The National Election Authority (NEA) in charge of supervising Egypt’s parliamentary polls has decided to annul the results of the elections in individual seats in 19 districts across the seven governorates of Giza, Fayoum, Assiut, Sohag, Qena, Alexandria, and Beheira.
“There were cases of major voter manipulation and errors in vote tallying, violations of campaigning rules, the failure to provide candidates or their representatives with a copy of the vote count, and other fundamental flaws that required the election to be annulled in these 19 districts, equivalent to 26 per cent of the total,” said NEA Chairman Hazem Badawi in a press conference on Tuesday.
Badawi said the election in the 19 districts would be held again on 1-2 December for Egyptians abroad and 3-4 December for Egyptians at home. In case of a run-off, it will be held on 24-25 December abroad and 27-28 December at home.
Badawi also declared that the National Unified List for Egypt, the only party list coalition running in the election, had won 142 seats unopposed after getting 20 per cent of the vote or more than the five per cent required by the Election Law.
On Monday, one day ahead of the announcement of the results of the first stage, President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi took people by surprise when he called on the NEA to review appeals, complaints, and accusations filed by several candidates over alleged “violations and fraud” in the first stage of the polls, hinting at the possibility of annulling some or even all of the results.
The move was widely welcomed, with some observers using it to call for “comprehensive reform” of the country’s political life and the election process, which is based on a mix between the individual and party list candidacy systems.
The first phase of the parliamentary elections took place on 10-11 November, with 1,281 individual candidates running in 70 districts in 14 governorates, in addition to one list, the National Unified List for Egypt, running in two districts.
Al-Sisi’s sudden announcement came following the spread of video recordings alleging irregularities in several districts. The president confirmed in a statement on his official social-media account that he had received “reports of events that took place in some electoral districts where there was competition between individual candidates.”
Al-Sisi called on the NEA to thoroughly examine the incidents and the appeals submitted, urging it to make decisions that honestly reflect the true will of the voters. He also stressed the need to enhance the transparency of the election procedures.
He did not rule out any measure that the authority might deem necessary to ensure the integrity of the electoral process, “whether through the complete annulment of the first stage of the elections or the partial annulment in one or more districts and their subsequent rerun.”
He called on the authority to “announce the measures it has taken regarding the violations of the election campaigning, so that effective oversight of this campaigning is achieved and violations are not repeated in the second round.”
The NEA immediately responded to Al-Sisi’s call, with Badawi stating in a press conference that the authority was “examining the complaints”. He said that “no violation will be covered up, and no candidate will be elected against the will of the Egyptian people.”
Over the past few days, activists and bloggers have been sharing video recordings showing candidates complaining of “violations and forgery” in the first phase of the elections.
Other videos show voters receiving money in front of polling stations in Giza governorate in return for voting for a certain candidate. Another video shows a candidate in Beheira governorate appealing to Al-Sisi to intervene to correct the vote, and another shows early vote counting inside a polling station in Alexandria’s Montazah district, which was confirmed by the NEA before it decided to exclude the ballot box in question.
A fourth video shows an independent candidate, Nashwa Al-Deeb, telling the public in a rally that she had decided to withdraw from the race in the Imbaba district in Giza due to the “gross irregularities” that had marred the election process.
“The election has turned into a financial auction where seats are sold for between LE20 and LE50 million, and votes are sold for LE200 and LE300,” Al-Deeb said.
Al-Ahram political analyst Amr Hashem Rabie said that “what happened in the first phase of the election shows the importance of the NEA intervening to stop any violations and to play a full regulatory and supervisory role, not just an administrative and organisational one.”
He attributed the irregularities in the parliamentary elections to the adoption of the closed list system, which had led to the proliferation of bribes and vote-buying. “This is an election without competition and with millionaires buying seats on the National Unified List to win unopposed or paying for votes in individual districts,” Rabie said.
Agreeing with Rabie, lawyer and human-rights activist Khaled Ali said that the path to the true expression of the will of the voters begins with abolishing the closed list system in favour of fully adopting the individual candidacy system to reflect competition.
There was a need to enable the candidates or their representatives to attend the vote-counting process and to appeal the election results directly to the judiciary, he said.
Prominent politician Hossam Badrawi deplored the fact that the National Dialogue held in 2023 and 2024 had failed to achieve any tangible political results. “Hopes were high that this dialogue would adopt radical political reforms, but the state’s bureaucratic institutions preferred to maintain the status quo,” he said.
He argued that irregularities in the first round of the parliamentary election were a direct result of the closed list system. “This system turns the election into a kind of endorsement, or rather a disguised form of appointment,” he said, adding that he had hopes that President Al-Sisi would launch a campaign to entirely reform political life and the election system.
“We want the return of the individual candidacy system to make the parliamentary elections competitive,” Badrawi said.
He said that the proliferation of bribes and vote-buying was a result of the closed list system. “When you have only one party list, and when you know that this list will win anyway, voters lose confidence in the entire election process,” he said, adding that “even if there is one list, it should get at least 40 per cent — rather than just five per cent — of the vote to be declared the winner.”
Badrawi called for putting the parliamentary elections under international oversight. “There should be international monitors to give credibility to the results of the election,” he said.
In the meantime, voters in 13 governorates will head to the polls next week in the second round of the parliamentary elections. Egyptians abroad will vote on 21-22 November and those at home on 24-25 November.
Some 141 individual seats in 73 districts are being contested by 1,316 candidates on the National Unified List, the only one running in the elections, and they will also be standing in the second round in two districts to contest 142 seats.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 20 November, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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