First day of runoff elections fails to reel in expat voters

Few expatriates showed up to vote at Egyptian embassies and diplomatic missions on Monday, the first day of voting abroad in the parliamentary runoff elections.

Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Hamdy Lozza said only around 4,000 people cast their ballots at 139 international voting stations, the state-owned Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported. A total of 30,531 expats reportedly participated in the first two days of voting earlier this month.

Just four individual candidates out of 2,548 garnered the number of votes required to win a seat outright after the first round, requiring voters to head to the polls again to select their candidates for the 222 seats still up for grabs.

Calling the turnout mediocre but positive on Monday, Lozza said there were no serious incidents or violations. A technical glitch at a polling booth at the Egyptian Embassy in Kuwait had been reported during the first round of voting, but was resolved this time around, he noted.

Expat turnout was lowest in European countries, Lozza said, but it appears to be weak even in countries with a high concentration of Egyptian expatriates.

Saudi Arabia is home to the most expat voters, with more than 1.5 million Egyptians estimated to live and work there, followed by the US, Libya (where voting did not take place this year due to ongoing unrest) and Jordan.

Afifi Abdel Wahab, Egypt’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told the privately owned Al-Watan newspaper that elections were orderly at the embassy in Riyadh and the consulate in Jeddah.

Likely because it was a work day, however, not many voters came out, he admitted without giving specific turnout figures.

Bahrain also had “a below-average turnout,” the privately owned ONA news agency reported. Photos taken at the Egyptian Embassy in Manama showed only a handful of voters. Again, official numbers were not provided.

As of Monday night, updates were not available regarding the vote in the US, Canada, Australia or New Zealand.

Expats registered in the 13 governorates assigned to the second phase of elections will head to their embassies on November 21 and 22, with runoffs scheduled for November 30 and December 1.