In search of a new electoral system for Egypt

A long-awaited political rights law stopped short of tackling the controversial issue of the type of electoral system to be used in the upcoming parliamentary elections

New legislative amendments governing the parliamentary elections scheduled for next September have at last been ratified by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). SCAF member Mamdouh Shahin, responsible for legislative affairs, said “the amendments will govern the election of Egypt's two houses of parliament – the People's Assembly and Shura Council – as well as the referendum to be held later this year on Egypt's new constitution.”
Answering questions in a press conference on 19 May, Shahin said Egypt's first parliamentary elections after the January 25 Revolution will be held no later than 30 Sep and will be placed under “full judicial supervision.” He added that “for this reason, they will be held in two or three stages to make sure the rule of ‘a judge for every voting box' is strictly observed.”
The rule of full judicial supervision was instituted by the Supreme Constitutional Court in 2000 and resulted in an increase in the number of opposition MPs – especially those affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood – in the parliaments of 2000 and 2005. In 2007, however, the regime of ex-president Hosni Mubarak introduced constitutional amendments that removed full judicial supervision and opened the way to wide-scale vote-rigging in 2010.
Shahin indicated that the new amendments of the 55-year-old law on political rights will be complemented by amendments oftwo other laws regulating the People's Assembly and Shura Council. He said the law on the People's Assembly will address whether the upcoming elections will be held in two or three stages.
Shahin explained that “pursuant to a constitutional declaration promulgated on 30 Mar, a Higher Electoral Commission (HEC) will be formed to take full charge of supervising the elections. HEC will be composed entirely of judges and supervised by the Chairman of Cairo's Appeal Court.” He added that HEC “will take full charge of the election process from A to Z.”
According to Shahin, this means that “the interior ministry will be completely excluded from exercising any role in these elections as had been the case in the past.”He indicated that “while military police will be entitled only to take charge of safeguarding polling stations against thuggery or violent acts, their actions will be taken pursuant to a judge's orders and they will not be allowed to enter polling stations.”
Shahin also stressed that “representatives of civil society – including human rights organisations and the media – will be allowed to freely monitor the parliamentary elections.” He added that candidates also will be permitted to send representatives to participate in overseeing polling stations and the vote-counting process.
Shahin boasted that it will be much easier for citizens to vote. For the first time, “they will need to show only their national identity cards without the need to present a voting card,” he explained.
According to Shahin, the amendments stopped short of specifying the electoral system to be adopted in the next parliamentary elections. “This issue will be left to the new law on the People's Assembly which is expected to be announced within a month.”He said the question whether the next parliament will have a quota of 64 seats for women also will be addressed in that law.
Concerning the controversial issue of whether Egyptians living abroad should be granted the right to vote, Shahin said this issue “still requires careful study by the HEC as it would be difficult to impose the ‘judge for every voting box' rule on polling stations in foreign countries.” In Shahin's words, “it is by no means credible that Egyptian ambassadorscould supervise voting or play the role of judges in foreign countries.”
The above amendments drew mixed reactions. Rifaat El-Said, chairman of the leftist Tagammu party, says “it is too bad the controversial issue of the electoral system to be used in the elections takes so much time. I think the electoral system should be regulated by the 1956 law on exercise of political rights rather than by the law on the People's Assembly.” He added that “in any event, all political forces should know as early as possible what electoral system will be adopted in order to prepare and design their campaign strategies for the upcoming elections.” El-Said says “we have only three months until the parliamentary elections are held and we should have known much earlier the system to be used.” He argues that “most political opposition parties favour scrapping the 20-year-old individual candidacy system in favour of a proportional party list system that requires citizens to elect candidates according to their political programmes rather than to tribal or familial relations.”
El-Said also believes the 46-seat quota for women in parliament should be scrapped. “We all know this quota was introduced by Mubarak's regime to institute a kind of sham democracy at the expense of genuine political reforms.”
El-Said laments that the amendments were announced without consulting opposition forces, which he considers an “undemocratic step.”
In his press conference, Shahin emphasized that the amendments were subjected to four weeks of intensive debate with civil society organisations and opposition political parties.
Gamal Zahran, a professor of politics at Suez Canal University, said “in general, the amendments on the political rights law are good. They create a positive, democratic climate for the elections, especially in terms of re-instituting full judicial supervision and creating a higher electoral committee composed entirely of judges,” said Zahran.
Zahran is also completely against a quota for women in parliament: “I think the principle of allocating a quota of seats for women or any other group – such as workers and farmers – should be completely phased out because all of these are part of the dictatorial legacy of the military rule which governed Egypt for six decades.”