Campaigning for the first stage of the Egypt's upcoming parliamentary polls will start Monday until Thursday, 15 October. On Saturday, the Higher Election Committee (HEC), the seven-member judicial body in charge of supervising Egypt's upcoming parliamentary elections, announced that campaigning for the first stage of the Egypt's upcoming parliamentary polls to be between 29 September and 15 October. According to HEC's spokesperson Omar Marawan, campaigning will officially kick off Tuesday and continue for 17 days. "HEC's poll timetable also states that there will be a ‘silent day' on 16 October to be followed by the vote for Egyptians abroad on 17-18 October and for Egyptians inside Egypt on 18-19 October," said Marawan, adding that "in case of a run-off, voting abroad will take place on 26 and 27 October, while voting in Egypt will be on 27 and 28 October." Concerns surround influence of wealthy candidates Campaigning will go ahead this week amid fears that the affluent candidates will have an upper hand. HEC's statistics show that 45 per cent of candidates in the two-stage polls are businessmen and rich landlords with wide-scale tribal and familial connections. A study published by Al-Ahram newspaper on 22 September concluded that, as election laws allocate 73 percent of seats in parliament to independents, almost half of these candidates are expected to come from a business background. "Businessmen prefer to run as independents and as the election laws allocated the majority of seats to independents, they were eager to run and are now ready to spend millions to get seats in parliament," Nabil Zaki, spokesperson for the leftist Tagammu party, told Al-Ahram Online. Zaki also argues that "the collapse of most of Egypt's political parties after two revolutions in four years has also helped open the door wide for independent businessmen to run in parliamentary elections." "Some of these belong to (former president Hosni) Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), but many others are businessmen who were encouraged to run for the first time," said Zaki. The lists of party-based candidates also include a considerable number of businessmen. The lists affiliated with the electoral coalition entitled "For the Love of Egypt" includes at least eleven high-profile businessmen. Some like oil tycoon Akmal Qortam and electricity cable magnate Zaki Al-Sewedey were members of Mubarak's NDP and ran before, while others like Farag Amer, Alexandria's food industrialist and chairman of Semouha Club, have decided to run for the first time. Zaki expects that spending on election campaigns will far exceed the financial limits imposed by the HEC. "I do not expect that the HEC will be able in any way to stem the tide of spending because it does not have the adequate and effective tools to do so," said Zaki. HEC plans to curb high spending Marawan said a specialized HEC subcommittee was formed to be in charge of overseeing the election campaigns and making sure they comply with the rules. "Offenders will face financial penalties ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 Egyptian pounds and if violations were found serious, offenders would be eliminated from the list of candidates," said Marawan. Marawan, however, indicated that "citizens or media personnel who want to report violations should do this in a professional way...I mean that these violations should be videotaped as a stipulation to be investigated by the HEC," said Marawan, indicating that "newspaper photos showing campaign violations can never be approved by the HEC." In a report issued on 26 September, the Arab Organisation for Human Rights (AOHR) said some candidates have launched their election campaigns very early. "They seized the Muslim feast of Eid Al-Adha to launch their election campaigns in violation of the HEC's rules," said AOHR, adding that "these violations, however, were not serious enough to be reported to the HEC." According to HEC rules, an independent candidate may not spend more than 500,000 pounds in the first round and 200,000 pounds in case of a run-off. They also determined that a list of 15 party candidates cannot exceed the spending limits of 2.5 million pounds in the first round and 1 million pounds in the case of a run-off. A list of 45 party candidates cannot spend more than 7.5 million pounds in the first round, and no more than 3 million pounds in the case of a run-off. The HEC also stressed that candidates are prohibited from issuing religious or racist slogans and from campaigning in mosques or churches. The Ministry of Awqaf (Endowments) said it will make sure that mosques will not be exploited by any candidates for campaigning purposes. The Ministry said it has prevented many of the clerics of the Islamist salafist party from using mosques or raising religious or sectarian slogans in any governorate. Under the former regime of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood allowed the use of religious slogans "as long as secularists are allowed to use secular slogans." The first stage of Egypt's parliamentary elections will be held in 14 governorates (out of a total 27). These include 11 governorates in upper Egypt (Giza, Al-Fayoum, Beni Suef, Al-Minya, Assuit, New Valley, Sohag, Qena, Luxor, Aswan, and the Red Sea), one Nile Delta governorate (Al-Beheira) and two Mediterranean governorates (Alexandria and Marsa Matruh). A number of 286 seats will be up for competition in the first stage, with 226 seats for independents and 60 seats for party-based lists. The 226 independents will be elected from 103 constituencies, and the 60 party-based candidates will come from two constituencies (one with 45 seats in eleven governorates in North, Middle, and South Upper Egypt and the other with 15 seats in three governorates in West Delta). Around 5,500 candidates will be running in Egypt's parliamentary elections, with a little more than half of this figure facing off in the first stage. Source: Ahram Online
