Dr. Amr Hashem Rabie
One of the wonders of the division of electoral districts is the division carried out by the Egyptian legal system in every electoral system, and perhaps every election, when it determines the electoral districts on which parliamentary elections, or Senate elections (the latter is not constitutionally considered a parliament), are based.
Political forces have often complained about the size of the constituencies, or their fragmentation, or the inclusion of their economic and social components in each other. This is done by integrating a part into the whole, or separating an important sector from the rest, thus creating an independent entity, and perhaps canceling or establishing other constituencies with new names.
One of the most important factors determining the size of an electoral district, regardless of its composition, is the electoral system under which the elections are held. There is a principle in parliamentary literature stating that there is a strong relationship between the size of a district and the number of candidates. The more candidates there are, even if they are affiliated with a political party, the smaller the size of the district will be.and Whenever a candidate is affiliated with a party or political force, according to the electoral law that prohibits individuals from running in their own right, the electoral district becomes larger. Hence, we find that the division of electoral districts under the individual candidacy system during the era of former President Hosni Mubarak in the successive elections held between 1990 and 2011 was characterized by numerous districts and small areas. There were 222 electoral districts. In contrast, the 1984 and 1987 elections, which were conducted on a party basis and in which the Muslim Brotherhood participated, divided the country into 48 districts.
Thus, the majoritarian system, being a personal electoral system, operates within narrow constituencies. Conversely, the more proportional the system, meaning the elections are conducted through political parties, the larger the constituencies become. However, this size should not be excessive, so as not to disadvantage small and medium-sized parties.
In 2007, Dr. Lisa Handley presented, in a paper published by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) in a book entitled “Challenging the Norms and Standards of Election Administration”, the most important agreed standards for dividing electoral districts, and indicated that neutrality is the first necessary standard in dividing electoral districts. This means that the electoral commissioner should have no political interest in determining the number, size, and composition of the districts. In other words, it is crucial that the district divisions not be based on the practices employed during Mubarak’s era to prevent the three main opposition parties (Wafd, Tagammu, and Labor) from winning a significant number of seats in the People’s Assembly.
The second criterion is equality, meaning equal representation in each district. It is unacceptable for a representative of 100,000 people to sit in parliament next to another representing 300,000. Certainly, the legal framework may be forced to allow for a less-than-perfect equality in the size of districts and the number of voters within them.
This has led to the practice of maintaining an acceptable standard deviation between districts. In Egypt, electoral districts have often varied due to intentional differences in the number of voters, but what is important is to emphasize that this variation should not be so large as to violate the principle of equality.
The third criterion is inclusiveness and non-discrimination, which typically involves dividing constituencies according to the same administrative and local components. The drawbacks of dividing constituencies differently are evident here, as it fragments a single tribe across multiple constituencies, thus limiting its power and preventing its representation. The inclusiveness criterion may also be violated when dividing a constituency known to have supporters of a particular party.
It may happen that there is an ethnic, religious or cultural group that is deliberately denied representation during the division, and this sectarian sorting may occur unintentionally. Therefore, some systems resort to creating a quota for the group that is wronged or oppressed, so the political system appears to be not depriving it while at the same time controlling its number in parliament.
The fourth criterion is transparency, which means being honest with the public about what will happen and perhaps even consulting with political forces before enacting it. In other words, electoral district reforms shouldn’t be concocted behind closed doors and then suddenly announced.
The parliamentary elections are taking place in a reality that lacks any of the four aforementioned criteria.
It is true that the legal legislator finds himself in a state of confusion, given that 90% of the population in Egypt lives on approximately no more than 20% of Egypt’s land, but much can be done to reform the current electoral districts.
The 222 single-member constituencies, similar to the 1990-2011 elections, and the 48 constituencies in the 1990s of last year, were the best in terms of size and in terms of the social and economic components of the constituency, although they need some adjustments, because some of them were detailed against the political opposition at the time, and in favor of the defunct Democratic Party.
Today the major problem is the existence of small constituencies such as Tanta, Qallin and Abu Hummus in the majority system in the individual style, and others that start from Giza, and end on the borders of Sudan and also include the Red Sea and the New Valley, in the majority system in the style of the party bloc known in the media as the “absolute list”.
In other words, we have constituencies that a candidate can travel through by bicycle or car, and others that require an airplane for him to move around. It’s true that the first type of constituency is represented by one, two, three, or four candidates, while the second type is represented by 102 representatives, but it’s unbelievable that any single candidate could effectively campaign in that area. No party in a developing country that is new to democracy can do that unless the capabilities of the state, its local authorities, its security apparatus, its media, its electoral system, etc., are harnessed for it.
There is no doubt that the absolute list system is politically flawed because it is more like an appointment or endorsement, and because it is only compatible with authoritarian regimes; because it creates a compliant, submissive, and subservient parliament before the executive authority, and it is constitutionally flawed because the Constitutional Court ruled it unconstitutional in local elections twice. In the Shura Council elections during the period 1980-1989, this flawed, incomplete, and globally abandoned system was responsible for this situation. It was chosen on the flimsy and false pretext that it was capable of representing the six social quotas stipulated in the constitution, because the proposals of some competent and specialized electoral experts for a proportional representation system capable of representing the quotas were rejected. It seems that the drafters of the constitution assumed – because of the quotas – that they were forming and preparing to establish a social, not a political, institution called the House of Representatives!!!!
Perhaps the most compelling evidence that the legislator intended to create a compliant parliament through absolute lists, rather than to overcome the quota representation complex, is that he made the Senate, which is free of constitutional quotas, adopt the same method of absolute lists as well!
There is no doubt that the best way to reform the electoral districts in Egypt is to get rid of the absolute list and return to proportional representation according to the 48 districts, or at least the individual system with narrow districts.
Here it is important that the National Elections Authority play its constitutional and legal role in determining electoral districts, instead of leaving this role to be manipulated by this or that politician or left to this or that security agency, so that the state party, known to all, can represent it.