Calling off local elections in Egypt has drawn the ire of the WP. An an editorial today the paper said
"Mr. Mubarak's apologists claim that the election was postponed -- nominally for two years -- to make way for a constitutional reform giving more power to local governments. Even Egyptians normally sympathetic to the regime laugh off this nonsense. As so often, the 77-year-old dictator's strategy is crudely obvious: He wishes to prevent the Muslim Brotherhood from winning seats on local councils because, under the byzantine terms of the presidential election law passed last year, it might then gain the legal right to nominate a candidate in the next presidential election. At the moment, only the ruling party qualifies to nominate a contender, which means that there would be no opposition if Mr. Mubarak proposed his 43-year-old son, Gamal."