Carter Center Announces Delegation to Witness Runoff Election in Egypt

(عربي)

CONTACT: In Cairo, Maurice Chammah +2 010 1283 2236 or [email protected]; 
In Atlanta, Deborah Hakes +1 404 420 5124 or [email protected]

The Carter Center announced today that it will deploy a limited mission to witness parts of the June 16- 17, 2012, runoff election for Egypt's president. The Center will deploy 90 witnesses from 36 countries to follow polling, counting, and those parts of the tabulation processes to which the Center has access. Twenty-six of the witnesses are already deployed to assess the short campaign period between the first and second round of polling.

The Carter Center mission will be led by former Prime Minister of Yemen Abdel Karim Al-Eryani and former Foreign Minister of Jordan Marwan Muasher, and will also include Jason Carter, state senator of Georgia, and David Carroll, director of the Carter Center's Democracy Program.

Carter Center witnesses received accreditation cards from the Presidential Election Commission (PEC) on May 16, less than a week before the first round of polling, which prevented assessment of critical pre-election phases including voter registration, candidate nomination, and campaigning . Due to the late accreditation for the election, as well as other limitations that included restrictions on issuing public statements, a 30-minute time limitation on witnesses' access to polling stations, and a lack of access to the aggregation of results at the national level, the Center was only able to deploy a limited mission to witness the first round of voting on May 23- 24, 2012.

Because of the continued application of these restrictions, the Center's mission for the runoff is unfortunately also limited. As a result, the Center will not be able to draw conclusions about the overall electoral process, and its statements therefore will focus solely on those aspects of the process to which its witnesses have direct access.

A preliminary statement of the Center's findings on the first round, released May 26, reported that while the polling process was largely peaceful and orderly, it occurred in a broader political context beset by uncertainty. The statement refrained from providing an overall assessment of the process, and noted that the PEC's restrictions undermined the overall transparency of the process.

The Carter Center's election mission is conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation and Code of Conduct that was commemorated at the United Nations in 2005 and has been endorsed by 40 election observation groups. The Center assesses the electoral process based on Egypt's national legal framework and its obligations for democratic elections contained in regional and international agreements.

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A not-for-profit, nongovernmental organization, The Carter Center has helped to improve life for people in more than 70 countries by resolving conflicts; advancing democracy, human rights, and economic opportunity; preventing diseases; improving mental health care; and teaching farmers in developing nations to increase crop production. The Carter Center was founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, in partnership with Emory University, to advance peace and health worldwide.