Egypt ruling party heads to sweeping win

Egypt's ruling party won 209 seats of the 508 that were up for grabs in the first round of a parliamentary election while opposition parties took just five seats.

State-owned al-Akhbar cited results announced by the High Election Commission, confirming that President Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP) was cruising to a sweeping victory as expected.

The opposition Muslim Brotherhood, which had controlled a fifth of seats in the previous lower house, earliersaid none of its candidates had won seats outright in the first round.

Human rights groups and the opposition accused the authorities of ballot-stuffing, bullying and other fraudulent tactics in Sunday's first round. The government has said the election was fair.

The election commission said it had annulled the counts from more than 1,000 ballot boxes but that irregularities had not affected the overall figures.

The newspaper listed the results as follows: 209 for the NDP, seven for independents, five for opposition parties and 283 seats to go to a run-off. The results for four seats were annulled.

A run-off election for seats in which no candidate won more than 50 percent of the vote will be held on December 5.

In many of the run-offs, NDP candidates will be competing against each other. The exact number was not immediately clear.

Reuters -1 December 2010