Patriotic Egyptians in Rwanda still worried if they will participate in their November 28, 2011 parliamentary elections.
Most of them have been shocked by the announcement from their embassy, Kigali that their electoral commission is considering canceling voting process in Diaspora due to few voters that have so far registered.
Egyptian embassy diplomatic attaché Ahmed Shouaib said that Egyptian electoral commission is currently contemplating not to spend too much funds on few voters abroad.
“The number of registered voters is small compared to the expected voters in the Diaspora. The number of the Egyptians in Rwanda who registered to vote on the official website are currently 12. Saudi Arabia has more than 98,000 and in Italy there are approximately 5,500, however this is not the last statistical number and there is time left for Egyptians to register online,” Ahmed Shouaib said in an interview with igihe.com.
Ahmed Shouaib added, “We haven’t made a final decision, but election observers are have to be deployed in embassies since they are the main pillars on which all the process depends so it will also have to be decided If the election process takes place without observers deployed in embassies as some ways of cutting costs so as to consider voting in diaspora despite the small numbers that may have registered,”
According to the latest statistics from online voters’ registration on the official website www.elections2011.eg, only 246,367 Egyptians in Diaspora have so far registered.
About forty-two million Egyptians are illegible to vote both in Egypt and Diaspora accordance to the Egyptian Interior Ministry’s statistics- that is those with National ID; reads a story published in Al-Masry Al-Youm news paper yesterday.
Ahmed Shouaib emphasizes that Egyptians in Diaspora still have only one window of increased pleasing numbers through online registration to participate in their parliamentary elections.
Political analysts suggest that many Egyptians in Diaspora have boycotted their parliamentary elections alleging that it involves a lot of corruption and that elections lacks transparency.
The Egyptian diplomatic attaché added that lots of suggestions from others diplomats can help in the forthcoming elections if they can pick lessons from elections done in different countries like South Africa, Brazil, Holland and others.
Ends
Leave a Reply