Muslim Brotherhood bends rules to win big in Egypt

Stringer/Egypt / Reuters

Women holding umbrellas stand in line during rain under an election poster by Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood "The Freedom and Justice Party'" outside a polling station as they wait to cast their votes during parliamentary elections in Alexandria on Monday.

By Charlene Gubash

CAIRO ? The Muslim Brotherhood has already started coloring outside the lines in order to win a majority in Egypt?s parliamentary elections.?

The organization, which gave its political branch the more ambiguous title, The Party of Freedom and Justice (FJP), is expected to win 40 percent of the seats in the lower house of parliament, according to?analysts estimates.? Official results from the first round of voting will be announced Thursday.

Based on our own observations at polling stations across Cairo and anecdotal evidence, they seem to have won support at the polls by bending the rules in their favor.

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Free food and cheap meat
In Cairo?s Saida Zeinab neighborhood, at one of the busiest polling centers in the city, we saw a party member and two other supporters of an independent candidate passing out leaflets to voters waiting in long lines to cast their ballots ? in clear violation of election laws. Soldiers who were on site for crowd control, did nothing to stop them. At the same spot, a tech-savvy FJP member sat on a bench, laptop in hand, to conduct exit polls. At other polling stations, they provided polling information to baffled voters.?
?
In a more economically disadvantaged part of Cairo known as ?The Slaughterhouse,? Hanan Nasr, a mother of three, watched FJP members pass out free packages of rice and oil to voters on their way to the polling station ? again in contravention of campaign law. They also bussed in party members from surrounding neighborhoods.

Voter confusion played into the hands of the FJP. Many voters simply did not know who the candidates were because of the sheer number of mostly unknown candidates (4,000), unknown parties (35 new ones since President Hosni Mubarak fell from power) and a complicated voting system requiring choices of farmer, labor and independent candidates.?

Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters

A woman casts her vote at a polling station during the second day of parliamentary elections in Alexandria, Egypt on Tuesday. Click on the photo to see a complete slideshow of pictures from the Egyptian election.

For those who did not understand the voting system, the FJP had people on hand before the election to explain how to make their ballots count ? for FJP candidates.

Although Nasr voted for a liberal party, her son, Ali, opted for the only party he was familiar with, the FJP.? Some FJP members had been signing up voters in Nasr?s neighborhood in the run up to the election and distributed free school supplies. And before the recent Eid al-Adha or Feast of the Sacrifice holiday, the one time of year when everybody in Egypt must have meat to celebrate the holiday, the FJP sold meat at half the market price to Cairo?s many disadvantaged.??
?
Clearly, the FJP struck a chord with voters.? Most of those we spoke to said they were voting FJP because they were well organized, helped the poor, and would uphold religious law.?

?They look to God,? said taxi driver Saad Abdul Aziz, who voted FJP.? ?They must be just.?

Mahmud Hams / AFP - Getty Images

Muslim Brotherhood members distribute fliers to voters outside a polling station in the Manial neighbourhood of Cairo on Monday.

Shifting promises
In the wake of the revolution, the FJP initially promised to compete for only 30 percent of parliamentary seats, in order not to frighten civil society and the interim military government.? They gradually upped that figure to 100 percent.?

Likewise, a promise not to field presidential candidates was soon broken.? The FJP had joined a much larger political bloc of secular and religious parties running for president, but the alliance fell apart when the FJP tried to dominate party lists.
?
The official election results will be announced Thursday evening, but the FJP is expected to win big in Egypt?s two largest cities, Cairo and Alexandria.?

Since it?s a parliamentary system, their leaders have already demanded that if their party wins the largest proportion of seats as a party, they should be entitled to form the new government.

In view of the FJP?s track record of broken promises, many wonder what kind of government they would be and whether they will respect their promise to adhere to democratic process and take into account Egypt?s secularists and 10 percent Christian population.?

Source: http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/30/9122713-muslim-brotherhood-bends-rules-and-expects-to-win-big-in-egypt

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Pakistan says NATO ignored its pleas during attack (AP)

ISLAMABAD ? The NATO airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers lasted almost two hours and continued even after commanders at the bases pleaded with coalition forces to stop, Pakistan's military claimed Monday, charges that could further inflame anger in Pakistan.

