The voting will take place over two rounds on Oct 18-19 and Nov 22-23, with two sets of run-offs in constituencies where no clear winner has emerged.
Egypt has been without a parliament since June 2012 when a court dissolved the democratically-elected main chamber, then dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, reversing a key accomplishment of the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.
Then army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ousted elected President Mohamed Mursi of the Brotherhood the following year, banning Egypt’s oldest Islamist movement and declaring it a terrorist organization.
This week, voters cast their ballots in 14 regions including Egypt’s second city of Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast and Giza, a province which includes parts of Cairo west of the Nile.
In a televised speech on Saturday, Sisi called on all Egyptians to head to the ballot boxes and urged the armed forces and interior ministry to secure the voting process.
U.S. group Democracy International monitored that election comprehensively and found that “disregard for Egyptians’ rights and freedoms prevented a genuine, democratic presidential election.”
Democracy International said on Friday it would monitor Egypt’s parliamentary elections but has scaled back its plans after having trouble getting visas for all its staff.
Democracy International has been accredited by Egypt’s High Election Commission to observe the polls but the U.S. based group said in a statement that “some visas for accredited core team members and short-term observers have not been issued and most visas have not been issued for the duration necessary to observe the entire election process.”
It said that without the necessary and appropriate visas for its accredited observers it would not be able to conduct the comprehensive observation it originally expected to carry out.
Egypt’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
