CAIRO: The High Election Committee (HEC) has opened doors for non-governmental organizations and media outlets to apply for parliamentary electoral observation, Youm7 reported Thursday.
“Applications to observe the parliamentary elections are to be submitted at the committee’s headquarters in Heliopolis during the period 1-20 August,” HEC’s Spokesman Omar Marawan was quoted by Youm7 without revealing accurate dates of Egypt’s long awaited elections.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has reiterated that the parliament elections will be held by the end of 2015.
Egypt’s parliamentary elections, which had been scheduled to kick off March 22, were indefinitely postponed after the Supreme Constitutional Court (HCC) ruled in March the unconstitutionality of articles concerning electoral districts and political participation laws.
Following the military-backed ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, then-Defense Minister Abdel Fatah al-Sisi announced a roadmap that set a timeline for the country’s political events. Sisi said the roadmap would initiated with drafting a new constitution and be followed by conducting parliamentary elections, and then presidential elections, respectively.
The constitution was adopted in January 2014 but the then-interim President Adly Mansour issued a presidential decree that swapped the order of the parliamentary and presidential elections.