Voting starts in Egyptian elections

CAIRO, June 11 (Reuters) Egyptians started voting today in the first parliamentary elections under constitutional amendments which make life harder for the Muslim Brotherhood, the main challenger to the ruling National Democratic Party.

At least eight people voted in Abdin secondary school in central Cairo, picking their candidate for the upper house of parliament or Shoura Council. In many places polling stations were opening later than the official 8 a.m. (1030 IST) start.

The elections on Monday are for 88 of the 176 elected seats in the upper house, which has wider powers under the constitutional amendments approved by referendum in March.

The elections are also a test of a new law which bans the use of religious symbols and slogans -- a ban widely seen as an attempt to drive the Islamists out of mainstream politics.

But on the eve of voting an Egyptian court denied a request by the electoral commission to disqualify eight of the Muslim Brotherhood's 19 candidates from standing.

Members of the ruling party had petitioned the commission to eliminate the Brotherhood candidates, alleging they had broken the law by campaigning under religious slogans.

But the Supreme Administrative Court ruled late yesterday that there was no conclusive evidence that the candidates or their supporters had used religious slogans.

Candidates other than the Brotherhood have used Koranic verses on their election posters and many of the National Democratic Party candidates have chosen as their election symbol the crescent moon, which has religious connotations.

During preparations for the elections police have intensified a crackdown on the Brotherhood, which says that more than 760 of its members are now in detention, 600 of them picked up since the beginning of the campaign last month.

In the Nile Delta province of Kafr el-Sheikh today, police detained a Brotherhood candidate's representative outside a polling station, a Brotherhood spokesman said. An Interior Ministry spokesman said he had no information on the case.

The Egyptian government outlawed the Brotherhood in the 1950s but allows it to operate under tight restrictions.

It cannot publish a newspaper, form a political party or hold public meetings but its members can stand for elected office as independents.

In the lower house elections of 2005 it won about one fifth of the seats in parliament, confirming its position as the country's strongest opposition movement.

Reuters SKB DB1125