Egypt

Articles about voting issues in the Arab Republic of Egypt.

Fifteen months after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, Egyptians overseas will go to the polls for a week from Friday to vote in a new president, amidst confusion whether the presidential elections will be suspended or not. Around 60,000 out of more than 300,000 Egyptians living and working in the UAE are registered to cast absentee ballots in Egypt’s embassy in Abu Dhabi and consulate in Dubai in the first free elections since Mubarak was ousted in February last year. It is estimated that more than eight million Egyptians are working and living abroad, but nearly 600,000 are registered voters overseas. On Wednesday, an Egyptian administrative court issued an unexpected ruling to suspend the presidential elections due later this month.  Read More »

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Egypt’s first post-revolution presidential poll will technically begin on Friday, as millions of Egyptians living abroad begin casting ballots for Egypt’s next head of state. Egyptians residing overseas, who number between five and six million, will cast votes for one of 13 approved candidates in Egypt’s first presidential election since the ouster early last year of longstanding president Hosni Mubarak. Many analysts say that Egyptian expatriates were not given enough time to study the candidates’ various electoral programmes, noting that they would begin voting only 12 days after the official launch of presidential campaigning. Many expats, meanwhile, are finding it difficult to follow candidates’ respective campaigns from abroad, or don’t possess the national identification cards required to cast ballots. After 30 years of Mubarak-era autocracy, during which most national elections were rigged, fair and democratic elections are a novelty for Egypt. The idea that their voices will actually count has stirred up strong feelings in many Egyptians, who espouse opinions as diverse as the candidates they are expected to vote for. And, according to various Ahram Online surveys, Egyptians living abroad are no different. Read More »

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Egypt’s ruling military council assured its support of the Supreme Presidential Electoral Commission (SPEC) and their work in a press statement Wednesday, after Parliament moved to change the operating laws of the body tasked with managing the electoral process. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) affirmed its “full appreciation and trust in Egypt’s esteemed judiciary” and the commission and emphasised the necessity of “committing to the constitutional verdicts” and “non interference of a state authority in the work of the other.” The military council’s statement comes one day after a row erupted between the SPEC and the lower house of Egypt’s Parliament. On Monday, the electoral commission announced its intention to indefinitely suspend all its activities and postpone meetings scheduled for Tuesday with presidential candidates and media personnel. Read More »

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Egypt’s presidential elections committee said it would stop its work in preparation for presidential elections due later this month after what it said was an insult to the committee by members of parliament during its session on Monday. The committee said in a statement it would not meet on Tuesday as planned with presidential candidates and media figures pending “suitable conditions for the meeting.” Read More »

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A panel of fundamentalist Islamic clerics on Wednesday endorsed the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood for president of Egypt, an attempt to prevent a split of the conservative Muslim voters. In another twist, Egypt’s election commission late Wednesday reinstated a candidate, a former regime official it disqualified just a day earlier, scrambling the projected voting even more. The ultraconservative endorsement boosted the Brotherhood candidate, Mohammed Morsi, who faces competition in next month’s election from a more moderate Islamist, Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh, who broke ranks with the group. Support for Morsi came from the Jurisprudence Commission for Rights and Reform, a panel of clerics mostly from the ultraconservative Salafis and new Islamist parties, but also including a Brotherhood member. The decision was announced at a news conference in Cairo. Read More »

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The Supreme Presidential Electoral Commision (SPEC) announced on Tuesday that it would hold an emergency meeting later today to discuss ways of implementing the newly ratified Disenfranchisement Law. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) ratified late Monday the Disenfranchisement Law (officially called the Corrupting of Political Life Law), and sent it for a final vote to Parliament. An official statement was issued in the state newspaper, Al-Gareeda Al-Rasmeya on Tuesday, thus allowing for the immediate implementation of the law. The law, which was discussed and approved last week by the People’s Assembly, places limits on the political rights of certain citizens. Read More »

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Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) rejected on Saturday the military council request to determine the constitutionality of the drafted Disenfranchisement Law before proposed legislation becomes law. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) had referred the proposed Disenfranchisement Law to the SCC on Thursday. The draft legislation, which was approved last week by the People’s Assembly, stipulates that those who were part of Hosni Mubarak’s government during the five years prior to 11 February 2011 would not be eligible to enter the presidential race or hold public office for ten years. The SCC said it has no legal jurisdiction over draft legislations that have not yet been approved by the SCAF. It added that the Disenfranchisement Law must be enacted first before it could issue any rulings on constitutionality. Read More »

