CAIRO, Sept 10: Opponents of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak joined forces on Saturday in protest at what they said was a rigged presidential vote that gave Mubarak a fifth six-year terms in office.

Mubarak’s main rival in Wednesday’s elections, Ayman Nour of the liberal Ghad (Tomorrow) party, took part in one of largest street demonstrations Cairo has seen during the last nine months of political turmoil.

Nour, who won 7.6 per cent against 88.6 per cent for Mubarak, said on Saturday the official vote count was fraudulent and his party would continue to contest it. The turnout was 23 per cent.

The country’s biggest human rights group estimated that 10 to 15 per cent of the votes assigned to Mubarak were fraudulent but that this would not have affected his victory, announced by the Presidential Election Commission on Friday.

Chanting “Batil, batil” (invalid), members of Ghad, the Kefaya (Enough) protest movement and the leftist Tagammu Party marched through the streets of the capital for two and half hours, seriously disrupting traffic.

The protest began outside Nour’s headquarters with a few hundred people but many others joined from the street, bringing the crowd to a maximum of up to 2,000 at its peak.

They shouted “Down, down with Hosni Mubarak” and “Hosni rigged the elections”. Whenever they saw a poster of the president, they pointed at him in unison and chanted: “There’s the thief, there’s the thief!”

Traffic police escorted the demonstrators but did not try to disperse them. When a small group of Mubarak supporters formed a counter-demonstration, police kept the two groups apart.

Kefaya and the Tagammu boycotted the presidential elections, saying the system was unfair and they did not have sufficient guarantees against the rigging that has marred previous votes.

But with the elections over and Mubarak in power for another six years, they again share an interest with other opposition groups in campaigning for political and constitutional changes.

“We are all in the same boat now,” said Khaled Taha, a lawyer and Ghad Party member protester. “We said ‘Let’s run in the elections and see the rigging for ourselves.’ But we’re fighting the same fight,” he told Reuters.

Mohamed Nashaat, a satellite dish installation worker, said he saw the demonstration go past his shop and decided to join.

“Nobody voted for Mubarak and the emergency laws are still in force. Those police could come and grab us any time they like,” said Nashaat, who voted for Nour.

Nour said authorities excluded his representatives from the vote count in many areas, and that where they could attend they noticed serious discrepancies that suggested ballot stuffing.

In some polling stations, for example, some ballot boxes contained 100 ballots and some 700 ballots, while the votes should have been more evenly distributed, he said.

“The results have nothing to do with reality,” he added.

The election commission, whose decisions are immune from challenge in the courts, said the vote was fair. Officials of Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP) said it was not perfect but it was better than past elections.

Nour, a combative 40-year-old lawyer and parliamentarian, said election officers allowed ineligible voters to vote for Mubarak in some stations while preventing others from voting.

“This is the height of duplicity, the height of rigging. That has produced improper elections. Vast numbers of ballot papers were added for Mubarak ... There was a direct (ballot) stuffing operation,” he added.

The Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights released a damning 22-page report on the elections, repeating many of the complaints observers made during and soon after voting.—Reuters