كشفت صحيفة “نيويورك تايمز” الأمريكية النقاب عن مخالفات شابت الانتخابات الرئاسية المصرية التي انتهت بالأمس، من بينها حصول العديد من المصريين على رشاوي من أجل الإدلاء بأصواتهم تنوعت بين سلع غذائية أو أموال تراوحت بين 3 و9 دولارات (حوالي 50 لـ 150 جنيهًا).
وقالت في تقرير، مع غياب خصم حقيقي لتقديم دراما قوية في طريقة لإعادة انتخابه، يعتمد الرئيس عبد الفتاح السيسي على حماس مؤيديه الشديد لإظهار نسبة إقبال في الانتخابات تعطيه الشرعية التي يتمناها، وحيث لم تعد تكفي الحماسة وحدها، لديه حاليا وسائل أخرى لدفع الناخبين إلى صناديق الاقتراع.
وقال بعض الناخبين إنهم تلقوا رشاوي تراوحت بين 3 إلى 9 دولارات (حوالي 50 لـ 150 جنيها) للتصويت، وفي العديد من المناطق، وعد مسؤولون، الناخبين بتحسين الخدمات مثل الكهرباء أو الصرف الصحي، إذا أدلوا بأصواتهم، وفي مرسى مطروح، عرضت مجموعة من رجال الأعمال 500 عمرة لأكثر منطقة تدلي بصوتها في الانتخابات.
وعززت السلطات المصرية استخدام سياسة العصا والجزرة؛ حيث قالت وكالة الأنباء المصرية: إن الامتناع عن التصويت جريمة يعاقب عليها بغرامة تصل لـ 28 دولارًا حوالي 500 جنيه، وفي محافظتي أسيوط والمنيا، ذهب ضباط الشرطة من بيت إلى بيت لحث الناس على الإدلاء بأصواتهم.
وقال متقاعدون في شركة الخطوط الجوية المصرية (مصر للطيران) إنهم حذروا من أن معاشاهم في أبريل سيتوقف إذا امتنعوا عن التصويت.
وكان الإقبال ضعيفًا في أجزاء كثيرة من القاهرة، ونقلت رويترز عن مسؤول في الهيئة الوطنية للانتخابات قوله: إن نسبة الإقبال بلغت حوالي 13.5%.
وفي طنطا، لافتات الدعاية للرئيس السيسي تغرق الشوارع، في غياب تام لمنافسه، موسى مصطفى موسى ، الذي اتهم الولايات المتحدة بإثارة الربيع العربي بهدف زعزعة استقرار الشرق الأوسط، وقال لوكالة أنباء سبوتنيك الروسية:” هذا المشروع الضخم نفذه فريق كوندوليزا رايس”، في إشارة إلى وزيرة الخارجية السابقة.
ويبدو أنَّ الجهود التي بذلت لإقناع الناس بالمشاركة في الانتخابات باستخدام كراتين الغذاء كانت ناجحة في الساعات الأخيرة، فبعد تسلم المواطنين لتلك الكراتين، قال مسئولون إن الإقبال صحي بشكل كبير.
ولم يرد متحدث باسم حملة السيسي على أسئلة حول التكتيكات الانتخابية، لكن السهولة التي دفع بها السيسي المعارضة المتصدعة لخارج المشهد نتاج سنوات من القمع، فقد حظر السيسي جماعة الإخوان، وسجن الآلاف من المعارضين، وفي مرحلة مبكرة سجن أو قام بتهميش أي مرشح قد يشكل تهديدًا انتخابيًا كبيرًا، وألقى القبض على الصحفيين، وطرد صحفية بريطانية الشهر الماضي.
وبالنسبة إلى مؤيدي السيسي، فإنه يمثل حصنًا للاستقرار في منطقة تتعرض للفوضى العنيفة والاضطرابات السياسية.
النتائج سوف تظهر بحلول الاثنين المقبل، وفي الانتخابات الرئاسية الأخيرة عام 2014، فاز السيسي بـ 97 % من الأصوات، وذلك عندما كان يحظى بتأييد شعبي واسع، إلا أنَّ شعبيته تضررت بشدة بسبب سلسلة من الهجمات الإرهابية في المدن الرئيسية، وانكماش اقتصادي، ومعاناة من غلاء الأسعار بشكل كبير.
Egypt — The woman in a long black shawl bustled up to a stall on a back street in the crowded Nile Delta city of Tanta, 50 miles north of Cairo.
“Where’s my subsidy box?” she demanded. “My brothers and sisters in Cairo have already received theirs. When do I get mine?”
