The Supreme Electoral Commission (SEC) will officially invite citizens to vote in parliamentary elections during a press conference Thursday, as announced by SEC spokesperson Judge Medhat Idris, state-run media reported Tuesday. The SEC will also present the elections' schedule during the press conference, although it is yet to announce the opening date for candidates to apply. The law has divided a total of 567 parliamentary seats between: 120 seats, to be elected through the list system; 420 running as individual candidates; and 27 to be appointed by the president. This is mostly to ensure fair representation for more vulnerable groups such as women and youth. The law, along with the constituencies' division law, was subject to criticism and controversy amongst politicians fearing only popular and rich politicians will be able to conduct proper electoral campaigns and obtain votes. Politicians at a seminar hosted Tuesday by local NGO the Egyptian Center for Public Policy Studies (ECPPS) also expressed concern over the ‘unbalanced' outcome of the constituencies division. They considered that the expenditure bar on electoral campaigns set at EGP 700,000 is "too high." Diaa Zaki, member of the supreme committee of the Justice Party (Al-Adl), argued that the constituencies division was tackled from a ‘security' approach without discussions with the concerned parties. "By security I mean that the law tried to either break a constituency or merge two together, to give more chances for certain candidates over others from the group they want to exclude," Zaki said in press statements on the conference's sidelines. Parliamentary elections were supposed to take place within six months of the passing of the constitution last January. They have, however, been delayed until 2015, despite President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi's confirmation that elections would be held before the end of 2014.
