Polls on schedule, Preparations Underway for Egypt's Parliamentary Election
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- Category: World Election News
- Last Updated: Thursday, 22 January 2015 21:03
Polls on schedule, Preparations Underway for Egypt's Parliamentary Election
Egypt’s preparations for upcoming parliamentary polls will begin after the one-week Eid Al-Adha holiday, Gamal Essam El-Din reports Several government officials made sure this week that Egypt’s upcoming parliamentary polls will be held before the end of the year and that they will not be postponed to 2015.
On 14 September, Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb said that the parliamentary elections will be held this year, as scheduled, and that the government will take all possible measures to ensure that the polls are marked by integrity and transparency. A day later, Minister of Transitional Justice and House of Representatives Affairs Ibrahim Al-Heneidi denied the rumour that parliamentary polls will be postponed to 2015.
Al-Heneidy explained that the Higher Election Committee (HEC), a seven-member judicial body in charge of overseeing the polls, is expected to complete the procedures necessary for the elections to be held before the end of the year. Informed sources said they expect that the HEC will meet after the holiday of Eid Al-Adha, scheduled to begin on 4 October.
“The current draft of the House of Representatives law does not allow this to be achieved as it reserves 75 per cent of seats to independents and stipulates that for a political party to win the seats of a certain district it must gain more than 50 per cent of the votes of citizens in this district,” said Ashour.
Egypt: Preparations Underway for Egypt's Parliamentary Election
The Supreme Elections Commission (SEC) is making intensive and continued efforts to prepare for Egypt's upcoming parliamentary polls, said SCE spokesman Medhat Edris. The SEC is tasked with organizing the process. The date of the parliamentary election has not yet been specified. The SCE is currently working on updating and modifying the voter database, he said.
It is also studying the proposed dates and timetable for the election, putting all the rules and procedures to ensure integrity of the vote, and setting controls for the electronic voting system, he added. Egypt's new House of Representatives will be composed of 567 members.
The new house law specifies that 75 percent of seats (420) will be elected via the individual candidacy system, while 20 percent (120) will be via the Party-list proportional representation system. The remaining five percent (27) will be appointed by the president.