Egypt’s interior minister said on Sunday he expected upcoming parliamentary elections to be “heated”, warning that the authorities would clamp down on anyone who stepped outside the law.
“It is expected that the next parliamentary elections will be heated,” Habib al-Adly told the official MENA news agency.
“We expect there to be some illegal activities but the security services will not watch as some incite trouble and brutality in the elections,” Adly said.
Elections are due to be held in November, with a second round in December, but no exact date has officially been set.
Egyptian human rights groups have repeatedly warned that a decades-old emergency law, which gives police wide powers of arrest and suspends constitutional rights, could be used to influence the outcome of elections.
The law was renewed in May for a further two years, but the government pledged that the new state of emergency would be limited to the fight against terrorism and its financing and to combat drug-related crimes.
Some 10 000 people, most of them Islamist activists but also secular opposition figures, are being held under the terms of the emergency legislation continuously in force since President Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981, rights groups have said.
Electoral campaign
Adly also warned against candidates branding religious slogans during campaigning, which is prohibited by law.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s largest and most organised political group, has said it planned to field candidates in the upcoming elections.
The group which is officially banned won 20% of the seats in the 2005 election by fielding candidates as “independents” under the slogan “Islam is the solution”.
“The Brotherhood will run as independents and if they run as the Brotherhood, the law will be applied and they know that,” Adly said.
“If they do anything that is punishable by law or violate the rules for electoral campaigning such as using religious or confessional slogans, immediate action will be taken,” he said.
The last parliamentary election, which saw President Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party win almost 80% of the seats, was marred by violence and accusations of fraud. Eleven people were killed during the polls.
– AFP