Parliamentary elections are still in their final phase as four elections in four constituencies are being repeated Saturday through Sunday in Egypt and abroad.
A total of 13 candidates will be elected in those electoral districts.
The parliament will be composed of 596 total candidates. Out of those, all 120 seats elected through the closed-lists system went to former intelligence service Sameh Seif El-Yazal’s For the Love of Egypt electoral list.
El-Yazal, a strong regime supporter, repeatedly announced his intentions to aim for a majority of votes by forming a parliamentary coalition, an idea that is yet to be studied by political parties.
Of the 596 seats, 448 candidates are elected through the individual-system, 435 of whom have already been elected, while the remaining 13 will be elected in the four pending constituencies.
Another 28 candidates will be directly appointed by President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, according to an entitlement of no more than 5% granted to the presidency in the constitution.
Head of the Supreme Electoral Commission (SEC) Judge Ayman Abbas further divided the individual candidates as follows: 316 independents and 239 affiliated with political parties.
A total of 15 political parties won seats in the second electoral phase.
In Cairo, the majority of the total 49 seats allocated were taken by independent candidates. For political parties, the Free Egyptians Party (FEP) was the largest in terms of winning candidates, with 14 winners compared to only one seat by Future of a Nation Party (FNP) and one seat for Al-Wafd Party.
There are only two winners affiliated with political parties in the governorate of Ismailia, with a total of six individual seats. With four independent candidates winning, the remaining two are from the Conference Party and the Future of a Nation Party (FNP).
In Daqahleya, only eight out of 29 parliamentary seats were taken by political parties. In Sharqeya, political parties obtained 15 of the total 30 individual seats for the governorate. The Al-Wafd and Future of a Nation parties led the governorate, with five and four candidates for each respectively.
As for Gharbeya, the FEP won the majority of parliamentary seats obtained by political parties, with five candidates, followed by the FNP with four, and the Al-Wafd Party, the Democratic Peace Party, and the National Movement Party with two seats each. Political parties won nearly 16 seats out of a total 24 for the governorate.
In Qalyubia, more than 10 out of 25 seats went to the FNP with five candidates, with three candidates for Al-Wafd Party and one for the FEP. The three parties barely made it in the governorate of Menufiya against independents. The FEP got three seats, the FNP got two seats, and Al-Wafd Party won one seat, while two other parties took two seats out of a total 20 seats.
Al-Wafd and the FNP obtained one seat each in South Sinai, but none of the political parties made it in North and Central Sinai constituencies. Al-Nour Party won three seats in the second phase, one in Damietta and two in Kafr Al-Sheikh.
The FEP was featured on For the Love of Egypt list but is yet to decide on joining the list’s calls for internal alliances.
In the first electoral phase, the FEP won 36 seats elected through the individual system. In the second phase there were 21 winners, giving them a total of 57 individual candidates, and making it the party with most members inside the parliament, without counting members running on list-systems. In total, the FEP said it will have 65 parliamentary members.
The FNP won 20 individual eats in the second phase and seems to be the second largest party after the FEP. The party also won 30 seats in the first phase and seats on For the Love of Egypt electoral list. FNP president Mohamed Badran had not been able to run for elections himself for being “under the legal age”.
Al-Wafd Party came third in this phase with 15 individual seats and was also featured on For the Love of Egypt. The party speaker announced several times “no alliances with FEP,” a strong rival. Last Tuesday party president El-Sayed El-Badawy stated he was not going to ally with other political parties but there could be coordination with “a number of parliamentary members and parties in legislations,” the party said in a statement.
The Conference Party also did not yet decide on internal parliamentary coalitions. It won only three seats in the second phase and announced that it won a total of 12 seats, four of them among the For the Love of Egypt lists, including former foreign minister Mohamed Oraby.
As for smaller political parties, such as the leftist Al-Tagammu Party, it obtained one seat in Suez. No other political parties won in the constituency, but three other independents obtained seats.
Furthermore, the Democratic Peace Party headed by Ahmed Al-Fadaly won three seats in the second electoral phase. Al-Fadaly had competed on the list-system with Tayyar Al-Istiqlal and joined the Egyptian Front Coalition, but lost to For the Love of Egypt.
The Egyptian Front Coalition was led by the National Movement Party, the political party headed by former presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq. It obtained three seats in the second phase.
In general, Egypt’s parliamentary elections were deemed to have been “transparent” by several observational reports, but there were violations by the candidates in terms of exceeding legal expenditures on electoral campaigns, and bribing voters.
The SEC said it referred over 300 complaints regarding candidates’ violations to the prosecution authorities according to procedure, since the commission does not have authority to take action against candidates.
