The House of Representatives 2025 with a 2015 flavor

The Senate elections passed quietly, almost unnoticed. The House of Representatives race, by contrast, promises to be far more eventful. With November approaching, the scene is already tumultuous: rival factions jostling for space, parties squabbling over seats, and expectations of yet another attempt at engineering the chamber’s composition.

In 2020, the National Election Authority opened candidacy on Sept. 17. This year, the delay feels telling. Parties remain unsettled, still bargaining over who gets what on the National List for Egypt, and the fights inside their own walls are spilling into the open.

Both loyalists and opposition camps expect a different map from the carefully managed Senate. That race was tailored for the pro-government side, leaving the opposition with scraps. The House, however, looks like it may echo 2015, with a few openings carved out for dissenting voices.

Engineering, 2015 style

Those familiar with the deals being cut say the 2025 House may look more like its 2015 predecessor than the 2020 version. Back then, a limited opposition bloc, the 25–30 Bloc, was formed. Its 30 or so MPs included figures such as Khaled Youssef, Ahmed Tantawy, Haitham Elhariri, Diaa El-Din Dawood, Ahmed El-Sharkawy, Khaled Abdel Aziz Shaaban, Mohamed Abdel Ghani, and Abdel Hamid Kamal. In 2020, only Dawood and El-Sharkawy held onto individual seats, while Ehab Mansour stayed on as Egyptian Social Democratic Party representative on the closed list.

If space is to be made for the opposition, then the Nation’s Future Party is unlikely to repeat its 2020 majority of 52%. Instead, we may see a return to the 2015 formula: a single majority party forming a coalition reminiscent of the old “Support Egypt” alliance, which gathered pro-government parties and some independents under one umbrella.

But nothing is certain until the very last moment.

Fights in the ruling camp

Elections always bring disputes, but this time the quarrels, for both pro-government and opposition parties, have spilled onto social media and even into the courts. Some fights remain under the radar, waiting either to be contained or to explode.

Inside Nation’s Future, the calm facade hides open fights over list slots and individual seats. One MP admitted a “membership price list” exists, though it is framed as donations. Quiet resentment simmers, hoping for compromise.

The unrest has drawn out the party’s dynamo, Ahmed Abdel Gawad, who traveled to Minya Al-Qamh in Sharqiya to broker peace among powerful families and would-be candidates. His appearance at a mass meeting at the Abaza family’s diwan was telling. In the traditional gathering space, the tensions had grown too sharp to ignore.

“There’s no candidate named for Nation’s Future yet,” he told the gathering. “Let’s see what the people of Minya Al-Qamh want.” 

He affirmed his respect for the Abaza family and its history, and addressed the former Minister of Agriculture Amin Abaza saying “You are our leaders, Amin Bey.”

Elsewhere, the Homeland Defenders Party, founded by retired generals and not known for airing its internal business on social media, was rocked by a video from party member Hanan Sharshar. She accused Giza branch secretary-general Nafaa Abdelhady of demanding 25 million pounds (about $500,000) for a place on the National List, adding that seats were going for as high as 50 million.

The leadership kept silent until the party’s parliamentary whip, Ahmed Bahaa Shalaby, denied the charges on television, calling them “lies and slander against a secretary-general,” referring to Abdelhady.

Still, he conceded that financial capacity is one of the criteria in candidate selection“Some can’t fund themselves. Others can. And some can and also donate,” he said, yet he insisted that no fixed donation fee is ever imposed. “If I have a candidate with strong potential but no financial means, the party will carry them.”

Opposition disputes

The opposition parties’ story is not so different. With disputes over candidates and accusations of money shaping decisions, the same script is playing out in the Reform and Development Party and the Egyptian Social Democratic Party.

Reform and Development leader Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat faced claims that he had unilaterally amended bylaws to keep himself in charge. Hafez Farouk, a member of the party’s national committee, lodged a complaint with the Political Parties Affairs Committee. Sadat dismissed it as an election-season ploy by those left off the lists.

Soon after came new allegations: seats for sale, millions of pounds required. Member Hossam Gebran told Al Manassa bluntly that “Selling memberships is real. I was speaking with the head of the party president’s office and I asked him about running for office and making a donation based on what I could afford. He told me, ‘Do you know that the price for a seat has reached 40 to 50 million?’”

He claimed that all the party’s MPs from the 2020 election had parachuted in from outside, with backdated memberships to make it look legal.

Party president Sadat rejects the accusation of selling memberships. He challenges anyone to reveal that they contributed a sum of money in exchange for their nomination, stating that “there is a lot of talk and this is the season for it, especially for those who were not chosen, whether on the lists or for the individual seats. Time will prove me right.”

Sadat further revealed to Al Manassa that his party has formed a committee to examine and sort nomination forms. “Our main concern, regardless of what we get on the lists, is to achieve success in the individual seats, because that is the real competition. We have arrangements to support our candidates in the individual races,” he said.

The Egyptian Social Democratic Party has its own turmoil. Women’s secretary Mona Abdel Radi resigned in protest, only to rescind her resignation later after intervention from the leadership, she told Al Manassa.

Abdel Radi, who is hoping to stand for election, worried that money weighed too heavily in the candidate selection process. The election committee, she later admitted, used multiple criteria, with financial capacity scoring lightly.

Even so, deputy leader for finance and administration Maha Abdel Nasser said the issue remains sensitive. “I dislike it, but if we don’t raise donations, how do we fund campaigns, support young candidates, print materials?”

She insisted this is not “selling memberships.” Donations vary by means, and no minimum or maximum is imposed. Criteria such as years of membership, political record, party service, and popularity matter just as much.

As conflicts continue to unfold within all the parties, the electoral landscape remains open to all possibilities: a return to an old formula that allows for limited opposition representation, or a return to an engineering similar to the Senate elections, all while money and influence continue to dominate the seats.