The cabinet is expected to endorse the electoral districts law before the end of the year. If it is approved by the cabinet and ratified by President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi parliamentary polls could be held in the first quarter of 2015. Parliamentary elections are the third and final component of the political roadmap adopted following the ouster of Mohamed Morsi on 3 July 2013. A new constitution was approved by referendum in January 2014 and presidential elections held in May. After Morsi was removed from office, the 2012 constitution, drafted by the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist allies, was suspended and the Islamist-dominated Shura Council dissolved. The process of preparing a new constitution began with a committee of 10 legal and constitutional law experts. The committee completed its work on 20 August 2013, six days after two Brotherhood sit-ins in Cairo and Giza were forcibly dispersed by security forces. The dispersals opened the way for the second phase of the process. A 50-member committee met for the first time on 1 September 2013. Led by the former foreign minister and secretary-general of the Arab League Amr Moussa, the committee opted to scrap the 2012 Islamist-oriented constitution in its entirety and produce a new national charter. On 3 December the committee completed its draft constitution. In a public referendum on 14 and 15 January 2014, 98.1 per cent of votes cast were in favour of the charter. Turnout was 38.6 per cent, 5.6 per cent higher than the turnout in the 2012 referendum on the Islamist-drafted constitution. The 98 per cent vote for the new constitution underscored the fact that the removal of Morsi was the result of a popular revolution and not a military coup, says Al-Ahram political analyst Hassan Abu Taleb. “The yes vote also showed strong support for the new direction the country was taking and signalled a rejection of religion being mixed with politics.” In the run-up to the referendum, media pundits and politicians began to argue that presidential elections must be held before parliamentary polls. On 26 January, 11 days after approval of the new constitution, interim president Adli Mansour reversed the timetable set out in the roadmap, which had stipulated that parliament would be elected before a new president. “There were fears that if parliamentary polls were held first the national unity and political consensus created following Morsi's ouster would collapse. Presidential elections took priority,” says Abu Taleb. A five-member commission was formed to monitor the election. Mansour set 9 February as the deadline for any recommendations regarding the presidential election law. After a month of heated debate focused on the right to challenge the Presidential Election Committee's (PEC) rulings a new presidential elections law was formally issued on 8 March. It placed the committee's rulings beyond appeal. A 20-day window for nominations opened on 31 March. The final list of candidates was announced on 2 May, while a two-day vote day was set to begin on 26 May. The vote was later extended for a third day, to 28 May. Al-Sisi, who had resigned his military commissions on 26 March, was officially nominated a candidate on 14 April. On 19 April he was joined by Hamdeen Sabahi, who had made a strong showing in the 2012 presidential election. There were no other candidates. On 21 May the PEC released the final count of votes cast between 15 and 19 May by Egyptian expatriates. Al-Sisi won 296,628 out of a total of 318,033. On 3 June PEC chairman Anwar Al-Assi held a press conference to announce the final results of the election. Al-Sisi has won 23.78 million votes (96.91 per cent) and Sabahi 757,511 votes (3.09 per cent). The turnout was 47 per cent of registered voters. In 2012 more than 4.5 million voters chose Sabahi. The collapse in his vote, says Abu Taleb, “showed a radical shift in the preferences of the electorate who turned to a military candidate who they see as capable of restoring order and imposing discipline.” Al-Sisi took the oath of office before the Supreme Constitutional Court and then repeated it at the Quba Palace before an audience of mostly Arab and African leaders. Only a handful of Western officials attended. An hour after being named Egypt's new president, Al-Sisi gave a speech in which he said, “Now is the time for work, the goal being to realise the revolutions' demands of freedom, dignity, and social justice.” More than six months after Al-Sisi's election the third step in the post-Morsi political roadmap — parliamentary elections — remains pending. In the meantime, all legislative power resides with the office of the president. The new constitution stipulated that parliamentary elections must begin within six months of the new constitution being passed, by 16 July 2014. Al-Sisi invited the Higher Election Committee (PEC) to meet on 15 July. After a few sessions the PEC announced that no timetable for candidate registration or the vote could be set before a law redrawing electoral districts, in line with the new constitution, was in place. Gamal Zahran, a professor of political science at Suez Canal University and a former independent MP, is critical of the time the government is taking to draft the necessary law. “We all thought that preparations for the polls would begin immediately after a new president was elected,” he says. “Yet it took the government more than four months to even begin preliminary work on the law.” In the meantime, political parties began a scramble to form electoral alliances. “The emergence of competing alliances does not indicate a return to political factionalism,” says Abu Taleb. “Political parties are just trying to enhance their chances of winning a majority in the coming parliament.” Government delays in preparing the electoral districts law and amendments to two other necessary pieces of legislation — the political rights and house of representatives laws — has strained relations with political parties. Even parties associated with Mubarak's now defunct NDP complain that the legal changes have been drafted without any government efforts to build consensus around the changes. Progressive parties which emerged following Mubarak's ouster in 2011 accuse the government of Mubarak-style authoritarian practices and conniving to allow Mubarak-era politicians and interest groups to once again dominate political life. Political parties are particularly incensed that the house of representatives law reserves 420 seats (70 per cent) for independents and just 120 (25 per cent) for party-based candidates. The five per cent of seats remaining will be filled by presidential appointees. However disgruntled they are, the vast majority of political parties say a boycott of the poll is out of the question. The technical committee entrusted with preparing the electoral districts law finalized its amendments on 8 December, fuelling hopes that the long-delayed parliamentary poll will soon be held.
