Election Commission rejects re-run request

Egypt's Presidential Election Commission on Thursday rejected Presidential candidate Ayman Nour's request for a poll re-run.

"The commission checked the request and ended up rejecting the request," said Osama Atawia, spokesman for the Presidential Election Commission.

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Nour called for a re-run early on Thursday, saying that Wednesday's vote was marred by fraud.

The call came as state newspapers said Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is ahead in the count, which started on Wednesday evening.

Nour filed a complaint with the Presidential Election Commission on "violations ... regarding the right of the voter to cast his ballot."

Mubarak's campaign spokesman, Mohamed Kamal, said Nour was attacking the process because he was going to lose.

Mubarak is expected to win a fifth six-year term in office when the result emerges later this week. Wednesday's poll was Egypt's first ever contested presidential election.

Monitoring groups reported irregularities including ballot stuffing, vote buying, and intimidation in favour of Mubarak, which Mubarak's party denies.

"In general the election was free and fair and whatever small incidents took place here or there have no significance on the overall outcome of the election," he said.

"Any candidate who is not going to get the vote that he expected to get is probably going to attack the process. That's my understanding of what [Nour] is doing," he added.

However, Nour deputy Hisham Kassim said: This is not about winning or losing, but about due process. Whether we got 1 percent or 51 percent, if you feel the process is flawed, we are going to take legal measures."

Nour had said late on Wednesday that partial estimates based on exit polls compiled by his party delegates gave him between 30 and 55 percent of the vote.