In front of a small kiosk in the Dokki district of Giza, Mohamed El-Saadi, a man in his sixties, sat contemplating the movement in the street opposite a school in front of which he was used to seeing queues on election days. When asked about the next parliament, he shook his head and said: “I don’t know the previous MPs, and I don’t feel they represent us… I won’t take part.”<\/p>\n
El-Saadi’s case is not an individual one. Official figures and opinion polls point to a notable decline in participation rates, amid a mounting crisis of trust between citizens and the institutions of political representation in Egypt.<\/p>\n
Official figures claim that in the last Senate elections, last August, the participation rate<\/a> did not exceed 17.1% of total registered voters, that is, around 11.8 million voters out of more than 69 million, and despite the announcement that valid votes amounted to 95.6% of the votes cast, observers and politicians who spoke with us believe that the official figures are exaggerated and that actual participation did not exceed 4% only, despite the spread of political money and the forcible mobilisation of numbers of students and employees to take part in the vote.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Recent<\/span> research<\/span><\/a> indicates that the reluctance of Egyptians, especially young people, to go to the ballot box is the product of an accumulation of political, economic and social factors, most prominently a sense of marginalisation and the absence of influential channels that enable young people to participate. This is coupled with a pressing economic reality that puts livelihood concerns at the top of citizens’ priorities at the expense of political affairs, while the weakness of parties and citizens’ low trust in institutions compound the loss of incentive to participate. Meanwhile, analysts believe that emerging institutions such as the Senate have not yet managed to convince the public of the usefulness of their existence or of the effectiveness of participating in their elections.<\/span><\/p>\n
In this context, <\/span>Zawia3<\/span><\/i> conducted a field survey covering 200 male and female citizens from various governorates of Egypt, with the aim of exploring their attitudes towards the upcoming House of Representatives elections. The results, which represent diverse demographic segments, reflected a mix of widespread refusal to participate and accumulated feelings of frustration, along with cases of participation taking place under pressure or external considerations.<\/span><\/p>\n
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70 Million for a Seat: The Price of Entering Egypt’s Parliament<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n