Polling stations have opened for voting in Egypt’s Senate elections (the upper house of parliament) on Monday.
Voting in the country’s 27 provinces will last two days, on Monday and Tuesday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Voting at polling stations outside Egypt took place on August 1-2.
According to the office of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the country’s leader has already voted at a polling station in a school in the Heliopolis district of Cairo.
Around 68 million voters are eligible to vote, and more than 8,000 polling stations will be open across the country on August 4-5.
The new constitution adopted in 2014 transformed Egypt’s bicameral parliament into a unicameral body and abolished the upper house, the Shura Council, which had purely advisory functions and whose decisions were not binding.
Last year, a nationwide referendum approved constitutional amendments that restored the upper house with the same advisory powers, changing its name to the Senate. In the long term, MPs hope that the Senate will be given legislative powers, but they recognise that this will take years, as the restoration of the upper house with legislative powers will entail the restructuring of the entire political system of the country and the adoption of a new Constitution.
After 2014, there were 596 members in the Egyptian parliament. Now another 300 will be added, bringing the total number of legislators to almost 900. Elections to the lower house are scheduled for the end of the year.
The final list of candidates was announced on July 18, and the election campaign began on the same day. The results of the elections to the upper house of the Egyptian parliament are expected to be announced on August 12.
