Students for Egypt run unopposed for universities’ students elections

Student union elections began at universities across the country on Tuesday, with the nationwide Students for Egypt bloc running unopposed for the majority of seats.

As a result, representatives for 10 out of 18 of Cairo University’s faculties were appointed by acclamation, and representatives for 14 out of Helwan University’s 21 faculties were also appointed without a vote. Voting ended on Thursday with elections to the presidency of university-wide student unions. 

Five sources commenting on this year’s student elections told Mada Masr that independent students are now reluctant to run, as a once rich and diverse patchwork of student political movements has flattened out into the single bloc.

Students for Egypt first appeared at a ceremony held at Cairo University commemorating the anniversary of the October War. At the time, the founder of Students for Egypt, who was not a student but rather the dean of the agriculture faculty, described the movement as a student initiative created to act in the service of universities and to serve sustainable development goals.

State institutions sponsor the movement, which articulates its aims in support of state policies and is closely linked to university administrations, a member of a student political movement told Mada Masr on condition of anonymity. “One of the youth welfare employees mentioned to me in 2019 that the higher education minister instructed that no financial or administrative support or facilities be made available, except to Students for Egypt,” said the student.

Student political movements did not participate in this year’s elections. Two members of student political groups that have participated in previous elections told Mada Masr that there were no longer any university students affiliated with movements other than Students for Egypt running for the 2021 elections. Naturally, Students for Egypt dominate the elections, said one of the students, saying the bloc does not allow for any competitors and perpetuates the idea that student activity is not a realm for political action.

Abdel Rahman Shawky, a member of Students for Egypt and the head of the student union for the Mansoura University Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, told Mada Masr that he ran again in 2021 to complete what he started last year.

With only 900 candidates standing for somewhere between 820 to 850 positions, Students for Egypt won by a landslide in the Mansoura University elections, Shawky told Mada Masr.

Yet, Shawky, who won by default the same seat he held in 2020 due to the absence of any competitors, was not averse to running unopposed. “We all seek one thing. Students for Egypt is greater than our [affiliation]. Any student who runs for election is a 'student for Egypt' whether or not they are in the formal organization," he said. Students for Egypt will cooperate with unions to educate students about their role in the country’s major national projects and how to serve them, said Shawky.

Shawky, an assistant rapporteur for the bloc at Mansoura University, acknowledged that student activity has been particularly low over the past two years due to the prevalence of online learning during the coronavirus pandemic.

Universities in Egypt closed their doors to students for two weeks in March 2020 to combat the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, opening again in the 2020-2021 academic year with a hybrid educational system of both online and in-person classes. In the new academic year that started in October 2021, all students over the age of 18 are required to be vaccinated in order to enter campus.

At Sohag University, independent students participated “to create a spirit of competition, but 90 percent of the candidates were from Students for Egypt,” said Mohamed Abdel-Zaher, who serves as the vice president of the students’ union and the university rapporteur of Students for Egypt for the law faculty.

Some 1,290 students were disqualified from running in this year’s elections on the grounds that they violated one or another of the eight conditions for candidacy, which include good reputation, and documented student activity at the university. Meanwhile, affiliation with any “terrorist entity, organization or group,” including the Muslim Brotherhood, is grounds for disqualification. Students have previously told Mada Masr that the reasons for their disqualification were not clear.

Students for Egypt likewise swept through 2020’s elections, getting 96.2 percent of the available seats in the various committees.