ALEXANDRIA: Al-Ghad party’s Alexandria branch held internal elections at the party headquarters on Friday. 84 members, nearly one third of the total registered in the Alexandria chapter, came out to vote. The two issues on the ballot were deputy elections for the Alexandria chapter and a referendum to confirm the party’s nomination of Ayman Nour as Presidential Candidate.

Five candidates competed for the four deputy seats available. Mohamed el-Wesemy, Naglaa Fawzy, Alaa Darwish, and Abdelaal el-Farouk won the four seats, with 77, 76, 69 and 63 votes respectively.

Nour was confirmed as the party’s Presidential candidate by a vote of 72 yes, 10 no, and two abstentions. He ran in the 2005 presidential election, finishing a distant second to President Hosni Mubarak. Shortly after, he was imprisoned on fraud charges, which his supporters argue were trumped up to silence the opposition leader.

Voting was open from noon until 9pm. At 9:30 the glass ballot boxes were brought into the small central room of the al-Ghad headquarters, and votes were read aloud and counted in front of a crowd of over 60 people.

According to el-Wasemy, Vice-President of the Executive Office for the party in Alexandria, the glass ballot boxes were a visual symbol of the transparency of party elections.

“A free election is not impossible to achieve,” he said, calling the election a message to Egyptians.

Also on the day’s agenda was a petition for constitutional reform of the electoral law. Opposition figures from Ayman Nour to Mohamed ElBaradei have called for reform of Egypt’s election laws, but the ruling party has shown no interest in the constitutional amendment, which would be necessary to reform the law. No matter what obstacles the current regime may create, el-Wasemy said al-Ghad “will push for the reform the people deserve” and will “never stop.”

BM

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