Maat begins an integrated program to support the popular monitoring for the elections

People’s eyes to ensure the integrity of the election

21/12/2009

Maat association started an ambitious program to support the popular monitoring for the elections, is being implemented during the period from 1^st January 2010 to 30^th June 2012. Through this program Maat will monitor the Shura Council, People's Assembly elections 2010, the presidential elections 2011, and local council’s elections 2012.
“Supporting the Popular Monitoring” program is considered an extension of Maat’s activities in the field of election monitoring, and represent a direct response to the results have been resulted from the evaluation of these projects. Maat has carried out during 2008, Voter’s Voice project to monitor the local council elections in an innovative method based on the voter himself, before this project Maat carried out during 2007 “ Monitoring For Participating” project to monitor and evaluate the performance of NGOs monitors in the Shura Council elections.

The program is divided into four stages based on full partnership with 35 NGOs in different regions of Egypt; along with relying primarily on involved popular parties (the voters themselves - the influential community grass-roots leaders - volunteers and activists of CSOs working in the targeted departments - bloggers and internet activists).
The first stage of the program began with signing a cooperation protocols with the umbrella NGOs in target governorates (7 organizations) that each one will select (4) NGOs in every governorate, and raising their capacity to work in the field of electoral monitoring and qualifying them to implement various activities under the program.

By the end of the program it is expected that more than 35 constituencies have capacities and mechanisms that enable them to self-monitoring on the election completely, and would lead to reduce the required cost for NGOs’ monitoring on the general election in the future also would overcome the major cause of poor monitoring. In addition to activating and institutionalizing the participation of community- based and influential actors in supporting the integrity of the election after they have been absent from this area for many years. At the end the program it will support the integrity of the electoral process as a whole, which is expected to witness a marked improvement after the end of the proposed program.
It is expected that there will be a systematic assessment of each stage of the program in order to avoid errors and to remedy shortcomings and maximize the positives. Maat seeks to ensure the participation of specialists and stakeholders in the assessment process so as to broaden the scope of support for the proposed program.