The future of parliament on a “Snakes and Ladders” board

Since President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s statement, the public debate over the future of politics and parliament in Egypt has come to resemble a game of Snakes and Ladders—jerked abruptly forward, then dragged backward, without rules that anyone can trust. What followed was not adjustment but upheaval: sweeping interventions in the conduct of the House of Representatives elections and in their declared outcomes.

The consequences have been severe and cumulative: votes annulled by administrative fiat and court rulings; reruns whose results were overturned wholesale; crushing losses for entire parties; the disappearance of tens of thousands of votes; and a collapse in turnout—most starkly in urban constituencies, where disengagement has become impossible to disguise.

Strangely, some of the loudest figures gathered around this Snakes and Ladders board are the very same voices that once offered unqualified support for the political and electoral process—flaws and all—right up until the president’s veto.

Today, they speak the language of outrage and reform, offering criticism of what occurred and promises about what comes next. Yet in practice, they push the public debate toward the brightly painted snakes, dragging it backward, while carefully sidestepping the ladders—those steps that might move the conversation forward and lay foundations that could actually be built upon.

A closer look reveals that some actors, whether deliberately or in apparent good faith, are attempting to defuse the most dangerous consequences of a troubled electoral scene and turn the page as if nothing had happened.

Their argument is straightforward: the process has been “corrected.” The National Elections Authority has acted, the Supreme Administrative Court has ruled, and the Interior Ministry has launched an unprecedented campaign against vote-buying. Taken together, they insist, these steps are sufficient to deliver the best possible Egyptian parliament—one that faithfully reflects the popular will—and therefore require no deeper political or structural reckoning.

Do we draw the curtain?

This line of argument focuses on the surface and avoids the heart of the matter. It treats the shrinking of dozens of candidates back to their actual electoral weight, after the loss of votes inflated by political money or other violations, as conclusive evidence that the elections were fundamentally sound.

That claim is simply untrue. Interior Ministry statements continued—throughout the voting days—to acknowledge the spread of bribery and organized voter mobilization via tuk-tuks, while testimonies kept surfacing in the press and across social media.

Candidates themselves spoke openly of the “price per vote,” and of tactical shifts that merely relocated these practices away from the immediate perimeter of polling stations, rather than eliminating them.

The “soundness, integrity, and superiority” of parliament is in no way limited to procedures being completed without violations or stamped with judicial approval. The essence of the process lies elsewhere: in genuine political representation.

In reality, hundreds of MPs in the next parliament—whether elected on the single national list or as independents—secured their seats through votes tainted by violations. Yet their victories could not be overturned once they acquired settled legal status, shifting jurisdiction over challenges to their membership to the Court of Cassation.

Many also won, before and after the president’s veto, with a meager share of the electorate. That forces deeper questions about whether it is acceptable to call everything we are witnessing a “political process” in the first place.

Political money is not the issue

Fixation on political money has meanwhile empowered voices that present themselves as calm, rational, and pragmatic, while quietly shifting responsibility away from the political environment and the electoral system that produced this outcome in the first place—and onto citizens themselves.

According to this line of reasoning, the Interior Ministry’s unprecedented clampdown on traditional mobilization methods, particularly in high-profile districts in the capital, explains the collapse in turnout: 1.7% in Giza, 2% in 6 October City and Basateen, and below 3% in Montaza in Alexandria and in Haram.

This argument collapses at the first glance beyond Cairo. Where competition existed—driven by local, family, or social rivalries—participation surged in runoff rounds. In Mansoura Center 2, turnout exceeded 29%. In Aga, it reached 27%. In Dakerness, Sherbin, and Beni Obeid, it stood at 23%. Other districts in Sharqiya, Kafr El-Sheikh, Beheira, Qena, and Minya recorded turnout between 15% and 20%.

The conclusion is unavoidable: citizens did not withdraw because vote-buying was restrained; they withdrew where elections offered no real contest.

More troubling still is the claim—voiced openly by some—that the crackdown itself carried “drawbacks.” That it frightened candidates’ supporters, forced withdrawals, and dampened enthusiasm. The implication is stark: that elections function better when lubricated by political money, and that integrity comes at the cost of participation.

As if the purpose of elections were to recreate manufactured crowds at polling stations, rather than to build a genuine political process capable of representing Egyptians and defending their interests.

Parliament: cosmetic or functioning

Finding “ladders” in the game instead of “snakes” requires a different approach. We should first ask ourselves: Why do we want a House of Representatives? Why is there only elite and insipid interest regarding popular disengagement?

Most readers and viewers ignore election news and articles, turning instead to celebrity scandals and viral social media trends. If parliament is seen as little more than a formal necessity, merely extending the parliamentary track that has existed since 2015, then there is no point in continuing the discussion at all.

With a weak parliament that neither represents people nor carries out its legislative and oversight duties, the gap between society and the authorities can only widen. That gap becomes fraught with pressure, breeding resentment, anger, and disorder, which in turn translates into individual and collective violence in the absence of real channels for representation and expression.