NATO has described the incident as "tragic and unintended" and has promised a full investigation.

Unnamed Afghan officials have said that Afghan commandos and U.S. special forces were conducting a mission on the Afghan side of the border and took incoming fire from the direction of the Pakistani posts. They responded with airstrikes.

Ties between Pakistan and the United States were already deteriorating before the deadly attack and have sunk to new lows since, delivering a major setback to American hopes of enlisting Islamabad's help in negotiating an end to the 10-year-old Afghan war.

Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said the Pakistani troops at two border posts were the victims of unprovoked aggression. He said the attack lasted almost two hours and that commanders had contacted NATO counterparts while it was going on, asking that "they get this fire to cease, but somehow it continued."

The Pakistan army has previously said its soldiers retaliated "with all weapons available" to the attack.

The poorly defined, mountainous border has been a constant source of tension between Pakistan and the United States. NATO officials have complained that insurgents fire from across the frontier, often from positions close to Pakistani soldiers who have been accused of tolerating or supporting the militants. NATO and Afghan forces are not allowed to cross over into Pakistan in pursuit of militants.

Saturday's strikes added to popular anger in Pakistan against the U.S.-led coalition presence in Afghanistan. Many in the army, parliament, general population and media already believed that the U.S. and NATO are hostile to Pakistan and that the Afghan Taliban are not the enemy.

"Whoever is a friend of America is a traitor to the land," around 400 members of Jamaat-e-Dawa, an alleged front group for the militant Lashkar-e-Taiba organization, chanted in a demonstration in Karachi, the country's biggest city.

While the United States is widely disliked in Pakistan, the army has accepted billions in American aid over the last 10 years in return for its cooperation in fighting al-Qaida. It has been accused of fomenting anti-American sentiment in the country to extract better terms in what is essentially a transactional and deeply troubled relationship with Washington.

Saturday's deadly incident also serves to shift attention away from the dominant perception of the Pakistani army in the West over the last five years ? that of an unreliable ally that supports militancy. That image was cemented after al-Qaida's chief Osama bin Laden was found to have been hiding in an army town close to the Pakistani capital when he was killed.

For Pakistan's weak and much criticized elected government, Saturday's airstrikes provide a rare opportunity to unite the country and a momentary relief from attack by rivals eyeing elections in 2013 or sooner.

By contrast, deaths of soldiers and civilians in attacks by militants, some with alleged links to the country's spy agencies, are often greeted with official silence.

Abbas dismissed Afghanistan's claims that the joint Afghan-NATO troops were fired upon first.

"At this point, NATO and Afghanistan are trying to wriggle out of the situation by offering excuses," he said. "Where are their casualties?"

Abbas said the two military posts, named "Volcano" and "Golden," were situated on a ridge in Mohmand region around 300 yards (meters) from the border with Afghanistan. He said their exact location had been provided to NATO and that the area had recently been cleared of militants.

Hours after the attack on Saturday, Pakistan closed its western border to trucks delivering supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan, demanded that the U.S. abandon an air base inside Pakistan used to operate drone strikes, and said it will review its cooperation with the U.S. and NATO.

However, a complete breakdown in the relationship between the United States and Pakistan is considered unlikely. Pakistan relies on billions of dollars in American aid, and the U.S. needs Pakistan to push Afghan insurgents to participate in peace talks.

After the bin Laden raid, ties almost collapsed but slowly resumed, albeit at a lower level and with lower expectations on the American side.

Despite high-tech targeting systems, accidents in the "fog of war" happen often.

NATO has hit friendly forces, civilians and even a diplomatic mission in conflicts in Afghanistan, Libya and Serbia.

During the 1999 bombing of Serbia, NATO jets struck the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade by mistake, killing three Chinese reporters. Canadian and British troops were killed in "friendly fire" incidents involving NATO airpower in Afghanistan. In Libya, NATO reportedly bombed opposition fighters at least twice during the seven-month campaign.

______

Associated Press writers Deb Reichmann in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Slobodan Lekic in Brussels contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111128/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan

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