The Egyptian presidency issued on Tuesday a list of the new Senate members selected by presidential appointment. The Senate, which was created in accordance with constitutional amendments approved last year, will act as an advisory chamber to the House of Representatives. It will sit in place of the Shura Council, the upper house of parliament that was dissolved in 2014. Two-thirds of the 300-member chamber are elected via the individual candidacy and the closed party list systems, and the rest are appointed by the president. The members appointed by President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi include prominent figures in the country like actors Yahia El-Fakharany and Samira Abdel-Aziz; CEO of Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper Abdel-Moneim Said; editor-in-chief of Shorouk newspaper Emad El-Din Hussein; leader of the leftist Tagammou Party El-Sayed Abdel-Aal; former leader the Wafd Party Bahaa Abu Shokaa; as well as Hoda Abdel-Nasser, the daughter of late president Gamal Abdel-Nasser, and Bishop Kamel Michel. The first Senate session, where senators will be sworn in, is set to be held in October. The first five-year term of the Senate will end in 2025. One-month-long Senate elections were concluded on 16 September. Pro-government Mostaqbal Watan (Future of Homeland) Party candidates won the majority (around 70 percent) of 200 open seats, followed by the People's Republican Party (six seats), Al-Wafd (six seats), and independents (six seats). The political parties of El-Tagammu, the Congress, Modern Egypt, Reform and Development, Guardians of the Nation, the National Movement, and the Egyptian Social Democratic Party took the remaining seats.
