{"id":14182,"date":"2025-10-13T17:41:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T15:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/?p=14182"},"modified":"2025-10-13T17:43:01","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T15:43:01","slug":"militarization-of-parties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/militarization-of-parties\/","title":{"rendered":"Egypt\u2019s Militarized Politics: The Road to the 2025 Parliamentary Elections Runs Through the Security Apparatus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since 2013, Egypt\u2019s security agencies have expanded their influence over the political landscape \u2014 not only through direct intervention<\/a> in selecting party leaders or candidates for elections and subjecting them to rigorous security vetting, but also by pushing former military and security officials into the political arena. Many of these figures have launched political parties<\/a>, joined their leadership ranks, or secured a share<\/a> of their parliamentary representation.<\/p>\n

While Egypt\u2019s pre-2011<\/a> party life was marked by weakness and limited attempts to influence the political sphere, and although the period following the January Revolution witnessed a brief phase of political openness, the post\u2013June 30<\/a> era has seen a far more radical shift toward what can be described as the militarization of politics<\/em>. Former military and security figures have come to dominate the political and parliamentary spheres to the extent that their presence has become a structural feature of the political system itself, rather than an exception.<\/p>\n

In the 2020 elections that produced the current House of Representatives\u2014comprising<\/a> 568 elected members and 28 appointed ones, for a total of 596 MPs\u2014the prominence of security officials<\/a> was striking. The parliament included around 71 former army and police officers, representing roughly 12% of all members, according to media reports and electoral analyses.<\/p>\n

Looking back a bit further, the proportion was not much<\/a> different in the 2015\u20132020 parliament, where former military and security leaders held about 75 seats across various pro-government parties, amounting to nearly 13% of the total 596 seats. The largest bloc came from the Nation\u2019s Future Party<\/em> (Hizb Mustaqbal Watan), which holds 316 MPs, an estimated 50\u201355 of whom are former officers. They are joined by roughly 10\u201315 members in the Homeland Protectors Party<\/em> (Hizb Humat al-Watan), which has 23 MPs in total, in addition to several others distributed among the Republican People\u2019s Party<\/em> and independent representatives.<\/p>\n

70 Million for a Seat: The Price of Entering Egypt’s Parliament<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n