International election observer will not monitor Egyptian referendum

The Carter Centre for International Election Observation has announced that it will not send field observers to monitor the referendum on Egypt’s Constitutional amendments which started today. The voting process will last for two days, although Egyptian expatriates around the world have been voting since last week.

The director of the centre’s Cairo programme, Alessandro Parziale, told Al-Jazeera‘s Egyptian station, Mubashir Misr, that his team would only monitor legal aspects of the vote via ten legal observers. He renewed the Carter Centre’s call for dialogue among all parties interested in the political process in Egypt and called for the Muslim Brotherhood to be allowed to be involved in the political arena. The movement, he said, is an “original” part of the Egyptian people.

Reiterating that the Carter Centre is neutral and does not interfere in the internal affairs of any country, Parziale was keen to stress that the recommendations are not binding on the Egyptian government.