CAIRO, Egypt — The thirdplace finisher in Egypt’s presidential race called Saturday for a partial vote recount, citing violations, his spokesman said.
Early results show that Hamdeen Sabahi came in third by a margin of some 700,000 votes, leaving him out of next month’s runoff between the two leading candidates.
Sabahi’s spokesman Hossam Mounis said the campaign has found evidence of many violations during the two days of voting that would affect the final results. He declined to give details about the violations but said appeals would be filed today.
“The evidence we have and that we are still accumulating shows a big number of violations in many polling centers that would affect the final results,” he said.
Former President Jimmy Carter said Saturday that monitors noted violations during Egypt’s presidential elections but that the vote was generally acceptable and the irregularities won’t impact the final results.
The Atlanta-based Carter Center had 102 monitors at polling centers across Egypt for the landmark vote.
Results from the first round of voting have shown that the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate, Mohammed Morsi, and Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, will face each other in a June 16-17 runoff.
Those two candidates were the most polarizing in the field and the divisive showdown has dismayed many Egyptians who fear either one means an end to any democratic gains produced by last year’s uprising that ousted Mubarak.
The first-round race, held Wednesday and Thursday, turned out close. By Friday evening, counts from stations around the country reported by the state news agency gave Morsi 25.3 percent and Shafiq 24.9 percent with less than 100,000 votes difference.
A large chunk of the vote — more than 40 percent — went to candidates who were seen as more in the spirit of the uprising that toppled Mubarak, that is neither from the Brotherhood nor from the so-called “feloul,” or “remnants,” of the old autocratic regime that Shafiq is considered one of.
In particular, those votes went to leftist Sabahi, who narrowly came in third in a surprisingly strong showing of 21.5 percent, followed by a moderate Islamist who broke with the Brotherhood, Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh.
Shafiq paid tribute Saturday to the “glorious revolution” that toppled Mubarak, a dramatic turnaround for the former regime official who fought his way into the runoff elections by appealing to public disenchantment with last year’s uprising.
Shafiq vowed there would be no “re-creation of the old regime” as he prepared to face off against Morsi.
“I am fed up with being labeled ‘old regime,”’ Shafiq told a news conference in his campaign headquarters. “This talk is no longer valid after 7 million people voted for me.” When pressed on the issue, he said: “All Egyptians are part of the old regime. Why do you keep saying the same thing over and over again?”
Shafiq and Morsi were the top vote-getters after the twoday election, which none of the 13 candidates could win outright. Now, both must appeal to the roughly 50 percent of voters who cast ballots for someone else.
Shafiq appeared to use the news conference to try to cast off his image as an anti-revolution candidate who spoke disparagingly about the youth groups that engineered the anti-Mubarak uprising, reaching out to all segments of society in a bid to rally voters who favored his rivals during the first round.
A former air force commander and a personal friend of Mubarak’s, Shafiq was booted out of office by a wave of street protests shortly after Mubarak stepped down on Feb. 11, 2011.
The 1 5 months since Mubarak’s ouster have seen a surge in crime, a faltering economy and seemingly endless street protests, work stoppages and sit-ins. The disorder has fed disenchantment with the revolutionary groups and may have played to Shafiq’s advanatge.
However, ex-officer Shafiq is also associated with Egypt’s military leadership. Critics say the generals who took over from Mubarak have mismanaged the transitional period and failed to reform corrupt institutions or to provide security.
Furthermore, they are blamed for the death of more than a hundred protesters, torturing detainees and trying before military tribunals at least 12,000 civilians.
“I pledge to every Egyptian that there will be no turning back and no re-creation of the old regime,” said Shafiq, 70. “Egypt has changed and there will be no turning back the clock. We have had a glorious revolution. I pay tribute to this glorious revolution and pledge to be faithful to its call for justice and freedom.”
Shafiq also tried to enlist the support of youth groups, singling out the large associations of soccer fans known as “ultras” and the April 6 group, both of which played a key role in the uprising.
His outreach was swiftly rejected by April 6, whose spokesman Ahmed Maher told a news conference that his group will never talk to the former prime minister, because it considers him a pillar of the Mubarak regime.
Shafiq paid special tribute to Sabahi, the socialist candidate and a champion of the poor who finished in third place. He held out the possibility of naming him as his deputy if elected president.
Morsi’s Brotherhood, meanwhile, has called for a meeting of the nation’s political forces to “deal with the challenges facing the nation” — a thinly veiled attempt to enlist support for its candidate.
Carter said his group was not able to monitor the entire process because authorities only granted his mission’s observers permits a week before the race. The Carter Center said in a statement that the observers were not able to witness the aggregation of the ballots, which “severely undermines the overall transparency of the election results.”
Carter said the violations — such as a lack of privacy for voters and the observers’ lack of access to the final vote counting — won’t affect the ultimate results.
“I don’t think the mistakes and errors and improprieties that we have witnessed in the last few days will have a negative impact on the runoff,” he told reporters. However, he stressed that his center is only able to make a “limited” judgment on the elections because of the limits on their mission.
He said he believed the restraints were in place because the election commission’s decisions are final and cannot be contested by any higher court, leaving it in charge of making final calls about the process.
“It was not restrictive to distort the outcome of the elections, I don’t think,” Carter told The Associated Press.
He said he was hesitant about accepting the mission because of the limits placed on it, but in the end decided to go ahead with it because he personally has been “deeply involved” in the Egyptian transition process from the outset. The Carter Center also monitored Egypt’s parliamentary elections, which stretched from last November to February.
He said the presidential election was a “great step forward” from those earlier votes, which were largely viewed as free.
“That is part of the democratic process,” he said. “The oppressive military regimes are over forever, I hope. The people have an unimpeded right to chose their own leaders in a democratic process. I think human rights in the future will be honored much more closely than ever before. So I think democracy has come to Egypt even though there are some difficulties in the transition process. I think they will be overcome.”
Information for this article was contributed by Sarah El Deeb of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/27/2012