(AhlulBayt News Agency) - Muslim Brotherhood leaders said government security forces and election officials kept their delegates from entering dozens of polling stations and prevented many of their supporters from casting ballots.
"The government has used all the means to prevent people from going to polling stations," Muslim Brotherhood campaign coordinator Mohammed Mursi said Sunday night as the polls were closing. "It seems the regime does not want to have real opposition in parliament."
The contest for the lower house's 508 seats is widely seen as a precursor to next year's presidential election, which could mark the first transition of power here in more than three decades.
President Hosni Mubarak, 82, has been treated for undisclosed ailments. Many Egyptians assume he is grooming his 46-year-old son, Gamal, to succeed him, but the younger Mubarak is not widely liked within the ruling National Democratic Party.
The crackdown on the opposition has led Egyptians who favor a more open political system to criticize the Obama administration for what they call its lackluster commitment to expanding democratic freedom in the Middle East. Egypt is among the top recipients of U.S. aid, having received $1.55 billion this year.
In the weeks leading up to the election, Egyptian security forces detained hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters and disqualified many of its candidates, an apparent effort to curb its political clout before a transition that could be destabilizing.
Muslim Brotherhood candidates won 88 seats in the 2005 parliamentary election, the party's strongest showing in history.
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