The Supreme Electoral Committee (SEC) warned Thursday against the violation of the electoral silence period that began Friday noon. However, despite the warning, candidates have been violating the regulation through online social media. The SEC mentioned that, according to the political rights regulatory act, political parties and independent candidates are not allowed to conduct any electoral campaigns since noon of the day that precedes the voting, which began for Egyptians abroad on Saturday. During the electoral silence period media agencies should be free of materials that include any sort of publicity or advertisement to any candidate, political party, or electoral list, the SEC added. Deputy Giza Governor, Alaa El-Harras, told state news agency MENA that an operation room was established in every district in the governorate to remove any form of electoral campaigning from the streets. El-Harras added that these operations will be especially conducted around the schools in which the voting will take place. Despite of these controlling measures on the streets, Daily News Egypt observed that candidates and political parties violated the electoral silence period through their Facebook pages and other online social media networks. Posters for candidates with their pictures and electoral programmes are still being posted and shared by the official accounts that belong to candidates or to the parties they belong to. The difficulty in regulating online campaigning stems from the fact that campaigning is often voluntarily carried out by supporters of candidates or parties. On his part, representative of the National Council of Human Rights at SEC, Amgad Fathy, told Daily News Egypt that the SEC media coverage committee does not monitor online media agencies. "We only monitor how television and the radio cover the elections. We do not have any regulation over social media networks that belong to parties or to candidates," said Fathy. Fathy added that it is impossible to have control over online media because parties have hundreds of outlets through which they campaign for themselves. Electoral campaigns began on 28 September after SEC declared the final list of candidates. Egyptians living abroad began voting on Saturday at Egyptian embassies in their resident countries. In Egypt, the first phase of parliamentary elections will begin Sunday for three days in 14 governorates, and the second phase of elections will begin on 21 November in 12 governorates, also for three days. Results should be announced in the first week of December and the parliament would be finalised by mid-December 2015.
