MAHALLA EL-KUBRA, Egypt (Reuters) ? Egyptians voted in the third round of a parliamentary election on Tuesday that has so far handed Islamists the biggest share of seats in an assembly that will be central in the planned transition from army rule.
Islamist groups came late to the uprising that unseated President Hosni Mubarak in February, but were well placed to seize the moment when Egyptians were handed the first chance in six decades to choose their representatives freely.
The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) led after the first two rounds, and the strong showing by Islamist movements has sown unease among Western powers that only disowned Mubarak when his three-decade rule was crumbling.
Many citizens see the first fair election they can remember as a chance to end the blight of incompetent leadership and a culture of venality among the powerful that enriched a few and left millions in poverty.
In an industrial region north of Cairo where labor disputes over low wages preceded the wider protests that brought down Mubarak, optimism was high as residents lined up to vote.
"I am glad to be alive to witness this - a free election in Egypt," said Ahmed Ali al-Nagar, a carpenter in his late fifties from Mahalla el-Kubra. "Workers had a big impact on the political outcome we are living through these days."
Mahalla's streets were dotted with the posters of parties, especially the Brotherhood and hardline Islamist al-Nour party, promising an end to corruption.
The concluding vote to parliament's lower house takes in regions of the rural south, which has the largest proportions of Christian voters, the Nile Delta region north of the capital Cairo, and the restive Sinai desert region to the east.
The ballot was overshadowed by the deaths of 17 people last month in clashes between the army and protesters demanding the ruling military council hand power to civilians immediately. The army says the elections will not be derailed by violence.
POLICE RAID VOTE MONITORS
Turnout in earlier rounds was far higher than in Mubarak's day, when ballot stuffing, thuggery and vote-rigging guaranteed landslide wins for his party.
Brotherhood banners in Mahalla carried its motto "Islam is the solution" alongside its FJP party logo, in defiance of a ban on religious slogans.
Flyers for al-Nour carried names of influential local families who had lent their support. Residents said such sponsorship boosted the popularity of the ultra-conservative party, which has also opened shops carrying its name.
Monitors praised the first two rounds as relatively free of irregularities, while noting that many parties had defied a ban on campaigning outside polling stations in election day.
But police raids on pro-democracy and rights groups last week have disrupted the work of leading Western-backed election monitors and drawn accusations that the army was deliberately trying to weaken oversight of the vote and silence opponents.
The government said the raids were part of an investigation into illegal foreign funding of political parties and not aimed at weakening rights groups, which have been among the fiercest critics of the army's rule.
The United States called on Egyptian authorities to halt "harassment" of the groups involved. Egypt's government said some of the groups had no permits to operate in the country.
The U.S.-funded International Republican Institute (IRI) said it was invited by Egypt's government to monitor the election and gave no funding to parties or civic groups.
It urged the government to let staff return to their offices and obtain the official permits they had long requested.
"There is no reason not to allow IRI to assess the elections," the IRI said in a statement.
Fourteen million eligible voters in nine regions were choosing who occupies 150 of the seats in parliament. The staggered lower-house election concludes with a run-off vote on January 10 and 11, with final results expected on January 13.
The army, under pressure to hasten the handover to civilian rule, issued a decree on Sunday to shorten an upper house election beginning on January 29 to two rounds from three.
Egyptians turned out in unprecedented numbers in the first two rounds and parties ranging from hardline Islamists to liberals and secularists are competing hard for every vote.
Liberals say groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and the hardline Islamist Al-Nour party, which surprised with a strong showing in earlier rounds, flout the ban on religious electoral slogans and tell voters their rivals are ungodly.
Islamists accuse one of the party's top figures, Coptic Christian businessman Naguib Sawiris, and others of using media they control to mount a disinformation campaign against them.
(Reporting by Yasmine Saleh, Tom Pfeiffer and Tamim Elyan; Writing by Tom Pfeiffer; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
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