Gearing up for the Senate elections - Egypt - Al-Ahram Weekly
Candidate registration for Egypt's Senate (the upper house of parliament) elections will take place between 5 and 10 July. Voting for Egyptians living abroad will be on 1-2 August, and for those inside the country on 4-5 August. Polling stations will be open during election days from 9am to 9pm.
The National Elections Authority (NEA) will receive nomination papers for candidates at the first instance courts during the five-day registration period daily from 9am to 5pm, except for the final day (10 July), which will be from 9am to 2pm. An initial list of candidates will be announced on 11 July, while campaigning will kick off on 18 July and continue until 31 July.
The results of the Senate elections will be announced in the Official Gazette on 12 August. The run-off is scheduled to be held for Egyptians abroad on 25-26 August, and in Egypt on 27-28 August. The final results will be announced on 4 September.
In a press conference on Tuesday, head of the NEA Hazem Badawi said an estimated 11,000 judges from the State Lawsuits Authority and the Administrative Prosecution Authority will take charge of supervising the polls.
Representatives from civil society organisations, NGOs, international organisations, and media institutions will be allowed to monitor the polls.
To be eligible to run, prospective candidates must undergo medical checks to show that they are psychologically capable of performing their duties as Senate members. Candidates are required to undergo these check-ups at hospitals and laboratories specified by the Health Ministry.
Candidate application papers should include documents such as a curriculum vitae (CV) and a copy of a criminal record, if applicable. A candidate must also indicate whether he or she intends to run as an independent or as affiliated with a political party.
The documents should also comprise financial disclosure statements from the candidate and his or her family, and a military service certificate or an exemption where applicable. Candidates will be required to pay a LE30,000 deposit as insurance.
President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi ratified two laws on 10 June regulating the elections to the Senate and the redrawing of its constituencies. The Senate shall consist of 300 members, two thirds of whom shall be elected by direct secret ballot, while the president shall appoint the remaining third (100 members) provided that no less than 10 of the total number of seats shall be allocated to women, the laws state.
Egypt is divided into 27 districts designated for individual candidate elections (independents), while four districts will be reserved for electing candidates on closed party lists. Two of these districts are allocated 74 seats (37 each), and the other two districts are allocated 26 seats (13 each).
The Senate elections come after parliament approved amendments to the election laws last month. The amendments stated that a mixture of two systems — the individual and the closed party list — would be adopted in the next parliamentary elections (for both the Senate and the House of Representatives).
The amendments came under sharp attack from some political parties, which argued that there was no serious competition under the closed list system and that the election results would be a foregone conclusion.
People could lose interest in the Senate elections and there would be a low turnout, they said.
The closed list system means that a party that wins 51 per cent of the votes in any district takes all that district's seats. Some opposition parties said they wanted the adoption of a proportional list system in which each party list would be allocated seats in proportion to the votes it wins per district.
Pro-government parties like Mostaqbal Watan (the Nation's Future) and Homat Watan (the Protectors of the Nation) said they are coordinating in preparation for the Senate elections. 'We and other political parties will seek to form a unified national list to contest the upcoming Senate elections,' said Ahmed Shalabi, the parliamentary spokesperson of Homat Watan.
Meanwhile, the leadership of the parliamentary majority party of Mostaqbal Watan will hold a meeting this week to finalise arrangements for the upcoming Senate elections, with a focus on selecting candidates based on competence and integrity.
Mustafa Kamel Al-Sayed, a political science professor and a member of the Civil Democratic Movement which includes several opposition parties, said the movement was monitoring developments related to the Senate elections but had not made a final decision regarding participation.
The position is still under internal discussion, Al-Sayed said, given the objection to the closed list system implemented in some constituencies, which the movement does not view as reflecting pluralism.
Al-Sayed said there was a trend within the movement in favour of participating in the elections in individual seats if a decision is made to run in the elections as a whole, especially since the chances of achieving winning results may be greater than through the lists, which are expected to be dominated by parties close to the government.
He added that the movement faces challenges related to limited resources and a lack of an organised presence in some constituencies. However, he believes that participating in the elections could represent an opportunity for the movement to publicise its positions and expand its popular base, even if it does not achieve victory.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 3 July, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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