A parliament defined by invalidity

In the first phase of Egypt’s parliamentary elections, the National Election Authority (NEA) was compelled to rerun voting in 19 individual-seat constituencies. Soon after, the Higher Administrative Court annulled results in another 30 constituencies from the same round, after ruling that grave violations had demonstrably affected the outcome.

The court has since ruled on 266 appeals related to the second phase of the elections: rejecting 211 challenges, referring 37 to the Court of Cassation for lack of jurisdiction, and dismissing eight on procedural grounds.

More constituencies would undoubtedly have been invalidated had objecting candidates, and an outraged public, been able to document violations with the evidentiary rigor required by the courts.

When these facts are considered alongside the structural flaws of the winner-takes-all list system—through which nearly half of parliament’s members are effectively elected without competition, a system the authorities insist on preserving intact—the magnitude of the crisis confronting this parliament becomes unmistakable.

Old games

Even with reruns in some first-phase constituencies, and the possibility of further reruns emerging from the second phase, the defining feature of this parliament will remain its invalidity.

More dangerously still, the very idea of parliament has been shaken in the public consciousness. No authority can compel citizens to take seriously a House born under a cloud of illegitimacy, nor to respect the laws, resolutions, or proposals that later emerge from it.

Despite the president’s intervention in an attempt at correction, nothing changed in these parliamentary elections. The same old violations and maneuvers persisted, as documented by opposition and independent candidates alike, and corroborated by video clips and comments circulated on social media.

No rational person, no patriot, no one genuinely concerned with national stability, integrity, or freedom can accept such a parliament.

It is astonishing, then, to hear those who still pin their hopes on it, expecting it to deliver something different in the future. The elections have produced outcomes whose consequences are likely to linger for years to come.

The manner in which these elections concluded suggests that the current authorities are not prepared to undertake genuine political reform: reform deep enough to meet popular demands, so affairs can be set right.

Talk of “fixing the electoral process” after the first phase’s scandals was nothing more than a way to weather the crisis, or a temporary truce in an intense struggle among pro-government political factions. It was not a shift in direction, nor an acknowledgment of what Egypt’s political moment truly requires.

Instead of addressing the problem at its roots through serious—even if gradual—reform, the authorities have resorted to patchwork solutions. This is the same logic applied to public debt: postponing reckoning through stopgap measures until debt nearly swallowed the national income.

Now, that same logic has been applied to parliament itself.

It seems the faction of distortion, fabrication, and forgery has the upper hand on the ground, and that it has reached a level of power that leaves no one able to restrain it or turn it back.

These elections provided fresh evidence of contempt for the popular will: through manipulation in all its forms, the use of political slush money, and relentless propaganda. They also propelled forward candidates in whom the public has little trust—figures neither willing nor able to defend citizens, hear their grievances, or address their problems.

The absence of true representation, and the falsification of the popular will, are not new phenomena—particularly over the past decade. What is new, and most alarming, is that this election revealed the emergence of successive “centers of power” operating beyond the capacity of state institutions to confront them.

If the door is left open to them, these forces will seize control of the public sphere and public finances alike, tightening their grip around the people’s necks. Then the situation will worsen.

To whom it may concern

This House of Representatives has come into being stillborn, on the edge of a dark and uneven road.

Invalidity will trail it at every step. If it continues to function, it will do so only through force. And a parliament sustained by coercion inevitably casts doubt on everything it produces—legislation, proposals, procedures—leaving them vulnerable to challenge, unraveling, ridicule, and waste.

When all that issues from parliament is imposed through compulsion, the legitimacy of the entire political system is pushed to the brink, placing the state itself in jeopardy.

With such a parliament, legitimacy sinks into the mud or rests on shifting sands. That, in turn, opens the door to state disintegration—ironically at the hands of those who claim to be working tirelessly to preserve stability.

Public disengagement from the elections is itself a grave message, searching for someone willing to hear it.

The danger is that Egyptians have moved beyond negative participation—spoiling ballots or refusing to go to polling stations—into a state of complete indifference to what is happening, or ignoring it altogether.

All of us will pay the price for corrupting political life in this way—whether by elevating the crooked to the forefront or by making a broad segment of people believe that political participation is merely a marketplace, complete with buying and selling, brokers and middlemen.

This is part of the organized destruction of our society.

Those who once claimed they stayed awake through the night to protect the nation—I no longer know where they are. In schools and through the media, they taught our generation, and those before us, that sleepless vigilance in defense of the country was a sacred principle, one that could never be abandoned.

What is needed is real reform

To treat the representation of the Egyptian people with contempt, and refuse to listen to their voice when it roars with complaint, makes demands, and expresses aspirations, is neither politics nor prudence.

Producing a parliament for the big beneficiaries—a very polite expression for the overwhelming majority of them—excludes people from the scene.

It severs the links between the executive authority and the people, especially at a moment when the press is constrained from addressing public problems, and social media users are pursued for raising them.

What emerges is rule by force—a model that may have survived centuries ago, but cannot endure today.

Even if it could, it would not serve “the interests of the Egyptian state”—if anyone still cares about those interests, or is sincere in speaking of “stabilizing its pillars.”

Today we are facing a deathblow to the parliamentary elections, when everything it produces is haunted by invalidity.

So will the “regime” seize the opportunity to carry out political, economic, and social reform—reform that is urgently needed to avert an explosion or social unrest?

Or is the force pushing it along the path it has followed for the past 10 years greater than its ability to change course?

Nothing will suffice except rerunning the elections in their entirety, while genuinely enabling the people to impose their will.

That requires a new electoral law based on proportional representation, an administration that abstains from interference in all its forms, and a firm stance against the corrosive influence of political money.

Only then can parliament cease to be a symbol of rupture—and begin, once again, to resemble a bridge between the state and its people.