Is Egypt's former ruling party making a comeback?
Following Egypt's January 25 Revolution, the ruling National Democratic Party was dissolved, yet prominent faces from the party are making a comeback in parliament.
CAIRO — One of the main factors that sparked Egypt’s January 25 Revolution more than five years ago was the rigging of the 2010 parliamentary elections in favor of then-President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). Though the NDP was dissolved in April 2011, its former members still seek a major role in Egyptian politics, especially in parliament.
On April 23, the House of Representatives finished electing 25 committee heads, 11 of whom are former members or affiliates of the NDP.
According to a Dec. 29 study on the current parliament's composition, about 145 former NDP parliament members who were elected in 2010 participated in the 2015 elections. Sixty-five of them won, while 80 candidates lost, some of whom went out in the first round and did not make it to the runoff. The study was published in Democracy, a journal issued by state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper.
The Mubarak-era candidates won 124 seats, or about 21% of parliament. The House of Representatives consists of 448 individual seats, 120 seats based on the absolute closed-list system and 28 members appointed by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
