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Polls opened in Egypt on Saturday for parliamentary elections that will stretch over several weeks and are set to be dominated by supporters of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

A first round of voting will end on Sunday, with a second round on 7 to 8 November. Run-offs will take place in late November and early December.

The polls are being held with a new electoral law under which 50% of 568 contested seats will be allocated to pre-selected lists that take all the seats in an electoral area if they win a majority of votes.

Opposition politicians say that lists led by pro-government parties are tightly vetted and hard to compete with.

The remaining contested seats will be allocated to individual candidates, and Sisi can appoint up to 28 legislators directly.

Mostaqbal Watn (Nation’s Future), which in August won nearly three-quarters of the contested seats in an election for Egypt’s Senate, an advisory body, is the favourite to come out top. The party has no formal ties to Sisi, but enthusiastically backs his programme.

As Sisi has consolidated control, interest in politics has dropped, with electoral turnout gradually declining.

As he voted on Saturday, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly celebrated the “democratic climate” in Egypt and called on Egyptians to participate.

“We must vote for the best, in order to uplift ourselves and be a great country,” said Mohamed Abdel-Aal, a pensioner voting in the neighbourhood of Imbaba in Giza.

Another man, who declined to be named, said he was voting to avoid a 500 Egyptian pound ($32) fine which state media has reported could be imposed by the election authority on non-voters. He said he didn’t trust any candidate and had cast a blank ballot.

Five voters out of the dozens at one polling station in Imbaba told Reuters that they were promised 50 or 100 pounds ($3.20 or $6.40) by people describing themselves as representatives of a Nation’s Future candidate, if they voted for him.

People wearing T-shirts with the party logo could be seen handing out coupons that voters said could be exchanged for cash to a crowd near the polling station. Reuters could not independently verify if there had been promises of cash for votes.

Asked about this, Ahmed al-Shaer, a senior Nation’s Future official, said the party rejected using money to influence voters and would investigate any violations, adding that other candidates may be using the party’s logo to gain votes.

Sisi has overseen a sweeping crackdown on political dissent since leading the ouster in 2013 of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Mursi, who was freely elected in 2012 before mass protests engulfed his rule.

Both Islamists and liberal opponents have been targeted.

Supporters say the measures have been necessary to stabilise the country and carry out economic reforms that have won praise from many economists and international financial institutions.

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Gunmen killed five children and badly wounded about nine others when they opened fire in a school in the city of Kumba in Cameroon’s Southwest region on Saturday, officials told Reuters.

The officials blamed the attack on secessionist insurgents who are seeking to form a breakaway state in Cameroon’s English-speaking west, though Reuters was unable to immediately confirm that.

“They attacked around noon. They found the children in class and they opened fire on them,” Kumba sub-prefect Ali Anougou told Reuters. He said that nine others had been seriously wounded and sent to hospital.

Anglophone secessionists have imposed curfews and closed schools as part of their protest against President Paul Biyaâs French-speaking government and its perceived marginalisation of the English-speaking minority.

Last year, officials blamed separatists for kidnapping dozens of schoolchildren, charges the separatists denied.

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Israel and Sudan agreed on Friday to take steps to normalise relations in a deal brokered with the help of the United States, making Khartoum the third Arab government to set aside hostilities with Israel in the last two months.

US President Donald Trump, seeking re-election on 3 November, sealed the agreement in a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and Transitional Council Head Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, senior US officials said.

Trump’s decision this week to remove Sudan from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism paved the way for the accord with Israel, marking a foreign policy achievement for the Republican president as he seeks a second term trailing in opinion polls behind Democratic rival Joe Biden.

Sudan to be removed from US terror list:

Netanyahu hailed it as a “new era” for the region, but the Palestinian leadership, watching as more of their Arab brethren appear to give their quest for statehood a lower priority, called it a “new stab in the back.”

“The leaders agreed to the normalisation of relations between Sudan and Israel and to end the state of belligerence between their nations,” according to a joint statement issued by the three countries that also promised US help for Khartoum to secure international debt relief.

Israel and Sudan plan to begin by opening economic and trade links, with an initial focus on agriculture, the joint statement said. A senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said such issues as formal establishment of diplomatic ties would be resolved later.

Trump touted the deal to reporters in the Oval Office with the Israeli and Sudanese leaders on the line in a three-way phone call, saying at least five other countries wanted to follow suit and normalise relations with Israel.

“Do you think ‘Sleepy Joe’ could have made this deal?” Trump asked Netanyahu, using the president’s pejorative nickname for Biden a day after their final, rancorous debate of the 2020 presidential campaign. “Somehow I don’t think so.”

Netanyahu, reliant on bipartisan support for Israel in Washington, responded haltingly: “”Well, Mr. President, one thing I can tell you, is, um, uh, we appreciate the help for peace from anyone in America.”

Trump’s aides view his pro-Israel policies as appealing to Christian evangelical voters, who are among his biggest supporters.

In recent weeks the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain became the first Arab states in a quarter of a century to agree to formal links with Israel, forged largely through shared fears of Iran.

Trump insisted the Palestinians also “are wanting to do something” but offered no proof. Palestinian leaders have condemned recent Arab overtures to Israel as a betrayal of their nationalist cause and have refused to engage with the Trump administration, seeing it as biased in favour of Israel.

“No one has the right to speak in the name of the Palestinian people and in the name of the Palestinian cause,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a statement.

Dropping Sudan from terrorism list

Trump announced on Monday he would take Sudan off the terrorism list once it had deposited $335 million it had pledged to pay in compensation. Khartoum has since placed the funds in a special escrow account for victims of al Qaeda attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

The White House called Trump’s intention to remove Sudan from the terrorism list a “pivotal turning point” for Khartoum, which is seeking to emerge from decades of isolation.

The military and civilian leaders of Sudan’s transitional government have been divided over how fast and how far to go in establishing ties with Israel. A sticking point in the negotiations was Sudan’s insistence that any announcement of Khartoum’s delisting from the terrorism designation not be explicitly linked to relations with Israel.

The Sudanese premier wants approval from a yet-to-be formed parliament to proceed with broader, formal normalization, and that may not be a quick process given sensitivities and civilian-military differences. It is still unclear when the assembly will be created.

“Agreement on normalization with Israel will be decided after completion of the constitutional institutions through the formation of the legislative council,” Sudanese Foreign Minister Omar Gamareldin said on state television shortly after Friday’s announcement.

The new agreement was negotiated on the US side by a team that included Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, who called the normalization deals the start of a “paradigm shift” in the Middle East.

He said Sudan’s decision was symbolically significant because it was in Khartoum in 1967 that the Arab League decided not to recognise Israel’s right to exist.

Sudan’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism dates to its toppled ruler Omar al-Bashir and has made it difficult for its transitional government to access urgently needed debt relief and foreign financing.

Many in Sudan say the designation, imposed in 1993 because Washington believed Bashir was supporting militant groups, has become outdated since he was removed in 2019.

US congressional legislation is needed to shield Khartoum from future legal claims over past attacks to ensure the flow of payments to the embassy bombing victims and their families.

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