With very few exceptions, domestic political developments in Egypt have fallen off the radar of much of the Western media. Post-Mubarak Egypt, much like post-Ben Ali Tunisia, has become more of a rhetorical device wielded in the West than a subject of interest in its own right. Lest we be caught unaware by the beginning of Egyptian Parliamentary elections later this month (official campaigning began on 2 November, and the first stage of balloting is scheduled for 28 November), I'm planning a multi-post series providing background on the upcoming Egyptian elections. In this first post, I will outline the schedule of upcoming elections, the development over the last few months of the electoral system and some of the major points of contention. Many of these issues have been noted in the long-running Witnesssing Revolution Liveblog Series, but I believe that a series of background-oriented posts in which this information is consolidated may prove a useful reference as we follow the elections themselves.
In Part II, tentatively scheduled for early next week, I will discuss the major political parties and the most recent polling data. If anyone would like to help with these background diaries, feel free to contact me via dKos' internal messaging-system.
On 12 February 2011, the day after the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) assumed power from Omar Suleiman (Hosni Mubarak's appointed successor), the SCAF issued Statement #4 in which they declared their objective to be “meeting the legitimate demands of the people” and “guaranteeing a peaceful transition of authority within a free and democratic system that allows for the assumption of authority by a civilian and elected authority to govern the country and the build of a democratic and free state.” The institutional reforms demanded by the protesters in Midan Tahrir and elsewhere in Egypt, for which the SCAF indicated some degree of intent, included among others:
1. the lifting of the Emergency Law, the suspension of the existing constitution, and the drafting of a new constitution
2. the dissolution of Parliament and the facilitation of free and fair parliamentary elections within six months
3. the facilitation of free and fair presidential elections in light of new constitutional limitations on the office of the Presidency
On 13 February, Statement #5 of the SCAF announced the suspension of the existing constitution of 1971, the dissolution of Parliament and the appointment by the SCAF of an eight-member committee of jurists to draft a series of constitutional amendments to enable democratic elections and the drafting of a new constitution. Statement #5 also affirmed that the SCAF and their temporary appointed government would administer Egypt for six months or until parliamentary and presidential elections are held. The constitutional amendments proposed by this committee and announced by the SCAF on 26 February were:
1. altered requirements for eligibility for the office of President (Article 75)
2. the establishment of three tracks for nomination of presidential candidates (Article 76)
3. limiting the President to two four-year terms (Article 77)
4. the supervision of elections by a High Elections Commission composed of jurists (Article 88)
5. the transfer of the power to determine the eligibility of parliamentarians from Parliament itself to the Supreme Constitutional Court (Article 93)
6. the requirement that an elected President appoint a Vice President within 60 days of taking office (139)
7. the requirement that a declaration of a State of Emergency require a majority vote in the People's Assembly; that a State of Emergency be valid only for 60 days; that an extension of a State of Emergency beyond 60 days require a public referendum (Article 148)
8. the establishment of a new Terrorism Law allowing the president to refer any terrorist crime to any of the judicial authorities (Article 179)
9. the proposal that the Shura Council function without its 100 presidential appointees until presidential elections are held (Article 189)
10. the proposal that constitutional amendments can be called for by either the President with the consent of the Cabinet or by a majority of both houses of Parliament (Article 189)
11. the proposal that within six months of the election of the new Parliament a 100-member committee be appointed with a six-month mandate to draft the new constitution, and that the President call for the draft to be put to public referendum within 15 days of completion (Article 189)
On 4 March the SCAF announced that a public referendum on these constitutional amendments was scheduled for 19 March. Early polling indicated mixed public reaction to the referendum, with critics arguing that a new constitution should be drafted prior to any elections since early elections were generally viewed as favorable to existing / entrenched political organizations, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood and remnants of Mubarak's National Democratic Party, who would then be in a position to appoint the constitutional committee. While a 'no vote' on the referendum would indeed compel drafting a constitution before any elections, it would also necessarily postpone elections well into 2012 and allow for the SCAF to decree an interim constitution. In the end, the referendum passed with 77% of the vote.
On 30 March, the SCAF issued a 63-article Constitutional Declaration documenting the administration of affairs of state leading to parliamentary elections, to be held within six months, at which point legislative and budgetary powers would be transferred from the SCAF to Parliament.
Development of the System for Parliamentary Elections
Since late Spring, there has been vigorous debate and numerous modifications regarding the system and schedule for parliamentary elections. While the specifics have differed, the electoral system common to all plans advanced by the SCAF is a combination of a closed proportional list (by party or coalition) to elect some percentage of the members and majoritarian individual election of the remaining members in two-seat districts, all subject to occupational quotas. Under the Mubarak regime, contestable seats (508 of 518 in the People's Assembly and 176 of 264 in the Shurah Council) were all elected by majoritarian individual election in two-seat districts. The individual candidacies are widely perceived to be one of the mechanisms by which Mubarak and the NDP retained their hold on power, so many of the modifications implemented over the course of the Summer have been concerned with the percentage of seats elected under each system. In the Draft Law of 29 May, two thirds of the seats would be elected as individuals; as amended on 7 July, that proportion was reduced to one half of the seats. As it now stands per additional amendments on 27 September, only one third of the seats will be elected as individuals.
