections. End summary.

2. (SBU) With the presidential election campaign due to
start on August 17 and conclude on September 4, and the
election itself set for September 7, several dozen Egyptian
civil society groups--many of which are legally registered
with the Ministry of Insurance and Social Affairs as formal
NGOs--are organizing themselves to monitor the campaign and
the election. The groups, which are organized in four major
coalitions, also monitor the upcoming parliamentary campaign
and elections, which will likely occur in October and
November.

3. (SBU) The four separate coalitions are led by civil
society groups that are well and favorably known to the
Embassy. They are grouped around several leading Egyptian
civil society organizations (and personalities) including the
following:
--Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR), headed by
Hafez Abu Seada, leads a collection of approximately twenty
civil society groups;
--the Ibn Khaldoun Center (IKC), headed by Saad Eddin
Ibrahim, leads a group of about ten organizations;
--the Human Rights Association for the Assistance of
Prisoners (HRAAP), headed by Mohammed Zarai, and the Group
for Democratic Development (GDD), headed by Negad El-Borai,
lead a group of four organizations;
--and finally, the Arab Center for the Independence of the
Judiciary (ACIJ), headed by Nasser Amin, which has recently
separated from the HRAAP-GDD coalition, and plans to conduct
its work independently.

4. (SBU) The reasons for the multiple coalitions are not
entirely clear, but appear to be driven by such issues as
conflicting personalities and philosophies. Also at issue is
the matter of "foreign funding." Both the EOHR coalition and
ACIJ have declined to seek foreign funding for their
monitoring activities. This decision does not appear to be
driven by xenophobia--both groups have cordial and close
relationships with Cairo's diplomatic community, including
emboffs--but rather by a desire to avoid giving ammunition to
critics, both in the GOE and in the yellow press, who
regularly raise the specter of "foreign interference." In
contrast to EOHR and ACIJ, the IKC and HRAAP-GDD groups have
had no qualms about accepting support from the USG (both
USAID and MEPI funds) for their activities.

5. (SBU) The legal status of domestic observers/monitors is
not certain. While they are not specifically outlawed under
Egyptian law, they are not provided with any explicit
protection or authority to carry out their work. In the 1995
and 2000 parliamentary elections, domestic monitors cobbled
together their monitoring efforts based on observation of
public spaces, and securing access to some polling places as
legal agents of the candidates themselves, who are authorized
under Egyptian polling regulations to have agents present in
the polling stations. According to various domestic
monitoring activists, they are now seeking to ensure their
access to the polling stations through similar arrangements,
and through direct appeals to the GOE and the Elections
Commissions, but they are also preparing to conduct exit
polling if access to the stations is denied.

6. (SBU) The National Democratic Institute, which has
received funding from USAID and has been operating from a
Cairo office for the past month, reports that it has made its
training and other capacity support available to all
interested groups. Many of the groups are availing
themselves of NDI's assistance, but several have declined the
NDI assistance because they do not wish to accept foreign
support. Significantly, however, some of the groups that
have refused to accept direct USG funding support have
expressed an interest in attending NDI's training workshops
and using its Arabic language manuals and monitoring
checklists. NDI tells us that they believe it feasible that
Egyptian civil society can muster three thousand short-term
observers to monitor both election days, as well as several
hundred long-term observers to cover both campaign periods.
NDI notes that funding for travel and per-diem of observers
may be a limiting factor. NDI is assisting those groups that
are willing to apply for funding from the USG and other
donors.
7. (SBU) The timing of Egypt's 2005 polls presents at least
one interesting prospect, from a monitoring perspective. The
IKC-led group conducted a monitoring exercise of the May 25
referendum (ref B) which has helped it refine its approach to
monitoring the looming September 7 presidential election.
Similarly, representatives of several of the groups have
noted that they hope that their experiences with the
September 7 election (which will be the first monitoring work
for most of the groups) will prepare them to monitor better
the parliamentary elections, expected to take place in
November.

8. (SBU) In addition, the quasi-governmental National
Council for Human Rights (NCHR) has announced plans to
support elections monitoring through the opening of an
operations room to monitor the campaigns and elections, the
establishment of a hotline for complaints, and the training
of journalists in coverage of the process.

9. (SBU) Finally, looming over the issue of domestic
monitoring remains the unresolved issue of judicial
supervision of the polling places (ref A). Several thousand
dissident judges affiliated with the Judges' Club announced
in May that they would refuse to carry out constitutionally
mandated supervision of the upcoming elections unless the GOE
met their demands of legal and financial independence from
the executive branch. These dissidents said they would only
supervise the polls if they had guarantees that their efforts
would not be part of a sham process. The dissident judges
undertook to meet in early September to make a final decision
about supervision of the polls. Notwithstanding the judges'
threat, the People's Assembly concluded its session in July
without acting on the draft legislation demanded by the
judges. The GOE, and the Supreme Judicial Council (which
answers to the Ministry of Justice, and thus to the executive
branch) has periodically sought to make the case that judges
and other Ministry of Justice employees will supervise the
polls, but there remains a significant chance that many
judges will boycott the poll supervision.

10. (SBU) Comment: The upcoming elections are
unprecedented by Egyptian standards for a number of reasons.
Significantly, the attention that they have attracted from
domestic civil society monitors, the judiciary, and the media
means that they will certainly receive more scrutiny than any
previous Egyptian elections.

Visit Embassy Cairo's Classified Website:
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/nea/cairo

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JONES

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