Egyptians Go to Polls to OK Mubarak’s 3rd Term : Mideast: The president’s name is the only one on the ballot. The ruling party is striving for stability.

CAIRO — Egyptian voters went to the polls Monday in a referendum on a third six-year term for President Hosni Mubarak, an attempt by Egypt’s ruling party to chart a course of stability in a region troubled by Islamic violence, lingering poverty and the threat of a backlash to peace with Israel.

With festive banners urging voters to say “Yes to Mubarak” and a leading newspaper proclaiming “one of the most splendid marches of democracy,” Egypt’s 18.8 million eligible voters had little choice in the voting, as Mubarak was the sole candidate on the ballot.

Egypt is nominally the Arab world’s premier democracy. But its slowness to open the doors of power to political opposition reflects the extent to which leaders fear the region remains a political powder keg that could explode in domestic violence, even as the Middle East makes unprecedented strides toward peace between Arabs and Israelis.

Mubarak, 65, a former air force commander who took over this nation of nearly 60 million after the assassination of Anwar Sadat, has charted a measured course toward democratization. He has been mindful of unhappy experiences with democratization in Lebanon and, more recently, Algeria--which teetered on the brink of civil war after Islamic fundamentalists were poised to sweep to power in the first free national elections.

A wave of Islamic violence has left 200 people dead in Egypt in the past 18 months. Unemployment is 20% and there are international demands for economic reforms that could leave thousands more jobless. The Mubarak regime has said that opening the floodgates to issues such as the legalization of a religious party without first assuring the stability of the country could plunge Egypt into civil war. The president has emphasized the need to achieve public consensus before launching any new economic or social course for the nation.

To much of the political opposition, that means that Mubarak is afraid of the costs of universal political participation.

“I say to the president that what he deems a conflict between the political trends in Egypt is a basic feature of democracy, where each trend puts across its ideas and programs, trying to win support for them,” said Gamal Badawi, chief editor of Al-Wafd, a leading opposition newspaper. “At the end, everybody seeks arbitration at the ballot box. Difference is a feature of human nature that cannot be denied or eliminated except through repression.”

The strongest potential threat to Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party, the Muslim Brotherhood, is not allowed to operate as a political party, though it unofficially mounts candidates for the Parliament through another opposition group, the Socialist Labor Party.

The Labor and Wafd parties have urged a boycott of the referendum on Mubarak, while the Nasserist and leftist United Progressive Party have called for a “no” vote.

Opposition parties throughout the election season have complained about corruption within the government, the failure to end more than 12 years of martial law and government control of the major newspapers, television and radio, guaranteeing the NDP will prevail no matter who runs for election.

Mubarak was nominated as the sole candidate for an unprecedented third term by a vote in the National Assembly, where the NDP holds 80% of the seats.

“It is the president’s party that benefits from the advantages of his remaining in power. Elections in our country have become a battle for survival,” Al-Wafd complained.

At the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters above a crowded vegetable market in downtown Cairo on Monday, spokesman Maamoun Hodeibi said opponents were prevented from mounting any effective opposition to Mubarak’s reelection.

Pointing to the thousands of “Yes to Mubarak” banners that festoon Cairo’s streets and the “Yes to Mubarak” songs on Egyptian television and radio, Hodeibi said, “This is the Pharaonic system. Why do you think they made those big pyramids, when you only need three meters by one meter to bury a body?”

“This is not an election,” he said.

Public approval over the government’s sharp crackdown on the Islamic fundamentalist bombings and shootings that caused a drop in revenue-rich tourism, and general optimism over Egypt’s role in engineering a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians have contributed to a reduction of the political tension.

At the fundamentalist-dominated Lawyers Syndicate, 28-year-old attorney Sabry Yahia said Mubarak has managed to ease Egypt’s foreign debt, improve the standard of living for most Egyptians, bring down the rate of inflation and convince the rest of the Arab world that Egypt did not err in making peace with Israel.