no indication

sometimes this stuff just borders on the surreal:

Police firing tear gas and rubber bullets blocked voters from reaching polling stations in several electoral districts around the country Wednesday and at least eight people were reported killed on the violent and chaotic last day of Egypt's fiercely contested parliamentary elections.

Clashes between riot police and irate voters broke out in several towns that were strongholds of opposition to President Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party. Police have increasingly intervened in the parliamentary vote, which was spread out over almost four weeks when it became clear that candidates representing the formally outlawed Muslim Brotherhood would win a significant number of the contested seats.

Here in Badaway, the Nile Delta home town of one Brotherhood candidate, dozens of police officers blocked the streets and alleys leading to the lone polling station, preventing anyone from voting throughout the day. Youths occasionally rushed the cordon of black-clad and helmeted officers, who fired tear gas and rubber pellets in response.

"Why doesn't the government just spare everyone the trouble and declare its own candidate the winner and skip the vote?" said Ahmed Farouk, a pharmacist who spent the day videotaping the sporadic melees.

"Our experiment in democracy has come to a bad end," said Ghada Shahbender, a monitor for the independent human rights group We Are Watching. She said she toured four polling stations in the Delta region north of Cairo that were shut by police. At one, in the small town of Kafr Mit Bashar, townspeople tried to negotiate with police to let them vote. During the negotiations, the police began firing tear gas and beating voters with truncheons. Several people suffered bloody gashes on their heads and one child's arm was broken, Shahbender said.

...

Wednesday's violence fit the pattern of Egypt's zigzag democratization of the past 14 months. Unprecedented open criticism of, and demonstrations against, Mubarak's 25-year rule have alternated with police crackdowns and arrests. Voting monitors have been allowed to operate in some instances and banned in others. Many candidates have campaigned freely and then been subject to sudden detention.

On Tuesday, Ayman Nour, who ran against Mubarak in the presidential election last spring, was jailed pending a verdict on fraud charges in which the key witness has said he was forced by police to testify against Nour. Police have rounded up hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood activists in the past few days.

...

On Dec. 1, however, after Egyptian police had begun their campaign of arresting candidates and beating voters, spokesman Sean McCormack said the State Department had "not received, at this point, any indication that the Egyptian government isn't interested in having peaceful, free and fair elections."

(via cursor)