By Alexander Dziadosz
CAIRO (Reuters) -A packed field of parties is contesting Egypt’s parliamentary election but those set to dominate the chamber agree on most issues of substance, including their staunch support for President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Voting in Egypt began on Monday, nearly two years after Sisi was elected to a third, six-year term, the final term he is allowed under Egypt’s current constitution. Polling is held over several phases and continues for more than five weeks.
Campaign banners hanging on streetsides and traffic circles featured a dozen logos – on paper as crowded a field as at practically any time since the 2011 Arab Spring uprising ended decades of one-party rule.
Unlike those days, however – when Islamists, liberals, socialists and regime loyalists waged hardscrabble campaigns for hearts and minds – the parties are now broadly aligned as they try to drum up enthusiasm among a disengaged electorate.
SEATS ALLOCATED TO CLOSED PARTY LIST
They are also running together under a hybrid voting system that allocates a little under half of seats to closed party lists.
This year only one list made the ballot – one that gives the lion’s share of seats to three pro-government parties, meaning many lawmakers were effectively guaranteed a win before the first vote was cast.
Several opposition figures were barred from competing as individual candidates, including both ultraconservative Islamists and leftists, based on a new interpretation of a military service requirement. Campaign costs and medical screening kept others out.
Critics say such moves have left many voters apathetic, especially after being worn down by years of economic hardship. Turnout in a vote for parliament’s advisory upper house this summer was just above 17%.
At one polling station in Giza, a 58-year-old electrician who gave his name as Amgad said people working for the candidates had bussed him in to vote, but he wasn’t sure who those candidates were, since “all the delegates work together.”
Defenders of the system say the party lists include a diversity of views and interests and help secure better representation for women and minorities. They deny voter manipulation.
The State Information Service, which liaises with foreign media in Egypt, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
NEW PARTY PRESENTED AS ‘UNIFYING ENTITY’
Under former president Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in 2011, lawmaking was dominated by the National Democratic Party, in which businessmen and Mubarak’s son held prominent roles.
By contrast, Sisi has never joined a party. The group most closely associated with his agenda, the Nation’s Future party, will likely lose ground based on the upper chamber results.
One of the biggest gainers in that vote was the National Front Party, founded late last year and now fielding businessmen and former ministers.
The party – which needed just 5,000 endorsements to be established but said it gathered over half a million – is “neither loyalist nor opposition, nor is it a single school of thought,” its co-founder Diaa Rashwan, who also heads the State Information Service, said in a TV interview early this year.
It is instead a “unifying entity”, he added.
Others on the list are Nation’s Future and the Homeland Defenders, a party founded by former military officers in 2013 which also made gains in the upper house vote.
Homeland Defenders seek to fulfill “a long-term developmental vision aligned with the state’s leadership,” spokesperson Amr Suleiman told Reuters.
The election involved “strong competition among parties and independents for individual seats,” he said.
OPPOSITION IN A BIND
Timothy Kaldas, an analyst at the U.S.-based Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, said the proliferation of pro-government parties helps centralise authority by preventing rival power centres from coalescing.
“Going from the Nation’s Future Party dominating parliament to a bunch of loyalist parties is a way to further weaken all of them, and also a way to reward new loyalists,” he said.
Opposition figures have been left with a dilemma: join the list or risk being shut out.
The Social Democratic Party decided to add its name. “We still feel there’s room to influence politics in the house, so we’re not going to waste it,” said Maha Abdel Nasser, a parliamentarian with the party who is running again.
The Constitution Party – founded in 2012 by Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei – took the opposite tack, teaming up with the Conservative Party to contest individual seats.
The campaign was an uphill battle against “political money” and voter indifference, said Mariam Farouk, the bloc’s spokesperson.
(Additional reporting by Reuters Cairo bureau; Editing by Aidan Lewis)
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