As noted above, the existing occupation quotas for Parliament have been upheld. In both houses, 50% of the membership must be legally classified as farmers or workers. In what many properly regard as a setback for women's rights, the 64 seats reserved for women in the People's Assembly have been revoked, now replaced by a requirement that every list (party or coalition) include at least one female candidate; lacking the additional requirement that a female candidate be listed in one of the top two positions on the list (as in the recent Tunisian elections) it is unlikely that women will constitute an appreciable percentage of the membership.
Elections for the People's Assembly
Elections for the People's Assembly, the 508-seat lower house of the Egyptian Parliament, will be conducted in three stages beginning on 28 November 2011, with each stage corresponding to nine of Egypt's 27 governorates (major civil divisions) as represented here:
28 November 2011 (run-off on 5 December) – Cairo, Faiyum, Port Said, Damietta, Alexandria, Kafr el-Sheikh, Assiut, Luxor, Red Sea
14 December 2011 (run-off on 21 December) – Giza, Beni Suef, Menoufiya, Sharqiya, Ismailiya, Suez, Beheira, Sohag, Aswan
3 January 2012 (run-off on 10 January) – Minya, Qalioubiya, Gharbiya, Daqahliya, North Sinai, South Sinai, Marsa Matrouh, Qena, New Valley
These elections will employ a combination of proportional lists and dual-seat constituencies for the 498 elected seats of the People's Assembly; the final ten seats are filled as presidential appointees. Two thirds of the seats (332) will be elected using a closed proportional list system within 46 multi-seat districts. Voters will thus cast one ballot for a single list of candidates representing either a party or a coalition. At the conclusion of voting, lists attaining at least 0.5% of the national balloting (i.e., across all 46 districts) will be 'qualified,' at which point seats within each district will be allocated on the basis of the proportion of the total votes cast for qualifying lists in that district. Obviously, the results of the elections for these 332 seats will not be known until the conclusion of all three stages of voting, across all 46 districts. The number of seats within each district varies from four to twelve, depending upon population.
The remaining third of the seats (166) will be elected as individual candidates within 83 two-seat constituencies. Voters will thus cast a second ballot on which they will select two individual candidates. Seats in these constituencies are allocated to the two candidates receiving 50%+1 of the ballots cast in the district. Run-off elections, if required, are scheduled as shown above. The deadline to declare the results of elections for the People's Assembly is 13 January.
Elections for the Shurah Council
The Shurah Council is the 270-seat upper house of the Egyptian Parliament. Elections for the 180 contestable seats in the Council (one third, or 90, are presidential appointees) will be conducted beginning on 29 January 2012 in a similar three-stage fashion across 30 districts, with 120 seats filled via the closed list proportional system (four seats per district) and the remaining 60 seats filled via two-seat constituencies:
29 January 2012 (run-off on 5 February) – Cairo, Faiyum, Port Said, Damietta, Alexandria, Kafr el-Sheikh, Assiut, Luxor, Red Sea
14 February 2012 (run-off on 21 February) – Giza, Beni Suef, Menoufiya, Sharqiya, Ismailiya, Suez, Beheira, Sohag, Aswan
4 March 2012 (run-off on 11 March) – Minya, Qalioubiya, Gharbiya, Daqahliya, North Sinai, South Sinai, Marsa Matrouh, Qena, New Valley
Run-off elections, if required, are scheduled as shown above. The deadline to announce final results for the Shurah Council is 14 March.
Expatriate Voting: a Pressing Issue
An additional demand among the protesters, as related to electoral law, was advocacy for the right of Egyptian expatriates to vote overseas, likely at Egyptian diplomatic missions. In late October the interim government affirmed its intent to facilitate expatriate voting. However, with under a month to go before elections begin on 28 November and given that there has not yet been an amendment to Article 39 of the interim constitution allowing expatriates to vote in diplomatic missions with or without judicial supervision, it is difficult to see that this will be resolved in time.
Summary
The upcoming Egyptian parliamentary elections are the product of tense official discussions and intense public debate regarding the electoral system, the timing, and the order in which drafting the new constitution versus elections should occur. Few, I think, are happy with this particular outcome; many fewer, I suspect, are pleased with some of the SCAF's most recent supra-constitutional maneuvering. Nevertheless, here we are... campaign season is underway in Egypt. Next up? Parties and polling...