After chairing the second meeting of the technical committee formed to finalise the new electoral district law Minister of Transitional Justice and House of Representatives Affairs Ibrahim Al-Heneidi announced that the new legislation will not be referred to President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi for ratification until it first wins the support of political parties. Details of the new law — the final stage of the political roadmap announced following the removal of Mohamed Morsi — are expected to be made public next week. On 14 October, Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb announced that the law would be finalised within three weeks. “Everyone knows the law is a prerequisite for parliamentary polls to be held,” said Al-Heneidi. “It is for this reason that we want to finalise the drafting process as soon as possible, but also ensure some kind of consensus over the legislation among political forces.” “Once a semi-final draft of the law is issued political forces will be able to give their opinions on it. They can submit their remarks, and any amendments to the draft they want to propose, via e-mail, fax or by hand within a period of two to three weeks.” “The committee is working to ensure the new law does not contravene the new constitution which requires that boundaries are drawn so as to strike a balance between the area and population of constituencies,” said Al-Heneidi. At the moment members of the committee are focusing on border governorates in order to finish the almost complete draft, says Al-Heneidi. “We want to guarantee that these governorates are represented fairly in the new parliament.” One source told Al-Ahram Weekly “the committee might resort to merging some border districts with scant population into larger units”. The seven-member technical committee, led by Al-Heneidi, also includes Mehleb's advisor for legislative and security affairs Rifaat Qomsan, Deputy Justice Minister for Legislative Affairs Hassan Badrawi, Deputy Chairman of the State Council (administrative courts) Mohamed Hossameddin, Deputy Interior Minister for Legal Affairs Ali Abdel-Moula, Ain Shams University professor of constitutional law Ali Abdel-Al and Mansoura University professor of public law Salaheddin Fawzi. The committee's secretariat-general is mandated with gathering all necessary data relating to population density and land area. Nagi Al-Shehabi, chairman of the Geel (Generation) Party, warns that the committee faces an uphill battle. “The existing electoral districts law, passed during Morsi's year of rule, was seriously flawed. It failed to ensure equal representation in terms of population numbers. In the Nile-delta governorate of Gharbiya, Bassioun district, home to 175,000 registered voters, was represented by two deputies, the same number as Al-Mahalla Al-Kobra, home to 385,000 registered voters.” “These anomalies are by no means exceptional. They must all be ironed out for the law to be judged constitutional.” Former independent MP Hamdi Al-Fakharani has filed a lawsuit asking for parliamentary polls to be delayed. “The existing law has enormous problems when it comes to districts reserved for party-based candidates,” says Al-Fakharani. “Currently party-based candidates will have to campaign across an area extending from Giza to Halayeb and Shalatin in south Egypt.” But the technical difficulty of establishing district boundaries that ensure equal representation is just one reason, and not the most important, and that is why Al-Fakharani believes the parliamentary poll should be delayed. “Fragile security conditions are the main factor in making a case to delay the elections,” says Al-Fakharani. “We have seen how terrorism has impacted on North Sinai. How can the vote be conducted in a governorate that is now in a state of emergency and subject to a curfew.” “Parliamentary polls should be delayed until security conditions improve, which would give added time to draft a law capable of winning the broad support of political forces. By the end of 2015 Egypt will be more politically stable and the legal framework more favourable to holding elections that are not subsequently mired in constitutional legal challenges.” Meanwhile, the Higher Election Committee (HEC), entrusted with supervising the parliamentary polls, this week asked citizens to review voter lists. HEC spokesperson Medhat Idris said “citizens can log-on to HEC's website to check that their names and voting centres are correct”. HEC also announced that mini-committees would be formed in each governorate “to represent the HEC, receive voter registration applications, review voter lists and supervise polling stations”. Each committee, says Idris, will be headed by the chairman of the governorate's court of first instance and include judges from the appeal and administrative courts and from the State Cases and the Administrative Prosecution Authorities.
