In cooperation between Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS) and the office of the IFES Organization in Cairo, a roundtable panel was held at Al Ahram foundation discussing the Egyptian system for elections administration and its future options. The roundtable was attended by a variety of experts, researchers and politicians from a wide range of the Egyptian political spectrum. This variety included Dr. Abdel Monem Said the Director of Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, Mr. Nabil Abdul Fattah, the Assistant Director for Al Ahram Center, Judge Hisham Al Bastawisy member of the Egyptian Judges Club, Dr. Ibrahim Darwish Professor of the Constitutional Law at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science at Cairo University, Dr. Sami Al Sherif Professor of Media at Cairo University, Mr. Hussien Abdul Razek Vice President of the Unionist Socialist Party, Mr. Diaa Rashwan, the Head of Political Systems Unit in ACPSS, and Dr. Essam Al Arian the Speaker for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The roundtable was also attended by members from the Peoples Assembly.
In the first session, Dr. Fernando Martinez Burkayo presented a paper titled Democratic Reform and Institution Building: the Mexican Experience in Elections Administration and Electoral Systems. In his presentation, the Mexican Judge discussed the Mexican experience in transforming from a one party system to a democratic multiparty system which was especially progressed after the Presidential Elections of the year 2000. During these elections the PRI has lost after monopolizing the Mexican political scene for nearly 70 years.
In his presentation, Burkayo described the political and electoral system of Mexico. Democratization came through a political pause then a breakthrough in which the political regime and the opposing political parties negotiated the size of participation in all ruling and governance capacity of the state and not only elections.
In his paper Burkayo developed his ideas on how undemocratic regimes utilize their electoral reforms to undermine and contain real demands for political reform. Electoral reforms in Mexico were used by the political regime to reach three goals. First, the gradual reforms presented for the political regime an indicator for its popularity in comparison to other opposition parties among different segments of the population. Since, the competitiveness between the two players in elections becomes extremely brutal. At the same time the regime was willing to compete with the opposition because no high risks or threats were present for the political regime. The Second Goal is that the political regime sometimes resorts to electoral reforms to create disagreements among the opposition movements. Finally, electoral reforms tend to attract all the efforts of the opposition parties and encourage potential political riots. This trend may once again increase the credibility of the political regime among the constituencies as the only power that can stabilize the society. At the end of his session, Burkayo pinpointed how the electoral institutions developed in Mexico, the role of the federal electoral institution and the system of electoral justice.
In the second session which discussed the legal administration of the elections through the supreme committees system. Two papers were presented in this session. The first one, Mr. Ahmed Abdul Hafiz has presented and it was titled the Relationship between the Supreme Committees and the Candidates. The second paper was presented by Judge Ahmed Saber and it was titled by the Relationship between the Supreme Committee and Official and Unofficial Monitoring of Elections. The session was chaired by Dr. Ibrahim Darwish who insisted that the electoral process should be solely handled and supervised by the judiciary as stated precisely by the Egyptian Constitution in articles 88, 93 and 172.
As for Mr. Ahmed Abdul Hafiz in explaining his paper, he argued that generally before 2005, the Interior Ministry carried out the complete responsibility for the elections since the constitution of the year 1923 and all related laws and amendments. This responsibility has continued even after the July Revolution of 1952. Abdul Hafiz emphasized that all the amendments that were undertaken concerning the administration of the elections were minor, artificial and were not related to the core demands for reform. He argued that this was clear in the presidential and parliamentary elections of 2005.
As for Judge Ahmed Saber, he welcomed in his speech the role of civil society in increasing the awareness of the democratic values among the Egyptian society and encouraging the Egyptians to practice their right to vote. However, Saber indicated that the role of the civil society is limited due to the regulations of the executive authorities on their activities. However, the Judiciary in Egypt respects and acknowledges the role of civil society in monitoring elections as long as it does not interfere in the responsibilities of the judiciary.
