ELECTIONS IN EGYPT.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 31, 6 February 1925, Page 5

ELECTIONS IN EGYPT.

VOTING IN PROGRESS. i MINOR DISTURBANCES. ZAGHLUL PASHA DEFEATED. (By Cable— Prefs Association.—Copyright.) CAIRO, February 5. 'Jlie election of delegates, who xvill in turn elect the members of the new Egyptian Chamber of Deputies, is proceeding. Although conditions in the polling centres generally appear to be calm, some disturbances arc reported to have occurred. It is reported from Mchall. t-el-Ki'hir, the capital .if the provii of Gharbiye. Lower Egypt, that crowds -tunned a] polling booth and atta.-ki-d the officials. They then destroyed the voting papers. | The police xvere not sufficiently mime-j rous ti. restore order, so the Minister of' the Interior ordered troops to proceed, to Meballet-el-Keldi-. Zaghlul Pasha failed to secure election as an electors' delegate for the Said Zeinal, division of Cairo. lie xvas defeated by one vote. This fact, does nut necessarily indicate that Zaghlul xx-ill not be elected as a member of the Chamber.—(Renter. > The importance of the election in Egypt cannot be exaggerated, as by a mere chance the reactionary elements j may be returned to power, and much j of the incalculable good done by Britain | in Egypt and the Sudan be undone, i It is useless, as was shown by tlie MaeDonald Oovernment, fur Zaghlul, l'ashu, in Ihe sacred name of "selfdetermination." to demand the handing [ over uf the Sudan to bis GoX'ernmcnt. Egypt has attained complete indepenUlence of the British regime, and "Sergeant Wliatsisnamc" rules no longer. It is just over a century since Mobomet Ali annexed the Sudan to Egypt in j order to find gold, slaves, and recruits for his army. The Khedive Said in 18.34 wished to abandon the Sudan, but be I had to content himself xvith proclaiming the abolition of slavery, which was mere wastcpaper. For the next HO years the negro inhabitants xvere the prey nf organised slave raiders acting xvith the connivance nf the Egyptian Clovernment. and the corruption 'of its officials. Hundreds of thousands of slaves were torn from the Sudan and sold into slavery in Egypt and Turkey. The worthless troops of the Khedives xvere several times defeated by the fierce Abyssinians, and in Darfur, the most southerly province of the Egyptian domain, the authority of the Khedive j Ismail xvas for a considerable time exercised by Zobehr Pasha, the Arab slave raider on his silver throne. When Tsmail xvas deposed, in 1870, the Sudan xvas in a state of misery and bankruptcy, and xvithin a few years the Mahdist revolt swept the Egyptian rule out of the xvhole of the Upper Nile. Everyone knows that it was due to Lord Kitchener and his British officers and men, and not a little to British money, that the KhaUfa was finally defeated, Khartoum restored to civilisation, nnd the dispute xvith France in regard to Fashoda nmii-ably settled. Egypt alone could have done none of these things, and the first result of handing over the Sudan to the Government of Cairo would be the revival of the slave trade and the gathering of the eagles to the carcase The Abyssinian slave raiders, the gigantic Turkhana on the Lake Rudolf side, the inter-tribal fights of the Nuera and the Dinkas, the ivory poachers, and all the other violent elements are kept in cheek by the British authority, by the British officers xvho drill and command the Sudanese troops. The Sudan is going to become one of the xvorld's grent cotton-groxving areas, and Britain is not prepared to see its fertile plain reduced once more to xvaste as if xvas in the days of Zobehr Pasha and the incompetent rule nf Cairo. It is not to be assumed because there arc reactionary elements in Egypt and the Sudan that the intelligent, portions of their vast community do not realise xvbat British enterprise and oversight has done. Unhappily all reformative or ex'en philanthropic efTorts are met by antagonism everyxvhere, and it i.s not' right to lose sight, of the fact. that determined opposition to Britain has lieen a feature of reactionary politics. Since 1020 the folloxving Englishmen have been murdered or seriously wounded by Egyptian assassins: — Captain Knight, shot. November, 1020. Mr. T. Hatton. railway official, fatally shot, December, 1021. Mr. Alfred Brown. Controller of Egptian Ministry of Education, murdered. February. 1022. Other hmglishmen attacked. J. Mcintosh Bey. Egyptian railway official, shot. Bimbashi AY. C'unlifTc Cave, Cairo Police Force, shot dead, May, 1022. Lieut.-Colonel A. F. H. Pigott, Pay Officer, shot in lungs, July, 1022. Professor T. W. Broxvn. of Horticultural Research Department, shot, wounded. August. 1022. Dr. Newby Rohson, Professor of Law School, shot dead. December. 10-2-2. Professor E. W. Shoebridge. Egyptian Ministry of Education, murdered, January, 102.1. Mr. Travers Allan, of Montreal, murdered near Luxor, February, 1023. Corporal Ryan, a British airman. fatally stabbed at Heliopolis, April.' 1024. Sir Lee Stack, the Sidar. November, 1024. Attempts to murder at least a dozen prominent Egyptians, including Zaghlul Pasha himself have also been made.