An estimated 35 million voters in 14 governorates were to head to the polls this week to cast their ballots in the first round of Egypt’s parliamentary elections.
The National Elections Authority (NEA) said on Tuesday that 139 polling stations located in Egyptian embassies and consulates in 117 countries worldwide had opened for voting by expatriates on Friday and Saturday, 7 and 8 November.
Voters at home followed suit in the first round of the elections for the House of Representatives on Monday and Tuesday this week (10 and 11 November), with the results of the first round of voting to be announced on 18 November at the latest.
Any run-offs are scheduled for 1-2 December for Egyptians abroad and 3-4 December for those at home, with the final result of the first stage to be declared by 11 December.
In a press conference on Sunday, Judge Ahmed Bendari, executive director of the NEA, announced that 5,606 polling stations were operating in 14 governorates for the first round.
It comprises 70 constituencies, with 1,281 candidates running for 142 individual seats in the 14 governorates of Giza, Beni Sweif, Fayoum, Minya, Assuit, Sohag, Qena, Luxor, Aswan, the Red Sea, the New Valley, Alexandria, Beheira, and Marsa Matrouh.
The round also includes two large constituencies with candidates running for another 142 seats, this time reserved for two party lists, the first representing 11 governorates in Upper Egypt (north, central, and south) and the second representing three governorates in the West Delta region, Bendari said.
The polls are supervised by around 9,600 judges, and local and foreign media, human-rights organisations, and candidate representatives are free to monitor the elections. The candidates will have the right to lodge appeals against NEA decisions with the administrative courts, Bendari said.
Of the 568 seats up for grabs in the two-stage poll, half –— 284 seats — are allocated to individual candidates in 143 districts, and another half to party lists in four districts.
Campaigning for the second stage of the polls also started this week. It kicked off on 6 November and will end on 20 November. Semi-official figures suggest that 1,316 individual candidates and one coalition, the National Unified List for Egypt led by the Mostaqbal Watan Party, will compete in the second stage’s 13 governorates of Cairo, Qalyoubia, Daqahliya, Menoufiya, Gharbiya, Kafr El-Sheikh, Sharqiya, Damietta, Port Said, Suez, Ismailia, North Sinai and South Sinai.
Of the 284 seats up for grabs in the second round, half — 142 seats — are allocated to individual candidates in 73 districts, and half to party lists in the two districts of Cairo and the North, Middle, and South Delta, covering six governorates and returning 102 MPs, and the East Delta, covering seven governorates and returning 40 MPs.
Some 34 political parties are fielding candidates in the two-stage elections. The pro-government Mostaqbal Watan Party, which currently holds majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate, is fielding 121 candidates (59 for the first stage and 62 for the second) on the National Unified List for Egypt, the largest number for any party.
Dozens of Mostaqbal Watan candidates are also running in all 143 individual districts.
The political parties gathered together as Homat Watan (Protectors of the Nation), the National Front, the People’s Republican, and the Wafd, are also fielding candidates for both the individual and party list seats.
In Cairo, where 31 candidates are running on the National Unified List for Egypt, 16 are affiliated with Mostaqbal Watan, seven with Homat Watan, six with the National Front, one with the People’s Republican Party, and one as an independent.
The Cairo candidates on the list include some high-profile names like former housing minister and Chair of the National Front Party Assem Al-Gazzar, former oil minister Tarek Al-Mola, former parliamentary affairs minister Alaaeddin Fouad, and Chair of the outgoing Parliamentary Human Rights Committee Tarek Radwan.
It also includes businessmen like construction and real estate magnates Tarek Shouky and Mohamed Maher Hamed, and stock market businesswoman Nevine Al-Tahery.
As many as 230 candidates are also competing for 31 individual seats in Cairo, with 16 of them affiliated with Mostaqbal Watan and nine with Homat Watan and 134 as independents.
Senator Hossam Al-Khouli, Mostaqbal Watan’s deputy chairman, said his party has more members and offices across Egypt than any other and will finance its campaigns out of the donations it has received.
Al-Khouli’s comments came amid widespread speculation that the major political parties had forced their members to pay in return for running on the National Unified List or even as individuals.
The NEA has set a spending limit of LE500,000 for individual campaigns, falling to LE200,000 in the event of a re-run. The 102-seat party list spending limit is capped at LE17,000,000, to be reduced to LE6,800,000 in the case of a run-off. The 40-seat party list spending cap is LE6,667,000 and LE2,667,000 for a re-run.
Campaign donations are restricted to Egyptian nationals and cannot exceed five per cent of the funding ceiling.
Mohamed Anwar Al-Sadat, chairman of the liberal Reform and Development Party, complained in a TV interview this week that most political parties in Egypt are “underfunded”.
“You can’t field candidates if you have no money to spend on their campaigns, which is why most political parties opted to join the Mostaqbal Watan-led National Unified List for Egypt Coalition and compete for party list seats,” he said.
Al-Ahram political analyst Amr Hashem Rabie deplored the fact that the NEA had disqualified three lists and accepted only one.
“It disqualified the Generation List, headed by the Democratic Generation Party, which was formed to compete in the East and West Delta constituencies,” Rabie said, also indicating that the “NEA also rejected the Your Voice of Egypt list in the West Delta, headed by the Arab Socialist Party of Egypt, and thus accepting only one list that is the National Unified List for Egypt.”
Rabie believes that the NEA cited flimsy, bureaucratic, and procedural reasons for rejecting the other two lists.
“Had it accepted them, the poll would have been more competitive, at least superficially, which would undoubtedly have been far better than the procedure it in fact adopted — that is accepting one list,” Rabie said, contending that “the procedure adopted by the NEA has turned the election into a kind of endorsement, or rather, a disguised set of appointments.”
“It has also diminished the poll’s momentum and, among many other things, has branded it as lacking competition, objectivity, and integrity,” Rabie said.
The National Unified List for Egypt Coalition comprises 12 political parties from across the political spectrum plus independents. They include Mostaqbal Watan, Homat Watan, the National Front, the People’s Republican, the Egyptian Freedom, the Egyptian National Democratic, the leftist Tagammu, the liberal New Wafd, the Reform and Development, the Al-Adl (Justice), the Congress, and the Generation’’s Will Parties.
Sayed Abdel-Aal, Chair of the leftist Tagammu Party, told Al-Ahram Weekly that most political parties are facing an economic crisis and had opted to join the National Unified List for Egypt Coalition in the hope of securing a foothold in parliament.
“We have repeatedly asked for an amendment to the law to cancel the list system in favour of implementing the individual candidacy system in all of Egypt, so that the political parties can compete in small constituencies,” Abdel-Aal said.
NEA regulations forbid the use of slogans that discriminate on religious or racial grounds, the use of public-sector institutions or means of transport, and the involvement of mosques and churches in election campaigns.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 13 November, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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