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Registration for Egypt's parliamentary polls to open in mid-October: Source Informed sources said the door for registration for Egypt's upcoming parliamentary elections is expected to open in the second half of October
Informed sources close to the Higher Election Committee (HEC), a seven-member judicial body mandated with overseeing Egypt's polls, told Ahram Online that the HEC has begun intensive meetings in preparation for announcing the registration dates for the country's upcoming parliamentary polls. "If everything goes well and if the new electoral districts law is finally ratified by president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, we will be ready any time before Eid Al-Adha on 4 October or afterward to announce the dates of registration, campaigning and the vote," a member of HEC's secretariat-general told Ahram Online on Saturday. HEC's preparations come after president El-Sisi told a national celebration on Farmer's Day on 18 September that parliamentary polls will be held before the end of this year. "This is a constitutional obligation and it should be implemented on schedule before the end of this year," said El-Sisi. The Egyptian president's words came in response to representatives of farmers calling for the delay of the polls for one year "or until security conditions improve." El-Sisi went on to say, "I completely reject voices which call for the delay of the polls because reasons announced for this delay are by no means logical, not to mention that the constitution must be respected." El-Sisi urged farmers – and all the Egyptian voters – to actively participate in the coming parliamentary polls, the last part of a political roadmap that has been adopted since the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July, 2013. The first two parts included the passing of a new constitution in a public referendum last January and the election of a new president last May. El-Sisi said that since the constitution provided the new parliament with greater powers in terms of legislation and supervision "people must take the utmost care in electing their deputies." HEC's source told Ahram Online that "if everything goes smoothly, the door for registration in parliamentary polls could open in the second week of October and last for one week to ten day; by the end of October or by the first week of November, a final list of candidates could be issued." Next, the source added, campaigning will be slated to kick off from the second week of November and last until early December. "Then comes the first stage of the vote, which is expected to begin in the first or second week of December," said the HEC sources. The parliamentary polls, which will be placed under full judicial supervision, will be held over three stages, with each stage including nine governorates. It will take around one month or a little more for the polls to be completed and for Egypt to see its first parliament in two years. The election law specifies that 75 percent of seats (420 seats) be elected via the individual candidacy system and 20 percent (120 seats) be reserved for party-based candidates. The remaining 5 percent (27 seats) is allocated to presidential appointees. Several political parties have been complaining that the law is discriminatory and biased toward party-based candidates. A group of parties urged El-Sisi to amend the law, recommending that the number of seats reserved to party lists increase from 20 percent to at least 30 percent. The HEC source, however, said "from a personal point of view, I think it would be quite difficult to amend the law in such a short time." The source, however, said "everybody has the right to go to the High Court and ask it to review the law to see whether it is constitutional or not." "If found in violation of the constitution, the law would be revoked and the polls delayed for at least two months," said the HEC source. The HEC source indicated that the election law – or the House of Representatives Law – was reviewed in constitutional and legal terms by the State Council's Department of Legislations and Fatwas and it found that it goes in line with the new constitution. "Besides, I have no information that anybody has announced he or she will ask the High Court to decide whether the law is constitutional," said the HEC source http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/111282.aspx
