Egyptian elections
January 3, 2012
Some 15 million eligible voters have been called upon to choose their preferred candidate for Egypt's first parliament since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak last February.
Polls will be open for two days in nine of Egypt's 27 provinces. The first two rounds of voting in December in the rest of the country saw the main Islamist parties claim an overwhelming victory.
This last round of voting takes in regions of the rural south, which has the largest proportion of Christian voters, the Nile delta region north of Cairo and the restive Sinai desert in the east which has seen a sharp rise in Islamist militancy.
The Muslem Brotherhood, viewed as the best organized political movement in Egypt, is widely expected to triumph in this week's polls. But the surge of Al Nour, which represents the ultra-conservative Salafist brand of Islam, has raised concerns among the country's increasingly marginalized liberals and Coptic Christians about civil liberties and religious freedom.
An Islamist victory also has Egypt's lucrative tourist industry worried that well-heeled Westerners may steer clear of the country in future.
Ongoing tensions
The ballot has been overshadowed by the deaths of 17 people late last month in clashes between the army and protesters demanding an end to the emergency rule of the military council.
Voters turned out in record numbers for the first two rounds of balloting and international monitors said the elections were relatively free of irregularities, following the notoriously corrupt polls of the Mubarak era.
But police raids on pro-democracy and rights groups last week, including one German foundation, have disrupted the work of Western-backed election observers and drawn accusations that the army was deliberately trying to weaken oversight of the vote and silence critics.
The government has defended the searches as part of an investigation into what they claim has been illegal foreign funding of domestic political parties.
Author: Gregg Benzow (AFP, dpa, AP, Reuters)
Editor: Andreas Illmer