CAIRO: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) won 25 seats of 50 allocated to individual candidates in the third and final round of People’s Assembly elections, according to preliminary results.
The FJP won 21 seats in the run-offs in the nine provinces of the third round of elections, according to an FJP statement issued on Thursday, in addition to four single winner seats they had won by absolute majority in the first stage held on Jan, 3-4.
The run-offs began on Tuesday in the eight provinces of Daqahleya, Qaliubiya, Gharbeya, Minya, Qena, North Sinai and South Sinai, Marsa Matrouh and El-Wadi El-Gadid.
Elections will be repeated on Jan. 14-15 in South Sinai as well as for the single winner seats in the third constituency of Qena, which includes Nagaa Hammadi and Disht, and the first constituency of Qaliubiya. Run-offs will be held on Jan. 18-19.
Elections will also be repeated for the workers seat in the first constituency of Daqahleya on the same date, according to the Supreme Electoral Commission (SEC). A total of seven single winner seats will be up for grabs in the constituencies where elections will be repeated.
A few constituencies including Shobra, Sahel and Aswan repeated the elections on Tuesday and Wednesday, along with the run-offs of the third round. Other constituencies had repeated the elections for the individual candidates seats, including the second and third constituencies in Assiut, the second and fifth constituencies in Sharqiya and the third constituency of Moharram Bik in Alexandria, due to violations that occurred in the first and second rounds in these areas.
The FJP won five single winner seats out of 12 in the previous constituencies, according to their statement.
The ultra-conservative Salafi Al-Nour Party snatched seven seats, maintaining second place, while Al-Wafd snatched a single seat, according to results so far.
The Egyptian Bloc said that preliminary results didn’t reveal whether any of their candidates won in the run-offs.
The FJP raked in 35.2 percent of the party list votes in round three of the elections, followed by Al-Nour with 27.5 percent, Al-Wafd with 9.8 percent and the liberal Egyptian Bloc at 5.6 percent. The Revolution Continues, which comprises youth activists, won only 2 percent of the seats.
In the first two rounds of elections Islamists also led the competition, winning just under 70 percent of the seats.
Wafiq El-Ghitani, leading member of Al-Wafd, which came in third following the Islamists, downplayed the significance of the Islamists’ victory, saying that neither the FJP nor Al-Nour won more than 50 percent of the seats, to account for an absolute majority.
"The FJP and Al-Nour don’t have the same ideas and policies and now all parties are attempting to form an alliance with Al-Wafd to create a strong front in parliament," El-Ghitani told DNE.
Ahmed Abou Baraka, a leading member of the FJP, said that the party is seeking to cooperate and establish national consensus with all other parties which secured seats in parliament, not only with Al-Wafd.
On the other hand Mohamed Abu Hamed, member of the Free Egyptians’ political bureau, which spearheads the Egyptian Bloc, said that the Bloc will mobilize fierce competition against the Islamists and rally public opinion against them on central issues.
Abu Hamed won the professionals seat against FJP candidate Amr Fathallah in Cairo’s sixth constituency which includes Qasr El-Nil and Zamalek in the first round of elections.
The Egyptian Bloc had come in third place following the Islamists in the first round of elections. However, it receded to fourth place in the second and third rounds following Al-Wafd.
Abu Hamed said that this was due to the vicious campaign launched against the Bloc when it was recognized as a strong contender in the first round.
"Rivals accused us of being the crusaders’ bloc, making false claims that the Church backed us," Hamed said.
Al-Wafd had openly accused the Church of backing the Bloc. Al-Ghitany previously told DNE that people refused to fall victim to religious blackmail used in the first round of elections, giving Al-Wafd an edge over them.
In Daqahleya, Mubarak loyalist and lawyer Mortada Mansour lost against the FJP professionals’ candidate Khaled El-Dib in the fifth constituency of Mit Ghamr and Aga.
However preacher Ali Qatamesh of Al-Nour Party, beat FJP candidate Hassan Gomaa in the second constituency of Daqahleya.
In the third constituency of Dekerness and Sherbine, FJP candidate Emad Shams El-Din won against Al-Adl Party’s Ahmed Shoukry, former member of the National Front for Change, who had also lost in the 2010 elections.
