The head of a disabled persons advocacy group was unable to reach a polling station on the second floor of an Alexandria school to vote.
Confined to a wheelchair, Tareq Abbas said he was surprised that the judge at the Lofty-al-Sayed School in Mansheya, Alexandria declined to come downstairs to take Abbas' vote. The judge reportedly told Abbas that he had no legal obligation to leave the polling station to enable a disabled person to vote.
The judge said that though he could go downstairs as a kind gesture, he had no time to due to long lines of voters waiting to cast their ballots, Abbas alleged.
Abbas, who heads the Egyptian Coalition to Support the Rights of People with Disabilities, said the law regrettably leaves the decision up to the judge whether to help disabled citizens vote, depriving them of their most basic political right. During the parliamentary elections, disabled voters requested special ground-floor polling stations.
"Are we being punished for exercising our political rights?" Abbas wondered.
Abbas was also unable to file a complaint at the police station because he would have had to ascend a more challenging three floors.
Similar difficulties were reported during the parliamentary elections that concluded earlier this year. No sign-language interpreters were available to help deaf voters, and a majority of polling stations were located on upper floors which created difficulties for wheelchair-bound voters, the Egyptian Coalition for the Disabled in Alexandria reported.
Heba Hagras, an Egyptian Bloc candidate who has a disability, also said no facilities were made available for those with special needs. Hagras said she found it difficult to go up to the polling stations in her wheelchair. She said one supervising judge refused to leave the voting center to help her.
Mohamed Mokhtar, who also uses a wheelchair, said his polling station was on the third floor and the scrambling of voters made it even more difficult to reach the ballot box.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
