“If anyone tells you they know for fact when the parliamentarian elections will be held then they are lying because no final date is set yet – there are certainly tentative options but the range is rather wide; extending from later this year to next summer,” said a highly informed executive source. He added that the president himself, who has been since his inauguration last June in charge of both the executive and legislative authorities, “has not yet spoken of a final date”.
On 14 June 2012, ten days before the delayed announcement of the results of the first presidential elections after the January Revolution, the High Constitutional Court declared the electoral law upon which parliament was elected in 2011 unconstitutional. On that day, Egypt’s Islamist dominated parliament that was elected months after the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak was dissolved by a decree issued by the head of the chair of transition, Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi.
Following his inauguration, a few weeks later, ousted president Mohamed Morsi tried to issue an administrative decree to reassemble the dissolved parliament but was interrupted by the judiciary. A fresh round of parliamentarians was due ahead of an acute political crisis that started only six months after the beginning of Morsi’s presidency. However, the ouster of Morsi in late June 2013 obstructed the path.
On 3 July, Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, then army chief, in the presence of political and religious figures and military top brass announced the post-Morsi road map which included three successive steps: drafting a constitution, holding parliamentary elections and concluding with presidential elections.
As the drafting on the constitution was being finalised, it was abruptly agreed upon that the presidential and parliamentary elections be held within 12 months – one after the other; granting the interim head of state, Adly Mansour, the decision to choose which would be held first.
In the midst of speculation over the nomination of El-Sisi, who had previously stated he had no plans to run for president, Mansour decided to have presidential elections take place ahead of the parliamentary elections.
Since his inauguration in June of this year, El-Sisi and his aides had been promising to honour the commitment. In mid-July, a presidential decree was issued to form the Higher Electoral Committee.
“This was the beginning of the process; this is what the president meant when he said a few days ago that there is no delay in the electoral process,” said an informed political source.
The source added, “Some could go to court and protest but it would be a hard case to argue; on paper at least, the dates are honoured; and no, there is no referendum needed for any further delay to the actual beginning of the voting process because the constitution speaks of the process and not the voting”.
When will the voting process actually take place? Answers vary – but none are offered with a convincing degree of certainty.
“The bottom line is that there are many different views on when we could have the elections; this has to do with several considerations – security, the composition of parliament, pressing economic priorities and also the public mood,” said the executive source.
He argued that the assessment of all top information and security bodies indicate that public opinion is not rushing for parliamentary elections. “I would not go as far as to say that nobody cares whether or not they are held but I would say that the majority are not dying to have parliamentary elections; the majority is still on the side of El-Sisi and they feel he is the one in charge and that is comforting enough,” he said.
The discontent over the delay and the debate over its constitutionality, the same source added, is “more or less something that is being brought up in the limited quarters of intellectuals and some but certainly not all political parties”.
Meanwhile, the same source explained that “it might be rather difficult to have the parliamentary elections during the academic year in view of the incidents of tension we have seen; afterwards it would be time for the holy month of Ramadan – so maybe after, towards next summer,” he explained.
This arrangement, he argued, is not without public consent; it would have given time for the “very weak and fragmented political parties of non-Islamist orientation to have prepared themselves and it would have given time for the government to finalise the law on the division of electoral districts – maybe even allow for some time to revise the controversial protest law”.
This scenario is suggested by independent political sources as well. It is also compatible with accounts shared by several political sources with regards to the continued but still unsuccessful attempts of both Amr Moussa, chair of the committee that drafted the 2014 constitution, and Kamal El-Ganzouri, a close economic advisor to the president, to finalise a list of secular candidates that is designed to secure the president a comfortable supporting majority.
Highly informed sources suggest, that “within the heart of the security quarters,” there is opposition Moussa and El-Ganzouri’s efforts on the basis that the joint attempt would not produce what security and information quarters say is essentially required: a parliament of more than 80 percent support to the head of executive.
The concern of the security apparatus is that Moussa, despite his extensive state affiliation and accommodation is far too progressive for their taste and that El-Ganzouri is far too apolitical to be able to navigate safely a pro-president majority.
Accordingly, the security-information quarters have opted to play it safe and ask some of the ‘old hands of the political process’ who have the ins and outs of the network for the parliamentary elections to call up on the key figures that had traditionally worked with the state– mainly notables of big families across the country and top business/political figures to merge efforts and compose a list of candidates for the entire country.
While Moussa and El-Ganzouri – an odd team given the long history of no-chemistry between the two former Mubarak era senior officials – is said to be able to finalise its list in a few weeks, the parallel exercise which is supervised by several old faces of the Mubarak-led NDP – and not just the tycoon Ahmed Ezz – would need more time.
According to the executive source, the government too needs time. He argued that the president is almost convinced that it would be unwise to dismiss the current government in the middle of a highly-taxing endeavor like the digging of the parallel extension to the Suez Canal, which should be completed by next summer according to the statements of the president, or the preparation for a mega-investment conference due for the end of February.
“We are just starting to stabilise the situation; parliament is important for sure; the president is committed to having free and fair parliamentary elections; but there are so many things that have to be taken into consideration,” he argued.
Moussa went on record this week as having said that “that the elections process will begin before the end of this year.” The head of the constitution drafting committee made no reference to the take of his own constitutional document; nor did he explain whether this would be about the much speculated announcement of the electoral districts law, which is also considered as part of the process, or whether it means actual voting.
Earlier this month, the Carter Center decided that it had no intention to observe the parliamentary elections on the basis that the current political atmosphere is not conducive to having free and fair elections