A strong parliament, by contrast, is in the interest of all Egypt, government, state, and citizen alike.

Bringing citizens back to polling stations will not happen by turning a blind eye to vote-buying, nor through awareness campaigns. It depends on reviving parliamentary work itself and keeping the executive branch, with all its agencies and bodies, out of what happens under the dome, leaving MPs and parties to engage directly with the street’s hopes and pains.

The situation cannot bear any more “patches.” Managing the political scene has proven totally unable to deliver.

If we accept moving forward with the new House of Representatives, the opportunity is there for it to be “the best” in Egypt’s history, not because of how it was elected, but because of its performance over the next five years, especially in its first parliamentary session.

This turbulent, lengthy, and confusing electoral experience, marked by empty ballot boxes, is not the product of pre-engineering alone. It is also the result of falling in line behind government projects and statements, and of identical voices and declarations.

It is the result of positions that range from absolutist to vague on pivotal laws affecting tens of millions, such as old rent, criminal procedure, and labor.

It is the fruit of the absence of oversight tools, the limited capacity of MPs, and the decline in their ability to provide even the simplest services.

Citizens will return to the ballot boxes when they see clear, differentiated parliamentary positions—beginning with the courage to propose ideas, to question seriously, and to introduce draft laws open to debate, amendment, and improvement.

Dozens of laws urgently require reconsideration, whether those touching people’s daily lives directly or those tied to reopening the public sphere itself.

The first challenge and the first step

Electoral laws themselves will be the first and most revealing test facing the next parliament.

Amending them requires political will before anything else. Only then can the technical and legislative work begin: removing procedural and practical barriers to candidacy, and addressing the structural flaws of both the list system and individual races.

Oversized constituencies inflame local rivalries and sensitivities between cities and villages; turnout collapses where competition is absent; and campaigning across vast districts demands serious money, shutting out all but the most resourced contenders.

Amending the laws governing the exercise of political rights, the National Elections Authority, and the House of Representatives and Senate will therefore be the true measure of what the future of politics in Egypt holds.

I am not speaking of cosmetic amendments. What follows is a set of core principles distilled from the long and substantive public debate over the real issues at stake.

1. Reconsider the grounds for exclusion from candidacy, and the conditions, procedures, and requirements for running, in a way that prevents arbitrary interpretation and application, under judicial oversight.

2. End the use of winner-takes-all closed lists. (*)

3. Hold elections under an individual system for two-thirds of the seats, and allocate the final third to proportional lists. Allow parties and independents alike to form these lists. This aligns with Article 102 of the constitution, which provides a broad framework for choosing the electoral system.

4. Consider allocating proportional lists to the groups that the constitution mandates for affirmative representation: women, workers and farmers, youth, Christians, people with disabilities, and Egyptians abroad.

5. Redraw individual constituencies so they have one seat, or two at most. Abolish the three- and four-member constituencies to reduce their size, bring MPs closer to those they represent, reduce voter confusion, and increase the number of competitors in runoff rounds.(**)

6. Amend provisions on counting in subcommittees, and on rules governing the work of candidates’ agents and representatives. This should make it easier to register authorizations with general committees, and guarantee that tally sheets are handed to any accredited representative of the candidate.(***)

7. Toughen penalties for electoral crimes, especially bribery, extortion, and manipulation. Create a system for swift investigation and accountability that enables the disqualification of candidates implicated in such crimes.

Political liberalization, together with electoral reform, is exactly the first step needed to show that change is possible and begin a new, responsible parliamentary life. It may also whet citizens’ appetite for genuine participation.

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(*) Mohamed Nour Al-Basrati, a political science professor at Beni Suef University, concludes that the current system of 50% winner-takes-all closed lists and 50% individual seats transformed the primary function of parties into alliance-building rather than program-based, ideological competition. It also created fluidity in those alliances and had a negative impact on participation rates. See his paper, “The Effects of the Electoral Environment as a determinant of the Democratic Transition: a case study of the Egyptian Parliament from 2011 to 2020,” published in Issue 11 of the Journal of the Faculty of Politics and Economics at Beni Suef University.

(**) Maher Hamdi Aish, a geography professor at Menoufiya University, noted the inverse relationship between turnout and the number of seats in a constituency in the 2015 House of Representatives elections. That, along with other reasons, led him to recommend abandoning the wide variation in the sizes of individual-seat constituencies because of their negative impact on turnout. See his paper, “The effect of the size of individual-system constituencies on turnout: A study in the geography of elections,” published in Issue 152 of the Arab Geographical Journal issued by the Egyptian Geographical Society.

(***) The current elections saw problems such as withholding tally sheets or numerical-count statements, not allowing candidates to file authorizations and proxies, and refusing officially notarized authorizations, according to candidates’ complaints and lawsuits before the Supreme Administrative Court. See, for example, rulings in appeals Nos. 5820, 6002, 6090, and 6083 for year 72 (Supreme Administrative Court).