This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 CAIRO 006200 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
NSC STAFF FOR POUNDS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PREL KDEM EG
SUBJECT: DOMESTIC ELECTION MONITORS GEARING UP 
 
REF: A. CAIRO 5051 AND PREVIOUS 
     ¶B. CAIRO 4170 
 
Sensitive but unclassified.  Please protect accordingly. 
 
¶1.  (SBU)  Summary:  Egyptian civil society is preparing to 
monitor the upcoming presidential and parliamentary campaigns 
and elections.  USG funding is playing a key role in this 
process.  Many challenges remain, but available information 
suggests that the upcoming elections will receive more 
scrutiny than any previous Egyptian elections.  End summary. 
 
¶2.  (SBU)  With the presidential election campaign due to 
start on August 17 and conclude on September 4, and the 
election itself set for September 7, several dozen Egyptian 
civil society groups--many of which are legally registered 
with the Ministry of Insurance and Social Affairs as formal 
NGOs--are organizing themselves to monitor the campaign and 
the election.  The groups, which are organized in four major 
coalitions, also monitor the upcoming parliamentary campaign 
and elections, which will likely occur in October and 
November. 
 
¶3.  (SBU)  The four separate coalitions are led by civil 
society groups that are well and favorably known to the 
Embassy.  They are grouped around several leading Egyptian 
civil society organizations (and personalities) including the 
following: 
--Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR), headed by 
Hafez Abu Seada, leads a collection of approximately twenty 
civil society groups; 
--the Ibn Khaldoun Center (IKC), headed by Saad Eddin 
Ibrahim, leads a group of about ten organizations; 
--the Human Rights Association for the Assistance of 
Prisoners (HRAAP), headed by Mohammed Zarai, and the Group 
for Democratic Development (GDD), headed by Negad El-Borai, 
lead a group of four organizations; 
--and finally, the Arab Center for the Independence of the 
Judiciary (ACIJ), headed by Nasser Amin, which has recently 
separated from the HRAAP-GDD coalition, and plans to conduct 
its work independently. 
 
¶4.  (SBU)  The reasons for the multiple coalitions are not 
entirely clear, but appear to be driven by such issues as 
conflicting personalities and philosophies.  Also at issue is 
the matter of "foreign funding."  Both the EOHR coalition and 
ACIJ have declined to seek foreign funding for their 
monitoring activities.  This decision does not appear to be 
driven by xenophobia--both groups have cordial and close 
relationships with Cairo's diplomatic community, including 
emboffs--but rather by a desire to avoid giving ammunition to 
critics, both in the GOE and in the yellow press, who 
regularly raise the specter of "foreign interference."  In 
contrast to EOHR and ACIJ, the IKC and HRAAP-GDD groups have 
had no qualms about accepting support from the USG (both 
USAID and MEPI funds) for their activities. 
 
¶5.  (SBU)  The legal status of domestic observers/monitors is 
not certain.  While they are not specifically outlawed under 
Egyptian law, they are not provided with any explicit 
protection or authority to carry out their work.  In the 1995 
and 2000 parliamentary elections, domestic monitors cobbled 
together their monitoring efforts based on observation of 
public spaces, and securing access to some polling places as 
legal agents of the candidates themselves, who are authorized 
under Egyptian polling regulations to have agents present in 
the polling stations.  According to various domestic 
monitoring activists, they are now seeking to ensure their 
access to the polling stations through similar arrangements, 
and through direct appeals to the GOE and the Elections 
Commissions, but they are also preparing to conduct exit 
polling if access to the stations is denied. 
 
¶6.  (SBU)  The National Democratic Institute, which has 
received funding from USAID and has been operating from a 
Cairo office for the past month, reports that it has made its 
training and other capacity support available to all 
interested groups.  Many of the groups are availing 
themselves of NDI's assistance, but several have declined the 
NDI assistance because they do not wish to accept foreign 
support.  Significantly, however, some of the groups that 
have refused to accept direct USG funding support have 
expressed an interest in attending NDI's training workshops 
and using its Arabic language manuals and monitoring 
checklists.  NDI tells us that they believe it feasible that 
Egyptian civil society can muster three thousand short-term 
observers to monitor both election days, as well as several 
hundred long-term observers to cover both campaign periods. 
NDI notes that funding for travel and per-diem of observers 
may be a limiting factor.  NDI is assisting those groups that 
are willing to apply for funding from the USG and other 
donors. 
¶7.  (SBU)  The timing of Egypt's 2005 polls presents at least 
one interesting prospect, from a monitoring perspective.  The 
IKC-led group conducted a monitoring exercise of the May 25 
referendum (ref B) which has helped it refine its approach to 
monitoring the looming September 7 presidential election. 
Similarly, representatives of several of the groups have 
noted that they hope that their experiences with the 
September 7 election (which will be the first monitoring work 
for most of the groups) will prepare them to monitor better 
the parliamentary elections, expected to take place in 
November. 
 
¶8.  (SBU)  In addition, the quasi-governmental National 
Council for Human Rights (NCHR) has announced plans to 
support elections monitoring through the opening of an 
operations room to monitor the campaigns and elections, the 
establishment of a hotline for complaints, and the training 
of journalists in coverage of the process. 
 
¶9.  (SBU)  Finally, looming over the issue of domestic 
monitoring remains the unresolved issue of judicial 
supervision of the polling places (ref A).  Several thousand 
dissident judges affiliated with the Judges' Club announced 
in May that they would refuse to carry out constitutionally 
mandated supervision of the upcoming elections unless the GOE 
met their demands of legal and financial independence from 
the executive branch.  These dissidents said they would only 
supervise the polls if they had guarantees that their efforts 
would not be part of a sham process.  The dissident judges 
undertook to meet in early September to make a final decision 
about supervision of the polls.  Notwithstanding the judges' 
threat, the People's Assembly concluded its session in July 
without acting on the draft legislation demanded by the 
judges.  The GOE, and the Supreme Judicial Council (which 
answers to the Ministry of Justice, and thus to the executive 
branch) has periodically sought to make the case that judges 
and other Ministry of Justice employees will supervise the 
polls, but there remains a significant chance that many 
judges will boycott the poll supervision. 
 
¶10.  (SBU)  Comment:  The upcoming elections are 
unprecedented by Egyptian standards for a number of reasons. 
Significantly, the attention that they have attracted from 
domestic civil society monitors, the judiciary, and the media 
means that they will certainly receive more scrutiny than any 
previous Egyptian elections. 
 
 
Visit Embassy Cairo's Classified Website: 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/nea/cairo 
 
You can also access this site through the 
State Department's Classified SIPRNET website. 
 
JONES