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A move to exclude some of the more divisive contenders from Egypt’s presidential election may help moderate candidates seen as better able to forge the consensus many believe can foster a peaceful transition to democracy. Two prominent Islamists – one a hardline Salafi sheikh, the other the Muslim Brotherhood’s official nominee – as well as ousted President Hosni Mubarak’s spy chief were battling to stay in the running on Monday as a deadline approached for them to appeal against disqualification by the state election committee. All three had put their names forward late in the process in a way that reinforced an impression in recent weeks that the shaky temporary consensus of necessity between an increasingly assertive Islamist bloc and the generals ruling Egypt since Mubarak’s overthrow 14 months ago was breaking down. Read More »

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Egypt’s ruling military has inserted a new element of confusion even as Egypt tries to sort out turmoil surrounding its upcoming presidential elections. The generals now insist a new constitution be written before a new president is seated, a rushed timeframe that some fear may prolong their hold on power. For weeks, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists sought to dominate the writing of the country’s first new constitution since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak more than a year ago. But after Islamist domination of the process sparked a backlash of criticism, the military has stepped back in to take a more direct role. The military’s new assertiveness has split the national debate. Some liberals have welcomed the military’s weight to counteract the increasing power of Islamists. Others, however, worry that the generals aim to continue their control over Egypt beyond their promised deadline for handing over power to a civilian president by the end of June. Read More »

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Egypt’s election commission disqualified 10 presidential hopefuls, including Hosni Mubarak’s former spy chief and key Islamists, from running Saturday in a surprise decision that threatened to upend an already tumultuous race. Farouk Sultan, the head of the Supreme Presidential Election Commission, said that those barred from the race Mubarak-era strongman Omar Suleiman, Muslim Brotherhood chief strategist Khairat el-Shater and hard-line lawyer-turned-preacher Hazem Abu Ismail. He didn’t give a reason. The announcement came as a shock to many Egyptians as three of the 10 excluded were considered among the front-runners in a highly polarized race that has left the country divided into two strong camps: Islamists and former insiders from the ousted regime who are allegedly supported by the country’s ruling military council. The disqualified candidates have 48 hours to appeal the decision, according to election rules. The final list of candidates will be announced on April 26. Thirteen others had their candidacy approved, including former Arab League chief Amr Moussa, moderate Islamist Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh and former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq, according to Sultan. Read More »

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The Muslim Brotherhood said Sunday that it will fight the banning of its candidate for president that has thrown Egypt’s move toward elected civilian rule into disarray and threatens a return to massive street protests. ”We do not accept it. We will challenge it,” said Gehad El-Haddad, a member of the steering committee for the Renaissance Project, which is at the heart of the Muslim Brotherhood’s presidential campaign. Ten presidential candidates were barred from contesting the nation’s top job in a decision announced Saturday by the presidential election commission, five weeks before the presidential race is set to begin in May. The decision comes at the tail end of a week marred by a slew of shocks and shifts — from a candidate jumble to a march on Tahrir Square— that persisted in shaking the pre-election period.  Read More »

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Egypt’s election commission rejected the appeals of three main contenders for president Tuesday, definitively removing the most polarizing candidates from the race to become the country’s first elected leader since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. The disqualification of the three diminishes the chances that an Islamist candidate will win the presidency, but there are worries over the fallout from the decision, particularly from the supporters of one of the barred candidates, ultraconservative Islamist Hazem Abu Ismail. Around 2,000 Abu Ismail supporters had camped outside the commission’s headquarters since the previous day, demanding he be allowed to run. When the rejection was announced Tuesday evening, some of them threw stones at security and briefly scuffled with military police. Read More »

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Egypt’s parliament has passed a bill that strips senior figures of ousted President Hosni Mubarak’s regime of their political rights for 10 years. Thursday’s vote is designed to stop Mubarak’s former spy chief and vice president, Omar Suleiman, from running in next month’s presidential election. The law would only come into effect if the military council that took over from Mubarak when he stepped down last year ratifies it. This is unlikely to happen before the election commission issues a final list of presidential candidates, which is expected later this month. Decisions of the election commission cannot be appealed. The law covers those who served in top posts, from the president down to leaders of his ruling party, during the 10 years prior to Mubarak’s ouster. Read More »

