CAIRO - Egyptian police will be ready to confront any attempts to jeopardise security during the parliamentary elections, which are scheduled to begin on November 28, Minister of Interior Mansour el-Eissawi said Tuesday. El-Eissawi said the police would call up reserves for manning forces as may be needed during the polls in a bid to "deal with unexpected incidents". He said the police role would be "merely to protect the polling centres" so that people can vote freely and safely, unveiling a strategy for co-operation with the Armed Forces to ensure the security of the voting process. Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the head of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), told a mini-Cabinet meeting Tuesday that the "parliamentary elections will be a major step for building a democracy in Egypt". The mini-Cabinet meeting, which was attended by Prime Minister Essam Sharaf and senior staff of the Interior Ministry, aimed at discussing the measures deemed necessary to protect the poll centres and the voting process. The first stage of the parliamentary elections due next week will take place in nine governorates: Cairo, Port Said, the Red Sea, Kafr el-Sheikh, Assiut, Alexandria, Luxor, Damietta and Fayyoum. Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr said in Algeria that Egypt was keen to facilitate voting for Egyptian expatriates after the January 25 revolution. According to figures released by the Higher Election Commission (HEC), Egyptian expatriates are showing more and more interest in the upcoming elections, the first after the ouster of president Hosni Mubarak on February 11. More than 136,230 expatriates registered their names on the electoral committee's website by 2:00pm Tuesday. "The number of expatriates has been on the rise over the past two days. Roughly 56,733 Egyptians living in Saudi Arabia have registered, marking the highest participation. Egyptians in the United Arab Emirates are second in place with 16,733, then the US with 7,505 expatriates," said Tareq Saad, a member of the HEC. Abdel Moez Ibrahim, the head of HEC, said Egyptians were registering through embassies and consulates worldwide as well as through the commission's website. Ibrahim added that the registration process will end by November 19. The Foreign Ministry estimates the number of Egyptians living abroad at eight million, said Abu Bakr el-Guindy, the head of the country's State-run Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS). Roughly 1.5 million Egyptian expatriates were registered with embassies worldwide by the end of December 2010, according to CAPMAS. "Fifty million Egyptians have the right to vote in the upcoming elections distributed over 53,000 sub-constituencies," el-Guindy said. He said Egyptians used to show little interest in parliamentary elections over the past three decades. "But it is expected that polling centres will be very crowded this time," he added. Egypt is the most populous Arab country, with a population estimated at 85 million people, according to CAPMAS.
