Run-off of the first stage of Egypt's new House of Representatives elections has kicked off for Egyptian expats in 124 countries in order to choose the representatives of the as-of-yet undecided individual seats in 13 governorates. Egyptian expats are able to print their ballot papers for the run-off on 19-20 November, with ballots to be sent to embassies on 21-23 November, according to the elections' timetable announced by the country's National Elections Authority (NEA). The governorates included in the current run-off are Giza, Fayoum, Beni Suef, Minya, Assiut, El-Wadi El-Gedid, Sohag, Qena, Luxor, Aswan, Red Sea, Alexandria, Beheira and Matrouh. Voting abroad in the first phase's run-off is scheduled to end on Monday, while voting is slated at home for Monday and Tuesday. The 596-seat assembly is chosen equally through two stages via the individual candidacy, and the closed party list system, while 28 seats (five percent) will be named by the president, as per the recent amendments to the elections law. The first and second stages of the parliament elections, held in October and November, resulted in naming 73 individual MPs (32 of them in the first stage and 41 in the second), while 211 are still up for grabs in the run-offs. Competition in the run-off rounds of the first and second stages of the election are limited to individual candidates, after the electoral list led by Mostaqbal Watan Party has secured an easy win of 284 seats reserved to four-party list districts, thus getting half of parliament's seats. Some 110 seats are contested in the run-off round of the first stage, while the remaining -101- will be contested in the run-off round of the second stage, scheduled to be held between 5 and 8 December in 13 governorates: Cairo, Qalioubiya, Daqahliya, Menoufiya, Gharbiya, Kafr El-Sheikh, Sharqiya, Damietta, Port Said, Ismailiya, Suez, North Sinai, and South Sinai.
