Egypt Live Blog

Al Jazeera staff and correspondents update you on important developments in Egypt as a new political landscape is shaped after a popular uprising forced Hosni Mubarak from power.

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RawyaRageh

 

In Mahalla, an industrial city that saw some of the first protests against the rule of former president Hosni Mubarak, election banners and posters drape the main square.

The last time people in the city voted - just over a year ago - Mubarak's security forces did everything they could to keep him in power, including closing polling stations and beating and accosting those who tried to monitor the process.

Now with this election, the people of Mahalla feel they are beginning to reap the first rewards of the January 25 revolution.

Al Jazeera's Jamal Elshayyal reports from Mahalla.

SherineT

adamakary

 

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Al Jazeera's Mike Hanna reports from a polling station in Shubra El Khaima, north of Cairo:

In this area, the polls opened on time and voting has been going very smoothly. Long queues forming at all the polling stations.. This particular area is a bedrock of Muslim Brotherhood support. In 2010 there were elections held here, there was massive vote rigging according to most observers. The Muslim Brotherhood boycotted the runoff in those elections. Two years later you have an electoral process which by accounts at this stage is free and fair.. It does appear that in areas like this the Islamist parties, in particular the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party are dominant. Some 70 per cent of the vote, it is understood, has gone to the Islamist parties so far, with the Freedom and Justice party the clear front-runner.

 

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Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros, reports from El Arish in the northern Sinai Peninsula, where voting is underway:

Overwhelmingly we are hearing people tell us that they will be voting for the Salafi Noor party or the Ikhwan, the Muslim Brotherhood's party, Freedom and Justice, so it's very much a lot of grassroots support for the Islamist parties here. When it comes to the individual candidates, people are not talking to us about policy and issue and what the individual candidates stand for; it is very much on tribal and clan lines, that's how people are voting here.

SherineT

 

Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros, reports from El Arish in the northern Sinai Peninsula

The polling station [here] hasn't opened yet. It is about an hour late. We have been told that the judges are inside, they are making their final preparations, but quite similar to what we saw in cairo in the first round, they are not quite ready to open the gates up.

However it is still not the huge queues we are seeing in other provinces. I think that is probably a combination of two different things, one despite the fact that El Arish is the biggest city by far in northern Sinai we are still only talking about just arund 90,000 or so eligible voters. Secondly there is a lot of apathy in Sinai in general. people have been telling us that they don't really feel any authority, any government, any parliament will really listen to their demands. They feel like they are a neglected community. A lot of bedouins and tribes reside in northern Sinai, especially in El Arish.

 

Egyptians began voting on Tuesday in the final round of landmark parliamentary elections.

Small queues began to form around schools, turned into polling stations which opened at 8:00am (0600 GMT).

The final round takes place over two days in the Nile Delta provinces of Qaliubiya, Gharbiya and Daqahliya; the New Valley province; the southern governorates of Minya and Qena; the border province of Matruh; and in North and South Sinai.

The first two stages of the staggered polls saw Egypt's main Islamist parties claim a crushing victory. After the voting for the lower house of parliament, Egyptians will vote for members of an upper house and the process to elect a full assembly will end in February. [AFP]

 

Egyptians are gearing up for the third and final round of voting for a democratic lower house of parliament. The elections have so far been dominated by Islamist movements - in particular the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Al Jazeera's Mike Hanna reports from central Egypt.