Egypt’s disabled seek fair representation in parliament

CAIRO — Article 244 of Egypt's 2014 constitution grants disabled Egyptians the right to appropriate representation in the next parliament. This representation has been set by the People's Assembly Law — which was considered unconstitutional in March and is currently being amended — at eight seats, out of a total of 120 seats of the electoral list system, representing one-third of the total parliamentary seats.

However, the Egyptian movement to empower people with disabilities believes that this quota is not enough. Hassan al-Sibai, the movement’s coordinator, told Al-Monitor that the constitution allocated a quota for those with disabilities for one parliamentary cycle, which has led Egyptian parties and electoral coalitions to deal with this group of voters as if their election was pro forma aimed at completing the lists' numbers.

Sibai explained that none of the people with disabilities who are qualified to represent the disabled community and their problems in parliament were selected, and he considered this to be inappropriate treatment of the disabled by the Egyptian political parties and coalitions.

“Some parties had allied with a number of people with disabilities and then renounced their alliance with them. [The parties] instead allied with people with disabilities who could afford spending money on the electoral campaigns of the parties and coalitions, without considering their ability to represent the disabled and their causes in Egypt. The parties and coalitions also refused people with disabilities to field parliamentary elections as individual candidates outside the scope of the electoral list system. In addition, the parties and coalitions did not include the causes of people with disabilities in their electoral programs,” he said.