Alwaght- Low turnout has marked Egypt’s second phase of elections that are meant to restore parliament after a more than three-year gap but which the opposition says has been undermined by widespread repression.
Polling stations opened at 9 a.m. local time (0700 GMT) on Sunday and closed 12 hours later. The same process will also be followed on Monday.
The elections seen by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as a milestone on the army's roadmap to democracy but voter turnout has been low, with only a quarter of the electorate casting ballots in the first phase on Oct. 18-19.
Sisi supporters won a landslide in the first leg and are expected to repeat their performance on Sunday and Monday when voting takes place in the capital Cairo and 12 other provinces. Television once again showed footage of largely empty polling stations.
The government announced it was giving public sector workers half a day off on Monday to encourage them to cast their ballots.
Many who abstained said they felt the polls offered little genuine choice in the absence of the main opposition Muslim Brotherhood and other critics and that parliament would change little in lives dominated by the struggle to earn a living.
Egypt's last parliament was elected in 2011-12, in the first election after the popular uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule. Voting then was marked by long queues and youthful excitement. The Muslim Brotherhood, long the country's main opposition movement, won about half the seats. A court dissolved that parliament in mid-2012. Egypt’s first democratically-elected president Mohammad Morsi, was overthrown by the military under the leadership of Sisi in July 2013. Morsi and other top Muslim Brotherhood members have been jailed while the military regime continues its crackdown on the opposition.
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In Focus
Ansarullah
A Zaidi Shiite movement operating in Yemen. It seeks to establish a democratic government in Yemen.
Shiite
represents the second largest denomination of Islam. Shiites believe Ali (peace be upon him) to be prophet"s successor in the Caliphate.
Resistance
Axis of Resistances refers to countries and movements with common political goal, i.e., resisting against Zionist regime, America and other western powers. Iran, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Palestine are considered as the Axis of Resistance.
Persian Gulf Cooperation Council
A regional political u n i o n consisting of Arab states of the Persian Gulf, except for Iraq.
Taliban
Taliban is a Sunni fundamentalist movement in Afghanistan. It was founded by Mohammed Omar in 1994.
Wahhabism & Extremism
Wahhabism is an extremist pseudo-Sunni movement, which labels non-Wahhabi Muslims as apostates thus paving the way for their bloodshed.
Kurds
Kurds are an ethnic group in the Middle East, mostly inhabiting a region, which spans adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. They are an Iranian people and speak the Kurdish languages, which form a subgroup of the Northwestern Iranian branch of Iranian languages.
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949.
Islamic Awakening
Refers to a revival of the Islam throughout the world, that began in 1979 by Iranian Revolution that established an Islamic republic.
Al-Qaeda
A militant Sunni organization founded by Osama bin Laden at some point between 1988 and 1989
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