Polling stations reopen for 2nd phase of House elections, manufactured youth mobilization on display

Less glitz and glamour were on display at many polling stations that opened Monday morning for the second phase of the 2025 parliamentary election, following heavy scrutiny over widespread electoral infractions.

These violations included the blatant continuation of electoral campaigning during the legally mandated period of electoral silence in governorates that voted in phase one on November 14 and 15, with banners bearing party slogans and flyers featuring electoral symbols — particularly those of the security-backed, majority-holding Nation’s Future Party — plastered across polling stations.

To prevent a repeat of those scenes in phase two, the head of the Cairo Governorate ordered the strict enforcement of electoral silence on Sunday night, instructing that all campaign material within 200 meters of polling stations be removed.

Mada Masr reporters observed campaign materials being torn down in Tanta on Sunday night, and polling stations visited by Mada Masr this morning in various areas of Cairo were similarly cleared. The Interior Ministry issued a series of statements throughout the day on elections infractions it said it had apprehended.

Yet clear efforts to manufacture public mobilization were still on display.

Crowds of young people were visible at several Heliopolis polling stations, a shift from previous presidential and parliamentary elections in which most voters seen in the streets were older.

But the queues of young men gathered outside the Martyr Mostafa Yousry Abu Amira School and Tabary School polling stations in Heliopolis stood in place without moving, while the school buildings themselves remained empty.

An even larger crowd of young people was visible at the Rashid Preparatory School station, though again, they were not observed voting — instead, a polling station official had instructed them to form lines so they could be photographed by his colleague.

Mada Masr also reviewed an advertisement circulated by a casting director on Whatsapp recruiting 500 young men and women to wear “casual clothes” and participate in the second phase of the parliamentary elections, offering LE500 and a free meal.

Similarly, at a Qasr al-Nil polling station visited by a Mada Masr correspondent, small queues had formed to the left and right of the polling tent. However, a station official said they were not waiting to vote. Instead, the official said they were standing there “because they feel like it — sons of the constituency, you know how it is,” he said, before inviting our correspondent to skip the queues and cast their ballot immediately. The entire process took less than three minutes.

Even with the small queues, the number of staff at the station easily exceeded the number of voters who had come to choose their preferred candidates.

Meanwhile, state-owned press outlets have already come out in full force to celebrate “the youth occupying the front of queues at most polling stations.”

The mobilization follows criticism levelled at political life in Egypt after phase one, with media commentators expressing concern over low youth turnout.

Broadcaster Lamis al-Hadidy voiced alarm at the general reluctance to participate in the first phase, pointing to the roughly 9 million young people who reached voting age between 2014 and 2025 and stressing the need to draw them in. “We must provide them with an attractive political climate,” she said, “not a frustrating or worrying one.”

There were still reports of vote-buying during Monday’s elections, including from a candidate and former MP running in Suez, who described “the distribution of financial sums to voters and the exploitation of the poor to try and get illegal votes” on full display in the governorate during the second phase.

The same pattern was widespread during the first phase of voting and in this year’s Senate elections, where pro-government parties hired charitable NGOs to push their beneficiaries to vote in exchange for cash or in-kind gifts.

After the volume of infractions in phase one of the House elections drew comment from President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the National Elections Authority decided to annul the results and ordered reruns in a quarter of the phase-one districts.

Informed sources told Mada Masr at the time that the chaotic management of the first phase had prompted concern about the legitimacy of the coming parliamentary session that reached senior state officials.

Violations witnessed ranged from viral footage showing a judge counting votes before polls had closed to candidates posting videos complaining that they were being required to pay millions of Egyptian pounds to secure their nominations.

Over 250 appeals related to the electoral process have been filed, with the Supreme Administrative Court expected to issue rulings on Wednesday.

The Nation’s Future Party has not addressed criticism of the process directly, but issued a statement on Sunday claiming it is the target of a smear campaign “launched by the Muslim Brotherhood,” and affirming its commitment to supporting the state’s “democratic institutions.”

Voting in the second phase continues tomorrow, with 1,316 candidates competing for 141 seats.

The remaining seats in the 13 governorates covered by phase two are expected to go to candidates running on “the National List,” a coalition of parties and independents curated and selected by the Nation’s Future Party.

Voters cast their ballot for their preferred list, electing its candidates as a bloc.

With the National List running uncontested this year, it needs fewer than five percent of the electorate to secure roughly half the seats in Parliament.