CAIRO, Oct. 26 (Aswat Masriya) – Egyptians will head to the polls Tuesday and Wednesday to vote in the run-offs of the first phase of parliamentary elections amid appeals by candidates against some of the results of the first round. 

The first phase covered 14 provinces including Giza, Fayoum, Beni Suef, Minya, Assiut, New Valley, Sohag, Qena, Luxor, Aswan, Red Sea, Alexandria, Beheira and Matrouh, with a total of 27.4 million eligible voters.

The turnout rate was 26.56 percent inside Egypt and about 4.5 percent abroad with over 7.2 million Egyptians inside and just over 30,000 outside casting their votes.

Only four of the 2,548 candidates running for individual seats in phase one, managed to clinch a seat in the first round, winning 50+1 percent of the votes in their constituencies. They include controversial TV show host Abdel Rehim Ali, famous for leaking the private telephone conversations of well-known pro-democracy activists.

“For the Love of Egypt”, a coalition list headed by an ex-military general, swept up all 60 seats allocated to the list system in the first phase.

Appeals Rejected

The Administrative court in Qena rejected all appeals against the results of the first round of voting on Monday morning, referring 33 of the appeals to the State Commissioners Authority for a legal opinion on the validity of the appeal.  

In Fayoum, the Administrative court rejected 14 appeals by eight losing candidates.

SEC announced Sunday that elections in four constituencies will be repeated at a later date because a court ruling had cancelled their results in Beheira, Alexandria and Beni Suef.

In the Beheira consitituency, the election was deemed invalid when it was discovered that one of the candidates had a criminal record. 

Run-off will be postponed in constinuencies in Alexandria, where 17 candidates in Raml constituency appealed the results because the ballot papers had included the name of a candidate who was excluded from the race but had raked in 23,000 votes.

A similar situation occurred in two Beni Suef constituencies.

SEC explained that some candidates were excluded just before polling started, when the ballot papers were already printed.

The commission added it didn't reprint the ballot papers to avoid a delay in the process.

The dates of the run-offs in those four constituencies have yet to be announced.

On Saturday, the administrative court rejected 20 appeals against the individual seats results and referred three other appeals against the results of the list system to the court of cassation.

The list appeals were presented by Nidaa Misr coalition and the Independence Current coalition which cited “violations and irregularities” during the electoral process.

The low turnout in the elections, however, was noted by international and local media. 

Following the announcement of the results, Nidaa Misr coalition decided against running in the second phase, citing what they described in a press conference as an "electoral farce". 

The African Union said in a statement the voting process “as done in a largely transparent manner.”

The second phase of the elections will cover 13 provinces including Cairo.

The total number of voters in the second phase is 27.5 million, the capital's share is 6.8 million eligible voters who will go to the polls on Nov. 21-23.