Presidential election in Egypt 2005

The 2005 presidential election in Egypt , held on September 7, 2005, was the first presidential election in Egyptian history in which several different candidates competed against each other.

The incumbent President Hosni Mubarak won it a fifth consecutive term, where he received 88.6% of the vote according to official results. Mubarak's rival candidate, Ayman Nour of the al-Ghad party , received around 7.3 % of the vote , while Numan Gumaa of the New Wafd party received 2.8% of the vote. Previous voter polls showed estimates that Nour could get over 30% of the vote. Criticism of the election process focused on the process of selecting the eligible candidates and on alleged violations of the electoral law during the election process. According to the critics, the elections, to which no official international observers were allowed, were fraught with serious irregularities. Mubarak was sworn in for his new term on September 27th.

Candidates

The presidential election was the first multi-candidate election in the history of Hosni Mubarak's presidency. However, after Mubarak announced his renewed candidacy on July 28, 2005, hundreds of opposition supporters protested in downtown Cairo on July 30 and 31 against his policies, accompanied by violent repression by the security forces against the demonstrators; around 20 people were arrested.

A total of ten parties could take part in the election; the leading candidates were:

• Hosni Mubarak from the National Democratic Party
• Numan Gumaa from the New Wafd Party
• Ayman Nour from the al-Ghad party

Furthermore:

• Wahid al-Uqsuri of the Egyptian Arab Socialist Party (expelled on September 3)
• Osama Schaltut from the Solidarity Party
• Ibrahim Turk from the Democratic Union Party
• Ahmad al-Sabahi from the Umma Party
• Rifaat al-Agrudi from the National Reconciliation Party
• Fawzi Ghaza from the Egypt 2000 party
• Mamduh Qinawi from the Constitutional Party

Suffrage

For the first time in the country's history, several applicants for the presidency were admitted after a constitutional reform. What President Mubarak had described as a milestone in the reform and democratization process that was initiated under pressure from the USA was sharply criticized by the opposition , since the amendment gave the ruling NDP a de facto monopoly on Mubaraks .

Until the 2005 presidential elections, the Egyptians could only accept or reject a candidate nominated by the Egyptian parliament . However, since the parliament was dominated by the National Democratic Party , Mubarak could be re-elected four times during his 24-year term through such a referendum. The turnout was therefore usually very low (around 10%).

procedure

The election campaign began on August 17, 2005 and lasted only briefly until September 4 of the same year. At the same time, there were signs of a paradigm shift in the election campaign : after a quarter of a century of Mubarak's rule, a not inconsiderable part of the population openly questioned his hard-handed policy and his confrontation with Islamism, which was always military, never argumentative-political. On July 18, 2005, a broad opposition alliance made up of factions as diverse as the Muslim Brotherhood , the New Wafd Party and the Kifaya (Enough) movement called for a boycott of the elections. Prominent potential candidates such as women's rights activist Nawal Saadawi and human rights activist Saadeddin Ibrahim withdrew their applications for the presidential election. The candidate of the liberal al-Ghad party , founded in November 2004 , Aiman ​​Nur , ran in the election. At the end of June, a trial was opened against him for allegedly forging election documents.

9865 polling stations were open until 10:00 p.m. on Wednesday, September 7, 2005, so that voters could cast their ballots by then.

Result

One day after the September 7 election, on September 8, 2005, the preliminary election results showed that incumbent Hosni Mubarak won more than 70% and Ayman Nour 12% of the vote. By contrast, Noman Gumaa received 5-7%.

In the election, Mubarak was confirmed in office with 88.6% of the votes. His fiercest competitor among the nine contenders, Aiman ​​Nour, came in at only 7.6%. The turnout was given as 23%:

Candidate, party		be right	proportion of
	Hosni Mubarak , National Democratic Party ( Al-Hizb Al-Watani Al-Dimuqrati )	6,316,714	88.6%
	Ayman Nour , al-Ghad party ( Hizb al-Ghad )	540.405	7.3%
	Numan Gomaa , New Wafd Party ( Hizb al-Wafd al-Jadid )	201.891	2.8%
Total (voter turnout 22.9%)		7.059.010	100%

Web links

• Guide to Egypt's election. BBC
• Egypt votes in landmark election. BBC
• Egypt's Brotherhood urges all to vote. Al-Jazeera

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Opposition claims massive fraud in Egypt electoral poll . ( Memento of March 12, 2007 on the Internet Archive ) Forbes.com
2. ^ Egypt election campaigning begins. BBC News - Middle East
3. ↑ Times of Oman ( Memento of the original from October 27, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Panel Rejects Nour's Charge of Vote Fraud ( Memento from September 9, 2005 in the Internet Archive )