The Conservatives Party is pushing to form potentially the largest coalition in preparation for the upcoming parliamentary elections, that looks to include some of the most prominent parties in the country.
The party said their initiative, ‘the Unified Project’, will produce a conclusive perspective that includes all the founding parties’ suggestions on amending the unconstitutional electoral districts law, according to the party’s statement.
(AFP FILE PHOTO / MOHAMMED MAHJOUB)
Ahmed Hassan, head of the party’s media office, told Daily News Egypt that at least 30 parties will be represented in the initiative’s launching conference on Sunday.
“Of the parties that will attend, there will be the Al-Wafd, the National Movement, the Conference Party among others,” he said.
The party said the initiative’s expected product will not be an alternative to the amended law, but will offer different perspectives to the points the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) ruled unconstitutional.
The SCC ruling on 1 March ruled the electoral districts law unconstitutional, resulting in the postponement of parliamentary elections until the questioned law is amended.
The elections were scheduled to take place in March, but the constitutionality of the electoral district law was questioned. President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has announced parliamentary elections will be held in the coming period, but not during Ramadan, which is to start in mid-June.
The committee in charge of amending the law made amendments to the electoral districts law, raising the seats for individual seats to 448.
The committee also announced there will be 203 constituencies for individual seats in the upcoming elections.
The seats for closed-lists system stand at 120, with 27 members to be appointed by Al-Sisi. The total count for the upcoming legislation house members will be 595.
The main issue from the government’s point of view was the flawed law distributing individual parliamentary seats over electoral districts. The number of elected individual seats in the initial law issued by the President was 420, out of the total 567 seats.
Political parties saw further problems, which would lead, in their opinion, to an unbalanced and unrepresentative parliament. They argued that this would give less space for political entities in the political process, to the advantage of powerful and wealthier candidates, mainly politicians from the regime of Hosni Mubarak.
