The government has no intention to delay parliamentary elections, as it is keen on finalizing the elections law as soon as possible, Transitional Justice Ibrahim el-Heneidy said at a press conference Monday.
“I do not have the authority to force the State Council to issue the elections law quickly, for it is an independent judicial entity,” he said.
On April 16, the Cabinet referred a draft elections law to the State Council for ratification, as the earlier elections law was rejected by the Constitutional Court due to the unconstitutionality of some articles, only a few weeks ahead of the scheduled elections.
However, the State Council sent the cabinet a memo asking for updated statistics over some electoral constituencies, including illegible voter numeration.
El- Heneidy said the Cabinet has sent the State Council all the illegible voter data up until May 2015, vowing that if updated data forced changes to the draft law, the elections would still not be delayed further.
The Cabinet’s draft law gives individual candidates the lion’s share with 448 seats, while the list candidates are given 120 seats. Some parties reject this distribution of seats as it gives “popular parties and candidates” a better chance to win the poll.
Egypt has not had a parliament after its 2012 Muslim Brotherhood-dominated parliament was dissolved in 2013, months after the military-backed ouster of President Mohamed Morsi in June 2013.
Parliamentary elections represent the third and final step in a political roadmap set forth following the ouster of Morsi. The first two steps included passing a constitution in January 2014, followed by presidential elections in June 2014.
