Run-Off Parliamentary Elections Underway Across Egypt

Local Editor

Egyptians are heading to the polls to cast their votes in the run-off parliamentary elections.

Polling stations opened at 9:00 local time a.m. [0700 GMT] on Tuesday in the capital, Cairo, and several other regions across the North African country. The run-off is scheduled to take place in two days.

Over 200 individual seats in the 596-seat assembly are voted for in the elections.

No clear winner was declared before the run-off, as none of the candidates could grab over 50 percent of the votes
The main elections were held on October 18, with a low turnout of nearly only 26.6 percent. There was no immediate indication that more voters were casting their ballots in the run-off.

Candidates supporting the incumbent military-backed president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, are expected to win most seats.

The main opposition Muslim Brotherhood, which won almost half of the seats in the parliament in 2011, has been banned from the vote. Supporters of several other political factions have also boycotted the elections.

Egypt has had no parliament since 2012, when a court dissolved the democratically-elected chamber, comprised mainly of Brotherhood members.

Since Mohamed Morsi, the country's first democratically-elected president, was toppled by the military under the leadership of Sisi in July 2013, the government has overseen a crackdown targeting Brotherhood supporters and other critics.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team