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The People’s Assembly (the lower house of Egypt’s parliament) devoted a special session on Wednesday afternoon to discussing proposed legislation aimed at prohibiting figures associated with ousted president Hosni Mubarak from contesting upcoming presidential elections. The assembly reportedly decided to convene after several MPs expressed fears that the bill, drafted by the moderate-Islamist Wasat Party, might be ruled unconstitutional. ”The problem is that the bill contradicts Article 26 of the constitutional declaration [issued in March of last year by the ruling military council and approved via popular referendum], which does not set any conditions on the presidency,” said Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Mohamed Attia. “Once the law is passed by the assembly, it must be scrutinised by the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) to determine its constitutionality.” Echoing the opinion of most MPs, Attia added that “any undue haste in passing the law will make people think it was tailored to serve the needs of a particular group or to prevent a particular person from contesting the presidency.” Read More »

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US President Barack Obama’s Facebook page has been swamped with comments from supporters of a candidate in Egypt’s presidential election. It follows news that Hazem Abu Ismail may be barred from the poll because one of his parents held dual nationality. Egypt’s electoral commission has said Mr Abu Ismail’s late mother became a naturalised US citizen in October 2006. But his supporters are calling on Mr Obama to support their claim that the immigration paperwork is fraudulent. Read More »

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Egypt’s electoral commission on Sunday said 23 people registered to run for the upcoming presidential elections, hours after the doors have officially closed for candidacy registrations. Each candidate is hoping to lead the Arab world’s most populous nation through a fragile transition following an uprising that toppled long-time president Hosni Mubarak last year. The candidates include former Arab League chief Amr Moussa, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Khairat el-Shater, former Brotherhood member Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh and Mubarak’s last prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq. Former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, a stalwart of the Mubarak regime and seen as close to the ruling military, registered less than half an hour before the 2:00 pm (1200 GMT) deadline. Suleiman. 74, announced he planned to run on Friday, saying overwhelming public pressure had aroused his sense of soldierly duty. He had needed to collect the signatures of 30,000 eligible voters by Sunday’s deadline in order to take part. Read More »

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The Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate for the Egyptian presidency has registered for the election set for late May. Khairat al-Shater, who announced he was running for the presidency less than a week ago, presented his papers to the electoral commission on Thursday. The party had previously said it would not field a candidate in the vote. Meanwhile, doubts were cast over the eligibility of Salafist contender Hazem Abu Ismail, after electoral officials said his mother was a US citizen. The ruling is likely to bar Mr Abu Ismail from the race, since a law made last year stipulates that a candidate, or his parents, may not have citizenship of any country other than Egypt. Read More »

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The Muslim Brotherhood is eyeing the total domination of Egyptian politics after breaking a key post-revolution pledge and putting forward a candidate for next month’s presidential elections. Leaders of the once-banned organisation, which enjoys widespread grassroots support and already controls nearly 50 per cent of seats in parliament, said categorically last year that there would be no official Muslim Brotherhood candidate in next month’s poll. The move was designed to assuage opponents who feared the organisation’s considerable might would translate into political hegemony. But at a press conference over the weekend, officials from the Brotherhood’s political wing announced the candidacy of Khayrat el-Shater, a multi-millionaire businessman, deputy to the Supreme Guide and a man described as the power behind the Brotherhood’s throne.  Read More »

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Egypt’s military rulers on Wednesday lifted a ban preventing Ayman Nour from running for the presidency, opening the way for a presidential bid by the liberal politician who came a distant second to Hosni Mubarak in a 2005 election. Nour mounted the most serious challenge to Mubarak that year. He was sentenced a few months later to five years in prison on charges of forgery that were widely viewed as trumped up as part of a political vendetta. Under Egyptian law, a former convict cannot run for the presidency until five years after the end of their jail term – Nour was released in February 2009 on health grounds. But the pardon issued on Wednesday will allow him to run. Read More »

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Presidential elections will be held in Egypt in May – the first since Hosni Mubarak was removed in last year’s popular uprising – and it looks as if the list of candidates will be a long one. Outside the office of the Presidential Election Commission, close to where President Mubarak used to have his residence, the candidates come out in a steady stream, brandishing the papers they need to begin their run for election to be the next president of Egypt. Sami Ibrahim Abdul Latif is a man of humble origins, from a simple village in the Nile Delta, wearing the traditional Egyptian galabeya. He scrapes a living reciting the Koran in graveyards. His programme is to support the poor – people like himself, he says. His campaign team consists just of himself. He has no campaign funds whatsoever. Read More »