The woman, Soad Abdel Hamid, a housewife, was referring to boxes of subsidized food — cooking oil, rice and sugar, mostly — promised to voters in many poor areas in return for casting their vote in Egypt’s presidential election.
With no real opponent to provide drama in his re-election bid, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is relying on the sheer enthusiasm of his supporters to generate a credible turnout. And where fervor isn’t enough, he has other means of enticing — or pushing — voters to the polls.
Some voters said they had been paid, from about $3 to $9, to vote. In several areas, government officials promised voters improved services, like electricity or sanitation, if they cast their votes. In Marsa Matrouh, on the Mediterranean coast, a group of businessmen offered to send 500 voters on a pilgrimage to Mecca.
Carrots were reinforced with sticks. The state news agency reminded Egyptians that failing to vote was an offense punishable by fines of up to $28, a threat rarely acted upon in previous elections. In Assiut and Minya provinces, police officers went door to door urging people to cast their ballots.
Retirees, and an official at the state airline, EgyptAir, said they were warned that their April payments would be docked if they failed to vote.
The three-day vote, which ends Wednesday, is shaping up to be a predictably low-watt and joyless affair, the antithesis of the youthful passions driving the Arab Spring in 2011, when Egyptians ousted their longtime ruler, President Hosni Mubarak.
Turnout was light in many parts of Cairo. Reuters, citing an official in the National Election Authority, said about 13.5 percent of 59 million eligible voters had cast ballots on Monday.
In Tanta, posters for Mr. Sisi were plastered all over the main thoroughfares of the city, which is famed for its mashabek, a sticky yellow swirl of sugar and flour, and its magnificent Sufi mosque. It was hard to find a single image depicting his challenger, Moussa Moustapha Moussa, an obscure politician drafted at the last minute to prevent the embarrassment of a one-horse race.
Mr. Moussa, who has ties to the security services, accused the United States this week of fomenting the Arab Spring with the goal of destabilizing the Middle East. “This huge U.S. project was implemented by the team of Condoleezza Rice,” he told Russia’s Sputnik news agency, referring to the former secretary of state.
But many voters in Tanta failed to remember Mr. Moussa’s name, much less register their intention to vote for him.
And the effort to increase turnout with promises of food seemed to be working. Behind a phalanx of soldiers and scowling intelligence officials, about 50 yards from the stall where chits for food baskets were being handed out, a presiding officer reported a healthy turnout.
In some respects, the vote felt familiar to Egyptians, who endured manipulated elections during Mr. Mubarak’s rule from 1981 to 2011. His government also paid people to vote.
A spokesman for the Sisi campaign did not respond to queries about its electoral tactics. But the ease with which Mr. Sisi has steamrollered Egypt’s fractured opposition is a product of even harsher repression.
Mr. Sisi has outlawed the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, jailed thousands of opponents, and in the early stage of the election jailed or sidelined any candidate who might have posed a significant electoral threat. Journalists have been arrested, and a British reporter was expelled last month.
To Mr. Sisi’s supporters, though, he is a bulwark of stability in a region buffeted by violent chaos and political turmoil. In Ganzour, a small town six miles south of Tanta, a Sisi campaigner named Ibrahim Soliman wielded a megaphone at the gates of a polling station.
“Do you want your women to be violated as they were in Syria, Iraq and Libya?” he shouted as a trickle of voters filed through the gate.
Moments later a group of musicians and young men appeared — playing pipes, turning a jig and dancing on the roof of a vehicle. Mr. Soliman announced that a Western reporter was watching. “Let’s show him that we are a united country!” he said.
Another man grabbed the microphone from him. “You’re not voting for Sisi,” he exhorted the gathering crowd. “You’re voting for the Egyptian state.”
The results are due by Monday. In the last presidential election, in 2014, Mr. Sisi won 97 percent of the vote, although that was a time when he enjoyed broad public support. A year earlier, Egyptians filled Tahrir Square for a second time to demand the resignation of the elected president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, paving the way for the military takeover that brought Mr. Sisi to power.
His popularity has been hit by a string of terrorist attacks in Egypt’s main cities and a stinging economic downturn that has inflicted deep pain on the country’s poor. Online satirists often mock his lengthy speeches. Although the economy has picked up this year, poor Egyptians are still reeling from soaring inflation.
“Sisi restored security to our country,” said Ahmad Tawakol, an iron merchant in Tanta. “Now I want him to lower the price of food.”
Down the street, as we walked away, a man who had been watching on a street corner said, “There is no democracy.” When we stopped to speak to him, the Sisi supporters gathered around.
المصدر
