"Is that the guy we saw on TV last night?" whispers a dark veiled girl to her friend while passing by a black van carrying posters of Diaa Rashwan, Al-Tagammu Party candidate for Armant constituency, Luxor.
"I know him! He`s from Al-Nussairat family of West Armant! I think he's the man to beat this year," adds Mona Abdul Gawad, a second year student at the Secondary Industrial School for Girls. "A man who frequently appears on TV, and is well known across the country, will be able to solve our problems, bringing them to officials in Cairo."
Mona, along with her colleagues, believes Rashwan, who lives and works in Cairo, about 670 kilometres from Armant, is the one capable of fulfilling their dreams of a better life, from his office in Al-Ahram Centre for Strategic and Political Studies in the heart of the capital.
"Unemployment pushes everyone out of the local cities. So if there's some candidate who's able to build us factories, schools and banks and create job opportunities for young people in their hometown, then he's the one," adds Mona with sparkling eyes.
Frequently though, residents of Armant have voiced concerns over Rashwan being a non-Luxor resident, fearing that he might take the seat and forget about his people there.
"Who would guarantee that you will keep serving our community?" asks a man during a visit by Rashwan last Thursday to the village of Dabaeya. "I mean, you live in Cairo, and we're here in the far South. How will we communicate?" The confident answer comes from Rashwan: "You all know that some people who live between you are totally idle. In the meanwhile, I might be distant from you, but I've always been there!" adding, "[My] relations with the media and political life in Cairo will help bring the case of Armant to the parliament." Everybody claps.
"Vote for Dr Mamdouh Mahmoud for unemployment-free Qus. Owning one of the biggest contracting companies in Cairo, and one cement company in Aswan, Mamdouh will employ all young people in Qus," reads the campaign slogan of Mamdouh Mohamed Mahmoud, NDP candidate for Qus constituency, Qena, on his page on an elections website.
Mahmoud, son of Mohamed Mahmoud Hassan, one of the Aswan High Dam engineers during the time of Abdul Nasser, hasn’t only inherited the companies of his father; he also followed the same path of his father who, though he lived, studied and worked in Cairo, represented Qus in the Egyptian parliament since 1979 until he died earlier this year.
Mostafa Bakry, Al-Esbooa newspaper editor-in-chief and Helwan MP since 2005, took it the other way around. Established as he is inside the city of Qena, with large posters of himself over some buildings in the city, he refused to give up Helwan, one of the biggest constituencies in Cairo, for his hometown.
"Bakry has a strong presence in Helwan owing to the services he provides the community there. I don’t think it will be a wise decision to leave everything he's been building for years in Cairo and to go south, far away from his office and newspaper in the capital," says Ahmed Bakry, director of Al-Esbooa's head office in Qena. "He was also afraid of ruining his reputation, if he ran for Qena constituency while he doesn’t live here."