Egypt needs clear election regulations

The Egyptian election process is becoming increasingly chaotic as the polls come closer, and the lack of clear rules about who is allowed to stand for office is damaging their transparency and democratic legitimacy. It is important in any election that the rules are clear right from the start, so all possible contenders know where they stand.

They have to be able to prepare their political parties, and organise their manifestos so that they can compete with the others they expect to see in the elections. It is not fair for election authorities to allow or disallow candidates right up to the last minute, since this skews the race and creates an atmosphere of unfairness towards all concerned.

This is why it is ludicrous that Ahmad Shafiq, the last prime minister of Egypt's deposed president Hosni Mubarak, might still be disqualified, just two weeks before the polls take place. Only last month he was allowed back into the race, two days after having been excluded under a controversial law. There is understandable popular resentment of the previous regime, but if officials from Mubarak's era were to be banned from office, such a rule should have been explicit and clear right from the start.

If Shafiq is banned from the polls, it is likely to strengthen the position of Amr Mousa, the former Egyptian foreign minister and former secretary-general of the Arab League, who has a high political profile even if he does not have a large electoral machine to compete with the huge organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mousa is the leading secularist standing for the presidency, and the polls show him to be neck-and-neck with Abdul Moneim Abu Al Fotouh, an Islamist who split from the Muslim Brotherhood's party to stand for the presidency.