Senate campaigning kicks off

Al-Ahram Weekly

17-07-2025

The lists of candidates competing for seats in the Senate in the August elections will be finalised this week.
Head of the National Elections Authority (NEA) Hazem Badawi announced this week that the papers of 469 individual candidates and of one party list for the 4-5 August Senate elections have been accepted by the NEA.
He indicated that the administrative courts have also finalised revising appeals filed against the lists of candidates. Final candidate lists will be published in two state-owned newspapers on 18 July so that voters can identify the candidates, Badawi said.
The Senate consists of 300 members, two thirds of whom will be elected by secret ballot, while the president will appoint the remaining third. No fewer than 10 of the total number of seats will be allocated to women.
Semi-final tallies show that four political parties —Mostaqbal Watan (the Nation's Future), the Unified Front, Homat Watan (Protectors of the Nation), and the People's Republican — are leading the race with around 303 individual candidates.
Opposition parties like the Justice Party, the Egyptian Democratic Party, and the Reform and Development Party are also fielding candidates running as individuals.
Mostaqbal Watan dominates among the 12 political parties running under the umbrella of the National Unified List (NUL — For the Sake of Egypt), fielding 44 candidates. The other parties include Homat Watan with 19 candidates and the National Front with 12.
The People's Republican and the Egyptian Democratic Party, the Reform and Development Party, the Justice Party, the liberal Wafd Party and the leftist Tagammu Party, the Generation's Will Party, the Freedom Party, and the Congress Party are also fielding five or fewer candidates as part of the NUL.
The Civil Democratic Movement, which includes several opposition parties, has decided not to participate in the Senate elections, with its spokesman political science professor Mostafa Kamel Al-Sayed describing the poll as 'a foregone conclusion'.
The Mostaqbal Watan-led NUL includes high-profile businessman and construction magnate Mohamed Al-Morshedi, the deputy chairman of the Party. It also includes iron and steel business tycoon Ahmed Abu Hashima, deputy chairman of the People's Republican Party, and the Wafd Party's Deputy Chairman Tarek Abdel-Aziz.
Abdel-Wahab Abdel-Razek, speaker of the outgoing 2020-2025 Senate and chairman of the Mostaqbal Watan Party, has decided not to run.
Unlike the Senate's first elections in 2020 when three party lists competed, the NUL is the only one running this year. This suggests that it will win unopposed. This has led many observers to comment that the result of the poll has already been decided.
Al-Sayed said that the small number of candidates — 469 — shows that there is a lack of interest in the Senate elections. In 2020, when the elections were held for the first time, there were around 760 individual candidates and three party lists, he pointed out.
'This reflects apathy and indifference about this election,' Al-Sayed said, adding that the adoption of the closed list system and the limited role played by the Senate were mainly to blame for the lack of interest.
The result is a foregone conclusion because the 100 candidates on the one-party list will win, and the president will appoint another 100 candidates, he said. The individual seats will be swept by pro-government candidates affiliated with parties like Mostaqbal Watan, the Unified Front, the Homat Watan, and the People's Republican, Al-Sayed said.
The 300-seat Senate was created after a number of constitutional amendments were passed in April 2019. A review of the amended constitution shows that the Senate has purely advisory powers. The state's socio-economic development plans, foreign agreements, laws, and other public policy matters are required to be discussed by the Senate, but the final say on them is the prerogative of the lower house of parliament (the House of Representatives).
Lawyer and human-rights activist Tarek Al-Awadi said on his Twitter account on 10 July that 'the presence of a single, uncontested list in the Senate elections does not reflect the strength of this list but rather reveals the depth of the crisis plaguing Egypt's political landscape… the elections lack any kind of meaningful competition.'
Political activist and commentator Mohamed Abul-Ghar said on his Facebook page that the lack of competition in the Senate elections and the low number of candidates show that democracy in Egypt is regressing.
Reda Farahat, vice president of the Egyptian National Congress Party, attributed the small number of candidates to the fact that running in the Senate elections is costly for both individuals and political parties. The electoral districts are very large in geographical size, a fact which makes it difficult for most political parties and individuals to campaign, Farahat said.
Egypt is divided into 27 districts designated for individual candidate elections (independents), while four districts are reserved for candidates on the closed party lists. Two of these districts (Cairo and South and Middle Delta and North and Middle and South of Upper Egypt) are allocated 74 seats (37 each), and the other two districts (East Delta and West Delta) are allocated 26 (13 each).
Essam Hilal, deputy secretary general of the Mostaqbal Watan Party, said the NUL includes candidates from both pro-government and opposition parties. 'It is an electoral coalition that will lead to the creation of a multi-party Senate reflecting all political backgrounds and ideologies,' he said.
Assem Al-Gazzar, a former housing minister and chairman of the Unified Front Party, said the NUL reflects a partnership among different political forces. 'Instead of each one having its own electoral list, a number of political parties decided to form a unified list that aims to achieve the public interest and reinforce internal political stability,' Al-Gazzar said.
Campaigning for the Senate elections is scheduled to kick off on 18 July and continue until 31 July. There will be a silent day on 30 July, after which the polls will open for Egyptians living abroad on 1-2 August and for those inside the country on 4-5 August. Polling stations will be open during election days from 9am to 9pm.
Candidates have the right to use the state-owned media in an equal manner. They are prohibited from using religious slogans or mosques or churches for campaigning. Badawi stressed that the media must refrain from spreading rumours or showing bias to particular parties.
He said that media outlets would be banned from conducting opinion polls, adding that the media must provide fair coverage and deal with all the candidates on an equal footing.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 17 July, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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