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The Muslim Brotherhood might make a policy U-turn and contest May’s presidential election, senior members said on Wednesday, as the group had yet to see a name among the declared candidates it was prepared to back. The Brotherhood, which dominated the first parliamentary vote after Hosni Mubarak’s ouster last year, had said it would not run in what is billed as Egypt’s first free and fair presidential race. The first round of voting is on May 23-24. The group instead said it would endorse one of the other candidates running. Analysts said the Brotherhood did not want to run to avoid alienating those in the electorate who are wary about Islamists sweeping the new political scene. But the Brotherhood has yet to declare support for any of the candidates who have lined up so far and who include Amr Moussa, a former Arab League chief who describes himself as a liberal nationalist, and Abdel Moneim Abol Fotoh, who was expelled from the Brotherhood when he defied the ban on running. Read More »

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At least 500 Egyptians have taken the first step to run for president, a sign of the excitement generated by the country’s first presidential elections in which the outcome is in doubt, election officials said on Wednesday. They said the 500 have obtained applications to officially declare their candidacy for the vote, which follows last year’s ouster of longtime authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak. Beside known presidential hopefuls who have been seriously campaigning, the applicants included a wide range of obscure Egyptians in different professions like journalists, judges, lawyers and school teachers, they said. The election is scheduled for May 23-24. Independent applicants must secure the endorsement of 30 lawmakers or 30,000 people in at least 15 of Egypt’s 18 provinces in order to run. Applicants from political parties with at least one member in parliament are exempt from these endorsements. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. Read More »

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A street scene with posters of moderate Islamist Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh

The first ever free presidential elections in Egypt have begun, with candidates now able to submit their applications. Politicians from the era of the deposed president Hosni Mubarak, ex-military officers and moderate and hardline Islamists are expected to become the frontrunners in a vote due to start on 23 May. The elections follow decades of authoritarian rule, with all of the country’s former presidents elevated from the ranks of the military and usually approved by referendum. Read More »

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An Egyptian court has ruled that the voting system that elected the new parliament was unconstitutional, creating a fresh source of uncertainty as Egypt tries to set up a governing system a year after Hosni Mubarak was toppled. Judge Magdy el-Agaty of the High Administrative Court said the elaborate system that apportioned seats among individuals and political parties violated the constitution. He referred parts of the election law to the Supreme Constitutional Court for a final judgment. It was not immediately clear if the ruling could eventually lead to courts overturning the results of the elections, which were held over three stages from late November to January. Egyptian politicians speculated that the ruling could hold up the functioning of parliament, which is supposed to name a council to draw up a new constitution. Read More »

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The second round of elections for Egypt’s upper house, the Shura Council, began Tuesday. The end of this round, after runoffs, will mark the official conclusion of polling for Egypt’s first post-Hosni Mubarak Parliament, for which elections began in late November last year. Polling will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday in 14 governorates: Aswan, Beheira, Beni Suef, Giza, Ismailia, Kafr al-Sheikh, Luxor, Matrouh, Minya, Port Said, Qalyubiya, Sharqiya, Sohag and Suez. Read More »

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Presidential hopeful Amr Moussa has called on Egypt’s ruling military, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), to hand over power to an elected president before the end of April. Speaking at a press conference on Saturday, the former Arab League chief said Egypt is enduring unprecedented challenges that might “threaten the stability of the entire nation.” He was commenting on Wednesday’s deadly football clashes in Port Said which left around 73 dead and scores injured following an Egyptian Premier League game between Cairo giants Ahly and Masry. Read More »

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Egypt’s military leader told electoral officials Monday to speed preparations for presidential elections after a new eruption of street protests demanding that the ruling generals move more quickly to hand power to an elected government. The military rulers had previously promised to hold presidential elections for their successor by the end of June. But Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the head of the ruling military council, asked election commission officials “to quickly finish legal procedures for presidency nominations,” according to Egypt’s state-run news agency MENA.  Read More »

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Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei on Saturday withdrew his candidacy from Egypt’s coming presidential race in protest over the autocratic governance that has persisted under Egypt’s post-revolutionary military leadership. Though Mr. ElBaradei wasn’t considered among the top contenders for presidential elections scheduled for this spring, his global stature makes his pullout a symbolic blow to the military leadership and its often faltering stewardship of the country’s transition to democracy. Read More »

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Army soldiers transport a ballot box to a counting centre at Shubra in El-Kalubia

Islamists aimed to cement control over Egypt’s lower house of parliament as a final phase of voting began on Tuesday, while a secular party’s plan to boycott elections for the upper chamber threatened to weaken the liberal bloc. Banned under Hosni Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood has emerged as a major winner from the uprising that toppled him, exploiting a well-organised support base in the first free legislative vote in decades. Read More »

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Security forces stepped up their presence outside polling stations Wednesday for the third round of People’s Assembly elections, after monitors said supporters of various candidates seemed likely to clash. Monitors said the increase in security presence began last night and continued into Wednesday.

