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First stage: The first stage of voting takes place on October 17-18 for Egyptians abroad, and October 18-19 for domestic voters. Fourteen governorates in Upper Egypt and the West Delta will vote in the first stage, with 226 of the seats going to individual candidates and 60 to electoral lists.

Second Stage: The second stage of the elections will take place from November 21-22 for expatriate voters and November 22-23 for domestic voters. Voters in 13 governorates across Greater Cairo and East Delta will head to the polls in the second stage of elections.

The lists

We have 6 lists which will compete on 120 seats across the country.

Nour party

For the Nour party, nothing new. They got some Copts to legalise their lists The Salafi Al-Nour party offers between 300.000 to 3M pounds to join its electoral lists. Coptic Patriarch Tawadros: Christians who present themselves as candidates in the Salafist lists are not credible… and some women who are not allowed to show their face and most probably their voice too. For the Love of Egypt they are considered the strongest coalition and the more secured! As you see you can find the Free Egyptians party and Tamarood: so it’s ok!

Then we have Call of Egypt. So it’s the remnants of a revolution. We remember that Sabahy got around 4% in the last presidential elections. Egyptians are fed up with revolutions.

We have Egypt list which is another Sabahy version in which we found, for our surprise, Tamarrod “party” this time! Most probably one is more revolutionary than the other. Most of those parties are just “cartoon” parties with some enthusiastic persons.

Last remark for the lists is the fact that we have only one list in East Dealta “For the love of Egypt”. It means that they already won and we got their names: 8 men and 7 women among them three Copts women. Oh my God, we have already 7 women in this parliament.

Individuals

For the individuals the question we have is: how can we catch the Islamists among 2573 candidates competing for 448 seats? This will take us to the conclusion article: Where are the Islamists in Egypt’s upcoming parliamentary elections? Despite court rulings against the Muslim Brotherhood and its members, non-Islamists fear undeclared members may run as individuals. Aside from Brotherhood members, whose identity is difficult to ascertain anyway, no legal obstacles block Islamists from running and they certainly will not lack the funding to do so. Islamist candidates have the right to run in their constituencies and it remains hard to predict to what degree they will make up in the impending parliament. “What happened in the 2011 parliamentary elections won’t be repeated again, neither by the Brotherhood or Al-Nour,” political analyst Amar Ali Hassan told Ahram Online. Hassan believes Egyptian voters will not be so quick to forgive Islamists just two years on from mass protests against the rule of the Brotherhood’s Morsi. “Massive public support for Islamists led to an unprecedented landslide victory in 2011’s elections but ended in huge disappointment and led to mass protests against the Brotherhood and Islamists in July of 2013,” Hassan commented. The political analyst believes the Al-Nour Party will win some seats but not on the same scale as in 2011. In the end only the ballot box can tell the extent of the Islamist presence in the next parliament.

Paul Attallah