Vacant parliamentary seats in the cities of Sharqeya and Menoufiya were re-occupied Friday night after the Supreme Elections Commission announced the victory of Mohamed Abdel Hady Habib and Fakhry Tayel, who took over the seats of former members Mohamed Anwar Al Sadat and Ali Meselhy respectively.
Abdel Hady Habib, an independent member of parliament (MP), told Daily News Egypt that he won with 26,800 votes, adding that his priorities in the parliament would be determined after studying what his constituency would need.
“We will be proceeding with what the former [MP] had started; there is no change”, he explained, clarifying that there would be no differences in the policies compared to the ones former MP Meselhy had followed.
The second new member, Fakhry Tayel, a Future of a Nation Party candidate, won with more than 29,000 votes, while his opponent Mohamed Al Gahsh received 21,000 votes, raising the number of MPs affiliated with the party to 51, state-owned Al-Ahram reported.
In February, former MP and member of the Human Rights Affairs Committee Mohamed Anwar Al Sadat was officially sacked with a majority of 468 votes after the Legislative Affairs Committee had found him guilty of “distorting parliament’s image abroad.” However, Al Sadat responded in a press release that the accusations were false and only meant to “damage his image.”
While Mohamed Ali Meselhy, a former MP and head of the Economic Affairs Committee, left his seat in the parliament following the latest cabinet reshuffle last February during which he was appointed as Minister of Supply.
