The decisions of the Supreme Committee and the behavior of the Ministry of Solidarity threaten the absence of serious follow-up to the upcoming parliamentary elections
Maat: We call on the head of the committee to extend the periods for receiving requests and registering followers
Maat: We call on the Prime Minister to investigate the practices of social solidarity against serious organizations registered in accordance with the law
Maat Foundation for Peace, Development and Human Rights expresses its astonishment at the procedures governing the right of civil society organizations to follow the parliamentary elections, which are determined by the Supreme Elections Committee Resolution No. 2 of 2015 regarding the opening of the door for Egyptian civil society organizations and foreign and international civil society organizations to follow the elections of the House of Representatives. These measures, on the one hand, and the behavior of the Ministry of Social Solidarity, on the other hand, put many question marks about the seriousness of the committee and the ministry in enabling civil society organizations to follow the elections.
The first article of the committee’s decision determines the period for submitting applications from civil society organizations to the committee during the period from January 12 to January 20, 2014, and among the required documents is a certificate from the Ministry of Social Solidarity, which until Thursday (January 14) refuses to give the certificate to the organizations, taking into account The fact that tomorrow and the day after tomorrow is a weekly holiday (15 and 16 January), this means that most serious organizations will be unable to submit their requests to the committee in a timely manner.
The biggest disaster lies in Article 4 of the committee’s decision, which sets January 31 as the deadline for registering the followers themselves on the committee’s website according to the codes that the organizations will receive from the committee, while the decision did not specify a date for the committee to deliver these codes to the organizations.
If we assume that the organization will submit its request on January 20, and it will wait until the committee announces the approved organizations (for an unknown period of time) and then receives the codes from the committee (during an unknown period as well), and after all that, it is required to enter the data of its followers before January 31 !! !! How can an organization that has five thousand followers, for example, register them on the committee’s website in a period of time that will in no way exceed three days or a week at the latest.
The chronological arrangement of the stages for receiving requests and entering data, in addition to the behavior of the Ministry of Social Solidarity, warns of the absence of serious follow-up to the upcoming parliamentary elections, and this threatens the integrity of the general elections, so Maat recommends taking urgent measures that achieve the following: -
1- Extending the period for the committee to receive follow-up requests from civil society organizations until at least January 24, with the codes being delivered to the organizations within 48 hours of submitting the request, and extending the period for entering the follower's data to end in mid-February 2015 instead of January 31.

2- The necessity for the Prime Minister to intervene with the Mrs. Ministry of Social Solidarity and to investigate the practices of the ministry and its subordinate departments against organizations wishing to monitor the elections, especially since the ministry’s conduct diminishes before him all the political speeches in which the state affirms its support for civil society and its registered entities under Law 84 of the year 2002.