Egyptians trickle to polls in parliamentary runoffs

Cairo: Egyptians trickled to the polls on Tuesday in just over half of the country's 27 provinces in parliamentary runoffs that are part of an election process dubbed as the final transition to democratic rule but that apparently failed to inspire voters.

More than 200 of the legislature's 596 seats are up for grabs in the two-day balloting in 14 provinces, ending Wednesday. Voting was also held in Cairo's twin city of Giza and the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria.

Voting in the remaining 13 provinces will be held next month and the legislature is expected to hold its inaugural session in December.

The election's first round last week had a turnout of 26.56 percent about half of the turnout in the last parliamentary election held in late 2011 and early 2012, which produced a chamber dominated by Islamists.

It's too early to predict turnout in the Tuesday-Wednesday runoffs, but TV footage on local news channels taken at polling centers in most of the 14 provinces in which voting is taking place showed a handful of voters in some and none at others.

It was in sharp contrast to the long lines outside polling centers in the 2011-12 vote.

Even if the turnout does not fall below that of the first round, questions will persist on the political direction of the country under Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, the country's general-turned-president elected last year.

Among those voters who did show up today, women and the elderly were dominant. Conspicuous by their absence were young voters, possibly reflecting growing disenchantment with el-Sissi's rule.

The next parliament, widely expected to be subservient to el-Sissi, will be the first since the Islamist- dominated chamber was dissolved in 2012 by a court ruling. This is also the first parliamentary election since el-Sissi, as military chief, led the 2013 overthrow of Egypt's first freely elected president, the Islamist Mohammed Morsi, following mass street protests against his rule.

The election comes at a time when el-Sissi's government is struggling to keep the nation's ailing economy afloat in the face of a slide in the value of the Egyptian pound and a shortage of foreign currency needed to finance vital imports. His government is also under scathing attack for its failure to prepare for or effectively deal with severe flooding in Alexandria that left six people dead after a weekend rainstorm.