LONDON — Egyptian elections are always highly predictable affairs, but the second round of this year's parliamentary elections on Dec. 5, was completely pointless. The first round on Nov. 28 showed that the regime was going to suppress even the marginal role permitted to prodemocracy parties in previous elections, so the leading opposition parties simply refused to participate in the second round.
It's hardly news that the Egyptian regime rigs elections: Egyptian voters are wearily familiar with that fact, and the turnout this time was only 10 to 15 percent of the 42 million eligible voters. But the rigging has become embarrassingly blatant. The largest opposition party, the Muslim Brotherhood, whose members held almost one-fifth of the elected seats (88 out of 508) in the outgoing parliament, won no seats at all in the first round this time.
It had little hope of winning any in the runoff round either, so it declared that it was withdrawing from the whole charade. The next biggest opposition party, the liberal New Wafd party, whose parliamentary presence looked likely to crash to two seats, did the same. But why, if it was already guaranteed to win, would the regime reduce the elections to a farce by eliminating even a token opposition in the new parliament?