Egyptian Parliament elections: Only 10% of voters participated
Voter turnout for the Egyptian parliamentary elections was low on Sunday. Only an estimate of 10 percent of voters showed up and cast their ballots for Egypt’s first parliamentary elections since President Mohamed Morsi was overthrown in 2013. The first phase of the elections is until today.
Along with Morsi’s removal was the dissolution of the parliament in 2013. Younger voters reportedly think that the current election is just a display of democracy by their current President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has ruled the country with an iron fist since 2013. True enough, old people who are Sisi supporters comprised the 10 percent who casted their ballots during the first half of the elections.
Reuters correspondents visited Egypt and noted that the 10 percent of voters is a sharp contrast from the 2012 elections where people fell in long lines just to cast their ballots. The low turnout of voters is reportedly because the youth is not happy with the elections.
Ahmed Mostafa, a 25-year-old who works in a lab, said, "It’s not going to matter. It’s just for show, to show that we are a democracy, and we have elections, and blah blah blah any nonsense."
Thirty-four-year-old Ahmed Ibrahim also shared the same sentiment and explained why most of the younger people opted not to vote. "The youth in Egypt, our ambition in 2011, we were going to build the country – but then suddenly it was stolen from us,” he explained.
Although the younger citizens are vocal about not casting their ballots, the government has declared a half-day holiday for state workers on Monday, in hopes to encourage the people to vote.
Egypt’s parliament was dissolved in June 2012 when the court ended the democratically elected main chamber, which was dominated by Muslim Brotherhood. In 2013, however, Sisi overthrew Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president. He then brought the country a fierce crackdown and imprisoned over 40,000 people, majority of which are Morsi’s supporters. Security has been revamped across polling stations amidst intimidations from the Islamic State of Iraq Levant and other opponents of the government.
Meanwhile, there will be two rounds of elections; the first is the ongoing schedule, Oct. 18 to Oct. 19, and the second will be on Nov. 22 to Nov. 23.
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