Turnout at 26.5% in Egypt parliament elections in first round

The “For the love of Egypt” electoral list won the party-based list seats in the first stage of Egypt’s parliamentary elections, while only four candidates won individual seats, the head of the High Elections Committee (HEC), Ayman Abbas, announced Wednesday evening.

In a press conference at HEC’s headquarters in Cairo, Abbas announced that the turnout in the first stage reached 26.56 percent with 7,270,594 out of 27,402,353 registered voters.

According to Abbas, the valid votes reached 6,584,128 (90.46 percent), while the void votes reached 694,466 (9.54 percent).

New Valley governorate scored the highest turnout with 37 percent of registered voters participating in the elections, while Giza had the lowest turnout with 21 percent.

There will be 222 individual seats contested in the runoff round which will take place next week.

The four candidates who won the seats in the first stage include Abdel-Rehim Ali, an independent candidate and a controversial TV presenter who won in a Giza-based constituency. The other winning candidates are Mohamed Dessouky and Mohamed El-Basha in two Upper Egypt constituencies, while Gamal Fares won in a constituency based in the New Valley governorate.

Abbas announced that the 103 individual seat constituencies are witnessing a runoff round.

Nour Party chairman Younes Makhyoun said in a ‎statement on Monday that “25 out of ‎a total of 160 candidates who ran for individual seats ‎qualified for the runoff,” while the Free Egyptians Party posted on its Facebook page earlier on Wednesday that 65 out of a total of 112 candidates also qualified for the runoff.

The “For the Love of Egypt” list won 60 seats in the first stage after contesting 45 seats in Giza and Upper Egypt and another 15 seats in West Delta. The list will be contesting another 60 seats in the second stage; 45 seats in Cairo, South and Middle Delta and 15 seats in East Delta.

However, in East Delta their list is unopposed and will deliver 15 seats as long as they get 5 percent of the votes there, which brings them closer to gaining the majority of the 120 seats allocated for the party-based lists in the parliament.

The turnout in the first stage of Egypt’s parliamentary elections in 2012 was 59 percent with around 50 political parties running in the race, compared to 44 parties running in this year’s elections. The total turnout for both stages at the time was 52 percent, which was considered the highest electoral turnout in Egypt’s parliamentary elections for more than four decades.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party came first in the 2012 parliament with 73 percent, while the Nour Party came second with 22 percent, and the Egyptian Bloc, which was an electoral alliance for some prominent liberal parties, came third with 15 percent. 

source :Ahram Online