Egyptians wary of Mubarak party loyalists in vote

Former members of the party that ruled Egypt for more than 30 years found pockets of support on Monday in the first parliamentary election since a popular uprising in January, but many voters said they knew who they were and would give them a wide berth.

Know locally as "feloul," Arabic for "remnants," members of deposed President Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP) are free to stand in the election, provided they have not been convicted of corruption or other serious abuses.

During preparation for the election over the past months, the political forces behind the uprising had fretted that many feloul would reappear in parliament thanks to their cash reserves, their local connections, or their experience with mobilising thugs to scare off their opponents.

But many of the most prominent feloul have decided not to stand and where they have reorganised in new political parties, those parties carry a stigma that put off many potential voters.

In Fayoum, for example, a fertile depression in the desert southwest of Cairo, no member of the prominent Wali family is seeking a seat in parliament this year, possibly for the first time since the 1960s, local politicians said.

Where former NDP members did stand on Monday, their supporters defended them on the grounds that they did not qualify as feloul because they were really independents who joined the old ruling party to get access to government funds and projects for the constituency.

Al-Senousi Abdel Razek, a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood in the village of Zawyat al-Karadsa, said he had given one of his three votes to ex-NDP member Mustafa al-Hadi, a local man whose banners and posters suggested a well-organised election campaign.

"Not all NDP were corrupt. Mustafa al-Hadi is an honest man who's done good for the community," he told Reuters outside the polling station.