Here are the most important points in the law :
* The parliamentary elections will be delayed but not at the end of the year !! “ Last time I checked the elections committee will start working on September 18th ,2011 !? “
* The people’s assembly and Shura council elections will be held in the same day on three stages , which means three days !! “I do not understand how or why !? This can confess people already and it will make it hard for civil society organization to monitor this huge process !!”
* The parliamentary elections will have mixed voting system “ 50% direct individual voting system and 50% the closed proportional system”
* The candidate ages in the people’s assembly is reduced from 30 to 25 years old.
* The people’s assembly “The parliament” will be made of 504 members.
* The upcoming president can appoint 10 members.
* The candidates age in the Shura council is 35 years.
* The Shura council will be made of 390 members.
* 1/3 of Shura council will be appointed by the upcoming president
* Voting will be by the ID Card
* Egyptians abroad right to vote has not be decided yet
* There will be no international monitors as this is an attack on our sovereignty !!
* There will be no women’s quota but every electoral list should include at least one woman.
* The court can nullify as parliamentary membership in 90 days from announcing the results
* No religious slogans to be used.
* There will be 120 electoral committees national wide.
The Shura Council and the People's Assembly are the upper and lower houses of parliament. That a third will be appointed by the government indicates that this is an attempt to derail the revolution. Fortunately, the people of Egypt are seeing through the prevarications and obviations these days, and the new election laws are being met with fierce criticism.
Bicameralism is a charade. It goes back to the Republic of Rome when the patricians used the upper house , the Senate, to quash democratic reforms. The Founders of the US re-created the Senate for precisely the same purpose. The UK has the House of Lords etc. and this foul, democracy-blunting scheme has been employed the world over. As regular visitors to this blog will note, I prefer democracies to republics--hiring somebody to make important decisions for you is an absurdity on its face--but if a representative system is to be used, then there must be only one legislative body, and its members must be seated by direct election--all of them.
This business of international monitors being a threat to national sovereignty is garbage. Clearly Egypt's owners, foreign and domestic, know that their rule cannot survive an honest election. They can't have democracy, it will be the ruin of them.
http://egyptianchronicles.blogspot.com/2011/07/egyelections-elections-law.html#comment-form
