Egypt poll commission to review 400 appeals before announcing results Thursday

Ahram Online , Wednesday 20 Jun 2012

Supreme Presidential Elections Commission (SPEC) to announce final results of Egypt's presidential runoff after examination of some 400 appeals filed by both campaigns

Hatem Bagato
Hatem Bagato, Egypt's Supreme Presidential Electoral Commission (SPEC) General Secretary (Photo: Reuters)

Egypt’s Supreme Presidential Elections Commission (SPEC) is expected to announce results of appeals filed by the Mohamed Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq presidential campaigns on Wednesday, only 24 hours before announcing final results of Egypt’s hotly-contested presidential runoff on Thursday.

SPEC head Farouq Sultan announced on Tuesday that the commission had received almost 400 appeals to the preliminary runoff results. Sultan added that the SPEC could not announce final results until it had finished reviewing all the appeals.

On the same day, the Shafiq campaign announced that it had presented 147 appeals to the SPEC, claiming that, were the appeals accepted, their candidate would win the presidential contest.

The Shafiq campaign has accused the Muslim Brotherhood of rigging elections in Morsi’s favour in Fayoum, Minya, Beni Suwef and Qena.

Yahia El-Kadry, a lawyer for the Shafiq campaign, announced on Wednesday that he had filed an appeal against the results of 241 polling stations, accusing the Muslim Brotherhood of pre-marking 1,000,000 ballots in favour of its candidate.

The Morsi campaign, meanwhile, announced on Tuesday that it, too, had presented more than 140 appeals to the SPEC, 100 of which the commission had already accepted.

Short link: