The Egyptians began voting today in the second phase of parliamentary elections, which will run until tomorrow in thirteen provinces to elect their first Legislative Assembly since 2012.
Nearly 13,500 polling stations opened their doors today and tomorrow from 09.00 local time (07.00 GMT) to 21.00 (19.00 GMT) in the capital, the Nile Delta, the Suez Canal and the Sinai Peninsula, among other regions.
In the affluent Cairo neighborhood of Zamalek, at least one polling station opened eleven minutes late because the judges were checking the electoral material, they told Efe the security forces deployed at the entrance.
About thirty men, all elderly, were waiting to cast their vote in the ballot box located in the Zamalek Public School.
The engineer Amin Shihab told Efe that these elections are "important" because Parliament is "a fundamental part of the political system" and expects his candidate to make a good interpretation of the law.
More than 28 million voters are eligible to vote in this second phase, after which the other half of the electorate would go to the polls in the first, held the past 18 and 19 October in fourteen Egyptian provinces.
The elections take place in two phases due to the large number of voters, the size of the territory and the necessary measures to ensure the vote, supervised by 16,000 judges and protected by 36,000 members of the security forces.
In this second phase 60 reserved seats will be awarded 222 politicians and parties to individual candidates, to complete the formation of the House of 596 seats, which is due to be made between late 2015 and early 2016.
It is expected that the coalition "For the sake of Egypt," the president pro Abdelfatah to Sisi and patriotic trend, is made with all seats allocated to lists of political parties, which only occupy 120 seats in total chamber.
Individual candidates will dominate the new parliament, in which the Islamists have a minimum representation, after the military coup against the government of the Muslim Brotherhood in July 2013.
The lack of real political competition and the complicated electoral system and citizens fed up after eight electoral events since 2011, made many voters abstain in October, when the turnout was 26 percent. EFE