The elections for MPs amid cries of anger ... Sisi brings the opposition and loyalists together into one list

In a scene that tries to recite serious and close to the paths of natural politics, Egyptian parties held a meeting to announce the names of their candidates to run in the House of Representatives elections through a unified list, amid angry demonstrations calling for the departure of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.

Under the name "The National List for Egypt," 15 political parties and coordination parties will run in the parliamentary elections scheduled to be held on October 21 and end on December 8th.

Among the most prominent parties participating in the election race under the umbrella of what is known as the national list, the future of the homeland, assembly, reform and development, while the delegation - which has a long political history - withdrew after a few days from the alliance in protest to the percentage of seats allocated to it.

Despite the great difference in political orientations between the entities participating in the unified list, the union itself was celebrated by the pro-government media, as it was considered an indication of the parties' alignment behind the political system.

In front of parties that differ completely in their programs and ideologies, the position of the voter will emerge, who will find within the polling committee a list of entities loyal to the regime, but rather appear as the mouthpiece of the regime as the future of a nation, and others that are supposed to represent the opposition, or so they were like the Tagammu Party.

The House of Representatives consists of 568 members, who are elected by direct, secret, general vote of 284 seats in the single system, and 284 seats by closed absolute lists, and the President of the Republic has the right to appoint a percentage not exceeding 5% of the members.

On the occasion that we are about to enter the House of Representatives elections, I would like to say that the current parliament does not have a need, and it doesn’t have a pure role. In any case, all the positions that we saw were from independent people, so I want to boycott all parties, whether it was the Future of the Nation Party or the Nour Party or others.

- AMMAR Mohammed (@ AMMARMo98584855) September 19, 2020

Previous alliances

This is not the first time that the national list has entered the electoral process. The elections to the Senate - the second chamber of parliament - which ended last week, saw an alliance of the same list, but with a smaller number of parties.

In the Senate elections, the list calculated for power alone advanced to compete for 100 seats with a coalition that included 11 parties, and because it was without a competitor, it won in the four districts assigned to the list system, as it was sufficient for it to obtain the votes of 5% of the voters registered in each district.

Despite the success achieved by the authority list, the results of the Senate elections revealed a reluctance of voters to participate, which puts many question marks behind the victory, especially with the failure of other currents that did not fall within the mantle of the list to obtain a single parliamentary seat, such as the Nour Party.

The number of registered voters in the Senate elections reached about 62 million, while the number of participants in voting reached only about 8 million, with a participation rate of 14%.

Electoral alliances are not new to the Egyptian political scene. The liberal-minded Al-Wafd Party and the Socialist Liberal Party allied separately with the Muslim Brotherhood during the parliamentary elections that took place in the eighties of the last century.

Alliances were repeated during the elections that followed the January 25 revolution, as the Muslim Brotherhood, with left-wing and liberal parties, fought the election race on one list, but the political horizon was open and competition was available for whoever wanted.

Anyone who is attached to see the National Party from its inception and its transformations until what remained among the most important causes of the revolution against Mubarak can watch the Future Nation Alternative Party, the worse and the lesser of it, as it prepares for a new transformation in the upcoming parliamentary elections soon.

- Mahmoud Esshak (@PINGOVER) September 20, 2020

Domesticated Parliament

For his part, former parliamentarian Ezz El-Din El-Koumi in the National List coalition finds nothing but a propaganda display of the political scene in Egypt.

In his interview with Al-Jazeera Net, Al-Koumi said that the election results have been settled in advance for the pro-regime entities, adding that the parties that are supposed to be affiliated with the opposition have accepted plunging into the arms of the system in order to obtain crumbs of parliamentary seats.

The spokesman confirms that the arrangement of the electoral process was under the auspices of security, adding that the existing system seeks to form a fully domesticated parliament in which there is no voice singing outside the squadron.

In general, the current electoral scene, according to the vision of the former parliamentarian, indicates that there is no real opposition in the country, adding that the current opposition is just pawns on a chessboard that implements the instructions of the regime that seeks to bleach its face in front of the outside world, by suggesting that it has opposition.

Al-Kumi expected that the current scene would lead to the formation of a new ruling party modeled on the National Party during the era of ousted President Hosni Mubarak.

In a related context, the Conservative Party announced the formation of a unified electoral list to run in the upcoming House of Representatives elections under the name "Choice", in alliance with the Union and the Revolutionary Guards as well as the coalition of independents.

The party affirmed in a statement that consensus between the aforementioned parties on one list comes "in order to be the voice of the people and the conscience of the nation, for the sake of building a modern democratic civil state and under the umbrella of the Egyptian constitution, and for the sake of political party pluralism."

The head of the Union Party, Hossam Badrawi, said that elections are the safest way to change in Egypt, not revolutions, referring to the demonstrations that took place in several regions in Egypt during the past two days, in response to the call of the actor and contractor Mohamed Ali to demonstrate and the demand of the current president, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, to leave.

It is noteworthy that Hossam Badrawi was the last secretary general of the dissolved National Party during the era of the late President Mubarak, and he was associated with the reformist wing of the party that was the official party of the Mubarak regime, and he inherited it in expressing the Sisi regime, the Party of the Future of the Nation.

Egypt does not bear new shocks, we have to change the framework of legitimacy, by building and providing alternatives, not by revolutions and demolition .. Egypt is the mother of civilizations, and the Egyptian people are alive and have their cultural gene alive, which appeared in the first three days of the January revolution, on 6/30 and at the end of July. The gathering of the Egyptian people is smarter than you can imagine.

- Hossam Badrawi (@HossamBadrawi) September 22, 2020

Low turnout

According to the field study conducted by the Egyptian Center for Media and Public Opinion Studies on the size of potential electoral participation in the upcoming parliamentary elections;

The number of potential participants who decided to participate unconditionally, but rather in response to the regime’s call, is close to 600,000 voters.

Whereas, the number of potential participants, provided that one of their relatives or acquaintances nominates, reached nearly 840,000 voters. As for potential participants, on the condition that they receive cash or in-kind consideration from the candidates, it reached nearly 390,000 voters.

The research center estimated the total potential participation in those elections to not more than 2.5% of the total resident voters enrolled in the electoral rolls.

As for the electoral alliances that took place previously between the Muslim Brotherhood and entities with different orientations, the director of the Egyptian Center for Media and Public Opinion Studies, Mustafa Khoudary, saw them as political alliances between elite parties and a group with sweeping popularity - at the time - which prompted people to participate broadly in the elections at the time.

In his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, Khoudary considered the alliance to be established currently as a security alliance coordinated by the security apparatus, and all its components - other than the delegation - are cartoon parties with no history or popularity.

Vice President of Watan’s Future Party: Formation of the National List for Egypt to Run in Parliament Elections # eXtranews # Al-Shaab_Maak_Yaris pic.twitter.com/8hyoX1RkUj

- eXtra news (@Extranewstv) September 14, 2020

National list

But there is a different vision adopted by the vice president of the Future of the Nation Party, Ashraf Rashad, who said that Egyptian political history stands for the second time in respect of the Egyptian political parties that formed the National List.

In his speech during a meeting held by the Egyptian Support Coalition, Rashad explained that the political parties achieved great success through the national list that won the confidence of the Egyptian citizen on the street, and this was evident in the Senate elections.

He added that the new electoral alliance includes all political currents with all different opinions, in order to uphold the interest of the homeland and create a national list that includes all community symbols of different ideas, according to him.