As for the third session which focused on two topics. The first topic was an analysis for the media coverage for the presidential and parliamentary elections. The second topic was a descriptive analysis for the elections campaigns for the two elections. Dr. Farouk Abu Zeid the speaker for the first topic drew a comparison between the legal framework for media coverage of the presidential and parliamentary elections according to the law no 174 of 2005 which organizes the media campaigns of elections, the recommendations of the Supreme Council for Journalism, in addition to the media coverage values and ethics. On the other hand, he examined the actual practical implementation of the law and the other guidelines. In which, he found out that the national broadcasting television and radio stations did not apply a fair balanced coverage; on the contrary, their coverage policies were more inclined in favor of the national democratic candidates in both elections. He also concluded that neutral objective media coverage would not be achieved without an institutional reform of the information sector.
Dr. Amr Elchoubaki elaborated on the second topic first by stating the obstacles that an opposition political party faces in its political campaign and how the National Democratic Party enjoys a state of integration with the government administrative body which gives the NDP a powerful capacity to win elections. The other thing Dr. Elchoubaki elaborated on the vagueness of information on a number of issues concerning elections campaigns. First, there is no concrete information on the criteria for choosing elections party candidates. He argued that this character is shared by all Egyptian political parties. Second, in democratic states, parties' elections campaigns budgets are known to the public because this shows a pattern of transparency and accountability. However, in the Egyptian case this kind information is hard to obtain and you can't have assurance on its validity.
The final session topic was the bureaucratic administration of elections and the process of voters' registration. Dr. Ahmed Thabet began his presentation emphasizing the Egyptian experience with all sorts of elections that the state institutions rarely practice neutrality. The Egyptian experience has in the majority of the times witnessed a state intervention in favor of its candidate. Then Dr. Thabet spoke specifically about the methods of defining electoral districts in Egypt, in which, there are always a huge differentiation between the electoral district and the administrative unit. This dissimilarity creates for voters' difficulties in knowing their electoral districts thus leading to a smaller turnout of participation.
Finally, Dr. Rabie discussed in his presented paper the methods of administrating the civil registry in Egypt. More than one issue was related to this topic. First, Dr. Rabie explained the legal framework for the registration process in Egypt. The second issue was laying out the European and Indian experience in this process. Finally, he made some empirical suggestions on the improvement of civil registries in Egypt. According to Dr. Rabie civil registry is an indicator of two things. The first is that it indicates the level of neutrality of the bureaucratic administrative bodies of the government. Second it is also an indicator of the measure of political participation in the electoral process.

Policy Recommendation for the Roundtable Panel
The participants had a consensus on the necessity of the complete supervision and monitoring of the electoral process in Egypt by the Judiciary. This supervision should be applied through a judicial committee from the beginning of the voting process until the official declaration of the results.

An independent committee should be formed to be in charge of organizing all elections in Egypt i.e. presidential, parliamentary, municipalities. The committee should also have the authorities to settle electoral disputes through a specialized court that coincides with the rule of law.
All elections in Egypt should be domestically and internationally monitored by civil society organizations.
A process of reviewing the civil registries of voters should be undertaken under the auspices of the judiciary or a new independent committee.
The names of voters listed in the civil registry should be installed on central computers to prevent the old method of handwriting in the registration process.
The abolishment of article 11 of the law of political rights that give the interior ministry and the voters the right to register their voting right in district of the working place since this right has been clearly abused during the parliamentary elections of 2000 and 2005.
The interior ministry should stop taking any administrative responsibilities concerning elections except to provide safety and security to the electoral process.
A new legislation or a constitutional amendment should come into force that provides independence of the judicial power from the executive branch of power.
Civil registry lists should be reachable to all parties and political movements because this facilitates the communication between the parties and the voters and encourages more participation in the elections.
Women should have simpler procedures and regulations for voting registration.
The political rights law should be amended also to have more simplified procedures for voting registration.
The redefinition of the electoral districts is an integral part of the electoral reform because it increases the accuracy of voters representation in the Peoples Assembly.
On the information reform, the panel urged the necessity of removing all obstacles that prevent citizens from issuing newspapers as this is part of their rights
The panel also called for paying more efforts to work on the separation between the notion of state ownership for the information sector and the government control over information. In addition, the private sector should enjoy equal rights as the public information sector in ground television and radio broadcasting as long as the private sector abides by information laws and regulations.