Polling stations in nine governorates opened at 8 am for the second day in the final round of voting. The nine governorates included in this round are Qalyubiya, Gharbiya, Daqahlia, North Sinai, South Sinai, Minya, Matrouh, Qena and New Valley.

Police and military officials made several statements about the heightened security measures taken after fighting and bickering took place outside polling stations in Daqahlia and Qena governorates. Security forces also prevented clashes between Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and Nour Party supporters at polling stations in Daqahlia. Read More »

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The Muslim Brotherhood worked to stretch its lead Tuesday as Egyptians returned to the polls in the final phase of the first parliamentary elections since the ouster of former president Hosni Mubarak and prosecutors asked a court to deliver “the harshest penalty” against him. As the polls opened, some analysts suggested that the party founded by the Brotherhood, Egypt’s mainstream Islamist group and best-organized political force, could come away with a clean majority of the seats in the full Parliament instead of the plurality indicated by previous results.

Some estimates indicated that the Brotherhood’s party, Freedom and Justice, started the day with nearly 50 percent of the seats awarded in the first two rounds of the vote. It won roughly 40 percent of the seats allocated by party voting, and a higher percentage of the seats contested by individual candidates. And the final nine governorates voting on Tuesday included the historic Brotherhood strongholds of Gharbiya and Daqahliyya in the Delta, where a number of the group’s best known candidates are running, including the former member of Parliament Mohamed Beltaggi. Read More »

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Supporters of Egypt's former President Hosni Mubarak shout slogans outside the police academy in Cairo

Egyptians vote Tuesday in the third round of a parliamentary election that has so far handed Islamists the biggest share of seats in an assembly that will be central in the 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 run-up to the third round has been overshadowed by the deaths of 17 people last month in clashes between the army and protesters demanding the military step aside immediately. But the ruling generals have insisted the election process will not be derailed by violence. Monitors mostly praised the first two rounds as free of the ballot stuffing, thuggery and vote rigging that once guaranteed landslide wins for Mubarak’s party.

But police raids on pro-democracy and rights groups last week have disrupted the work of leading Western-backed election monitors and drew accusations that the army was deliberately trying to weaken oversight of the vote and silence critics. Read More »

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A woman walks past soldiers standing guard at a polling station during the second round of the parliamentary run-off election at Al Doki in Giza

Egypt’s army rulers issued a decree on Sunday to hasten the conclusion of parliamentary elections after deadly clashes in Cairo last month raised pressure for a quicker handover to civilian control. Final run-offs to the assembly’s upper house will end on February 22 instead of March 12 as previously planned, the ruling military council said in a statement, and the house will hold its first sitting on February 28.

Fifty-nine people were killed in confrontations in late November and December between security forces and protesters demanding the military leave power sooner. Many Egyptians voiced outrage at video footage of soldiers beating men and women after they had already collapsed on the ground, some dragging a female protester by her black full-body veil, exposing her bra then clubbing and kicking her. Read More »

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Chairman of the Centre Party Abu-Ela Madhi said that his party would demand to add a new article to the new Constitution to activate the electronic voting in the next parliamentary elections.

Madhi said, in a statement reported by the Middle East News Agency (MENA), that the e-voting guarantees that elections are based on the principle of transparency and justice of all contestants. Read More »

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Egyptians trickled into polling stations in the run-off of a staggered election marred by clashes between protesters and security forces that have left 15 people dead in five days. Polling took place in a third of the country’s 27 provinces, with a visibly lower turnout than in previous rounds, AFP reporters said.

The run-off in the second phase of legislative polls, taking place over two days, will see the two largest Islamist parties go head to head for 59 seats in the lower house. The ruling military has decided on a complex election system in which voters cast ballots for party lists, which will comprise two-thirds of parliament, and also for individual candidates for the remaining third of the lower house. Read More »

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