The subject of young people standing in the parliamentary elections has been neglected by many analysts, who have tended to reduce the elections to questions regarding the turnout and ignored more positive aspects. The state's concern for the representation of young people in parliament was clearly shown in the 2014 Constitution, Article 244 of which provides for the “appropriate representation” of young people in the House of Representatives. This principle was also reflected in the electoral law of 5 June 2014, which stipulated that the electoral lists had to reserve 16 seats for young people. It was further underscored by President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi's remarks during the 2014 Badr military exercises. “I want to see more young people in the forthcoming parliamentary elections,” he said. An analysis of the first round of the elections reveals that a large number of people under the age of 35 put themselves forward in the polls. Thirty-three of these made it to the run-offs, and 19 were political party candidates. Seven from the Free Egyptians Party, four from the Nation's Future Party, three from the Al-Nour Party, three from the Wafd, one from the Conference Party, and one from the Republican People's Party. The number is even higher if the age of 40 is taken as the cut-off age, in accordance with the definition used by the prime ministerial decree that authorised ministers to select their aides. Under this definition, 74 youth candidates succeeded in the first round of the elections. Of the winning candidates under 35, 19 were single-ticket candidates. According to a breakdown of the information on these MPs, four were under 30, all were men, about half were lawyers (nine of them), and all, with the exception of one, were university graduates (two with Masters degrees). Giza led the governorates in the number of successful young people's candidates with six (32 per cent of its MPs are under the age of 35). The number of independents (nine) is roughly equivalent to the number of political party winners (10). The latter represent the Free Egyptians (four MPs), the Wafd (two), the Al-Nour Party (two), the Nation's Future (one) and the Republican People's Party (one). The total number of MPs under the age of 35 in seats reserved for both single-ticket and party lists comes to 29, if the number of young people who succeeded on the two For the Love of Egypt lists in Upper Egypt and the West Delta (ten MPs) are taken into account. Using 40 as the cut-off point, the number of winners climbs to 49, 37 of whom ran on single-ticket seats and 12 on the party-list system (four from the West Delta and eight on the Upper Egypt list). This is 18 per cent of the total number of winners in the first round. Comparing the number of successful young people in the first phase of the elections to the number of young people in parliaments worldwide, it can be seen that the Egyptian figure falls within the international average. According to an EU parliamentary report for 2014, young people between the ages of 30 and 40 account for 10 to 20 per cent of MPs in Europe, and young people under the age of 30 account for less than two per cent of the total number of MPs. If the same success rate continues in the second round of the parliamentary elections, we can expect between 90 and 100 MPs under the age of 40, or 15 to 16.7 per cent of the total number. This figure is higher than the proportion of young people in the 2012 People's Assembly, in which there were 77 MPs under the age of 40, or 13.6 per cent of the total (eight were under 30, and 69 were in the 30 to 40 age bracket). This year's anticipated figure will be close to that in the 2000-2005 parliament, in which young people accounted for 16 per cent of MPs (73 out of 444). The main difference between the 2015 elections and its predecessors is that this time around independent young people were given an opportunity to compete and enter parliament, whereas in the past the vast majority of young MPs rode on the coattails of the ruling or dominant parties, whether the pre-revolutionary National Democratic Party (NDP) or, after the 2011 Revolution, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and Al-Nour Party. While it is important to note the good level of representation of young people in the forthcoming parliament, it is equally important to register several observations that merit attention. First, the level of representation of young people in parliament does not appear to reflect the new political circumstances of Egypt after the 25 January and 30 June revolutions, despite the recent introduction of a quota system for young people along the lines of the systems in Kenya and Rwanda (in which two seats are reserved for MPs under the age of 35), Tunisia (one out of every four seats in each constituency are reserved for MPs under 35) and Morocco (39 seats are reserved for candidates under 40). Second, no women under the age of 35 who fielded themselves as single-ticket candidates won. This casts into relief the problem of the double marginalisation of young female candidates: as women and as youth. The only opportunity for such candidates to succeed in the first round was on the For the Love of Egypt list, which brought in four women MPs on its Upper Egypt list and two on its Western Delta list. The third observation pertains to those factors that were behind the success of the winning youth candidates. Was the secret of their success family/clan connections, or did it derive from their ability to persuade the voters of their personal merits, without the need for a powerful family/clan to back them? Judging by preliminary indicators, the majority won on the basis of their own qualifications and efforts, although there were cases in some constituencies of candidates being eliminated in the run-offs due to intense competition between tribal groupings. An example is 20-year-old Ahmed Taqi, who was defeated in the Naga Hamadi district by the nephew of Abdel-Rahim Al-Ghoul, Khaled Khalafallah, and Fathi Qandil, both prominent names with powerful tribes behind them [[QUERY: Text to be amended]]. As we look towards the future, it will be crucial for the performance of the young MPs to reflect the ambitions of young people. These MPs certainly must not be weak or indifferent, as was the case of their counterparts in previous parliaments whose overall outlook was consistent with those of the majority, and who never attempted to alter the parliamentary agenda in such a way as to represent the concerns of their generation. It should be added that the young MPs will not be able to better represent the nation's young people until they have acquired and honed the skills necessary to effectively perform their legislative and oversight functions. Such training is essential if we want to inject new blood into the parliament and to offer a model for young people to emulate, should they desire to run in local elections. The writer is a researcher in youth studies and PhD candidate at Cairo University.
