ICEM Monitoring – Preliminary Findings

The Independent Committee for Election Monitoring (ICEM) is currently preparing a fully comprehensive report on its findings during the Presidential Election process. The report will include information on the voter registration procedures, campaign period, media conduct and election-day.

In the meantime, the ICEM has reached some preliminary conclusions, based on the comprehensive monitoring of the election-day in more than 2,000 different polling facilities throughout Egypt.

Election administration authorities have failed to install the necessary legal provisions that would ensure the independence and integrity of the electoral process and set a clear division of roles and responsibilities between the election administration, judiciary and government. As such, the electoral process remains vulnerable and easily breached and manipulated by the very same stakeholders of the election outcome.

Election administration authorities intentionally failed to clarify the electoral process for voters. As such, the election was conducted in an environment of general confusion about the process and the responsibilities of the election administration, courts and government. To this regard, the election administration failed to conduct any meaningful voter education initiatives. The voter apathy characterizing the election is a major concern. Democracy strives on the principles of citizen participation.

By allowing NGOs to monitor the voting from inside the polling stations, election administration authorities made important progress that allows for ensuring the transparency and integrity of the electoral process. It is unfortunate that NGO observers were not able to take the advantage of this decision, due to the fact that it was issued on the Election Day itself. Moreover, election officials remained uninformed about this development throughout most of the day. Nevertheless, this decision falls short of accomplishing its goal if it is not followed by a similar decision to allow NGOs to observe the count. NGOs’ right to monitor the count of the votes is critical to having an election that could be called free, fair and transparent. Thus, ICEM insists that election administration authorities continue with the progress made and allow NGOs to monitor this essential moment during any electoral process.