As Egypt votes again, Mubarak is castigated
CAIRO — It was a day of fortunes turned inside out: The Muslim Brotherhood, persecuted for decades by then-president Hosni Mubarak, moved closer Tuesday to winning Egypt’s parliamentary elections while the disgraced former leader listened from a defendant’s cage as a federal prosecutor demanded the “harshest penalty” for him.
More than 14 million Egyptians were eligible to cast ballots Tuesday for 150 seats in nine governorates, with the Brotherhood registering more than 40 percent of the vote entering the third and final round. The main rival to the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, the more religiously conservative Al-nour party, had more than 20 percent in the first rounds.
Final results are expected to be announced next week. Elections for the less-powerful upper house of parliament, known as the Shura Council, are to begin Jan. 29, and presidential elections are scheduled for June.
The initial phase of parliamentary balloting, which concludes Wednesday, is expected to solidify an Islamist victory, marking a stunning reversal for the Brotherhood and the nation, which, despite its overwhelmingly Muslim population, had long been governed by secular politics. Liberal candidates, including youth leaders who helped ignite the popular revolt against Mubarak a year ago, have been set back by strategic and organizational problems.
Tuesday’s voting took place as prosecutors made arguments against Mubarak, 83, who has been on trial since August on charges of corruption and complicity in the killing of hundreds of protesters during the Arab Spring movement. Many Egyptians believe the toppled leader will escape justice, but prosecutors used provocative language to paint Mubarak and his family as opportunistic schemers.
Mubarak was a “tyrannical leader who sought to hand power to his younger son, Gamal, and who spread corruption in the country and opened the door to his friends and relatives, ruining the country without any accountability,” said prosecutor Mustafa Suleiman, quoted by Egyptian news reports from the courtroom.
The prosecutor also portrayed the former president’s wife, Suzanne, as plotting to have her son follow her husband.
Suleiman said Mubarak, who could face the death penalty, “deserves to end in humiliation and indignity: from the presidential palace to the defendant’s cage and then the harshest penalty.”
Essam Battawi, a lawyer representing Mubarak and his co-defendants, criticized Suleiman for giving a “sermonic speech” that provided no proof that Mubarak had ordered the violence that led to the deaths of demonstrators. Battawi said the prosecution “didn’t even come up with a single witness” to makes its case.