Registration for parliamentary elections began yesterday with most political forces aiming to field as many candidates as possible, reports Gamal Essam El-Din When the Interior Ministry yesterday began accepting nomination papers from candidates for the 28 November People's Assembly elections, thousands came forward. The figure is expected to reach more than 4,000 by the time the doors close on 7 November. Candidates will be vying for parliament's 444 seats and female candidates for 64 seats reserved for women. The president of the republic has the constitutional authority to fill 10 other seats by appointment, bringing the total number of MPs in the next parliament to 518. The Higher Election Commission (HEC), the judicial body in charge of supervising the polls, announced on Monday that once the registration door is closed, it will revise the lists of candidates between 8 and 12 November. "By 15 November," said a HEC statement, "the final list of candidates should be completed and the next day campaigning for the 28 November election will be formally launched." HEC also indicated that between three and nine judges will be in charge of supervising the main polling stations "and that these judges will also be tasked with supervising auxiliary polling stations." The commission said Egyptian civil society organisations wishing to monitor the election process should register with the HEC or the National Council for Human Rights from now until 8 November. Responding to the HEC guidelines, Minister of Information Anas El-Fiqi announced that cabinet ministers who registered as candidates in the election will not be allowed to appear on television during the campaign. The ban applies to nine cabinet ministers who intend to run in the race. Although HEC warned that election campaigning should not begin before the formal date, the streets of Cairo and other major cities and towns are already festooned with posters and streamers of possible candidates. The ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) announced that it will field the largest number of candidates -- 508. The names of NDP candidates will be announced after candidate nominations close in the late hours of 7 November. Although a closely guarded secret, some prominent figures and businessmen are almost certain to be on the list of NDP candidates in addition to the ministers that also include: speaker of the People's Assembly Fathi Sorour; Chief of the Presidential Staff Zakaria Azmi; and NDP Secretary for Organisational Affairs and business tycoon Ahmed Ezz. Leaders of the NDP, which held a 73 per cent majority in the outgoing parliament, believe that the party will win big. Gamal Mubarak, addressing the NDP's Higher Council for Policies on Tuesday, said "the upcoming election will be a turning point in the political history of Egypt and the NDP is quite ready to contest it and achieve a sound victory." The liberal-oriented Wafd Party, under the leadership of businessman El-Sayed El-Badawi, announced on Sunday that it had nominated 195 candidates and that this number was expected to increase. The list includes Fouad Badrawi, the party's deputy chairman; movie star Samira Ahmed; former football star Taher Abu Zeid; businessmen Rami Lakah and Mohamed Kamel; professor of political science Mona Makram Ebeid; and journalist Mohamed Mustafa Sherdi. At a press conference on Monday, El-Badawi said the Wafd had decided to withdraw its threat to boycott the election. "Our threats forced the government to meet some of our requests for integrity such as allowing state television channels to broadcast some of the party's election campaigns and help its candidates easily get the papers needed for nomination in the polls," said El-Badawi, warning, however, that "if any of our candidates face any obstacles from security forces or the candidates of the ruling NDP, we will withdraw from the election at once." According to El-Badawi, "this should be the last chance for the ruling NDP to prove that it really cares about the integrity of the election and that it believes in fair competition." The leftist Tagammu Party, which won just one seat in the 2005 elections, has decided to field 83 candidates, including nine women and 12 Copts in 23 governorates. The party's candidates include Mohamed Abdel-Aziz Shaaban, the party's sole MP in the outgoing parliament; Diaa Rashwan, a political analyst with Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies; Amin Shafiq, a journalist with Al-Ahram newspaper; and El-Badri Farghali, a leftist firebrand and former MP. Two of the Tagammu's candidates are slated to compete against two NDP-affiliated cabinet ministers: Nagwa Abbas against Minister of Petroleum Sameh Fahmi in east Cairo's district of Nasr City and Coptic Akram Labib against Minister of State for Parliamentary and Legal Affairs Moufid Shehab in Alexandria's district of Moharrem Bey. Around 60 candidates will be nominated by the Democratic Nasserist Party, including deputy party leader and a group of journalists. The outlawed Muslim Brotherhood will be fielding from 150 to 170 candidates, covering only 30 per cent of the districts. The group came under a severe security crackdown in the last few weeks, after which its leaders said they might field candidates in just five per cent of the total districts rather than 30 per cent. The group is also suffering from deep divisions as some of its leading members attacked their leaders' decision not to boycott the elections. On Monday, the Brotherhood said that 22 of its MPs in the outgoing parliament had decided not to run in the 28 November polls. Although the group's leadership cited reasons of ill health and other personal motives as being behind the decision of its 22 MPs, other sources emphasised that the MPs decided not to run because they believed that the group should have boycotted the election and that the polls will not be fair.
