- October 22, 2011
- 4 minutes read
Beltagy: Diverse Candidates In FJP Electoral Lists
Dr. Mohamed Beltagy, member of the Executive Office of the "Freedom and Justice" party (FJP), and a member of the Democratic Alliance’s Elections Coordination Committee, asserted that the FJP has sought an electoral list that is carefully balanced to achieve two objectives: national consensus and outstanding figures representing the full political spectrum capable of attracting the votes of the general public.
In a press statement, Dr. Beltagy explained that the Alliance’s lists are simply lists of ‘candidates’, not lists of parliamentary; and that it is the right of each party to present a list of candidates for 100% of the seats in parliament. He also pointed out that this does not and should not embarrass any party, adding that “It is the masses who will determine the proportion of presentation each party gets in parliament”.With reference to the Democratic Alliance (DA) being late in presenting its electoral lists, Dr. Beltagy said that the DA has sought to bring-in the largest number of national forces and political parties, in order to form an electoral alliance with a national list, to face the dissolved National Party’s own list. But when some parties decided to run independently, competition between various national forces emerged. Hence, it became natural for each list to organise its members so as to ensure their ability to compete nationally and attract the votes of the general public. He added that this has made it necessary to review, refine, reduce and focus the candidate list, to be more competitive with other national forces and parties.
With regard to the high percentage of FJP candidates in the coalition’s list, Dr. Beltagy pointed out that many of the alliance’s parties nominated all their candidates for ‘higher’ seats: e.g. avoiding seats for “workers”, and going for seats of the People’s Assembly and not the Shura Council, and for only the top half of the electoral list, avoiding individual seats; going for male rather than female candidates. Thus we had to fill in the rest of the candidates for workers, individuals, female seats, and the second half of the lists – all of which is far from real competition, but was necessary to complete the lists. This is why a high proportion of the candidates are from the FJP.
The Egyptian elections system is divided into electoral lists – through which only political parties compete with candidate lists – and an independent or "individual" candidate system – which is open to all parties and independent candidates.
