Parliament to receive president swearing-in ceremony since 2005

CAIRO – 25 May 2018: The House of Representatives is getting ready to receive President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi within a few days.

Swearing before the Parliament will be applied for the first time since 2005 when former President Hosni Mubarak took the oath for last time. Presidents were sworn in before the members of the General Assembly of the Supreme Constitutional Court due to the absence of a validly elected Parliament.

President Sisi is also expected to deliver a speech following the swearing-in ceremony.

President Sisi is expected to take his new oath of office in Parliament on June 2, said Chairman of the Committee on Information, Culture and Antiquities in the House of Representatives, Osama Haikal.

“The works also include renovating parliament’s plenary meeting hall in which Sisi will take the oath,” said Parliament’s secretary Ahmed Saadeddin who reviewed the renovation works of Parliament’s main buildings along with Kamel El-Wazir, head of the army’s engineering organization.

In the same context, MP Mustafa Bakri, member of the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, remarked that Speaker of Parliament Ali Abdel Aal will deliver a welcoming speech during the swearing-in ceremony; then, will invite the president to be sworn in.

He further explained that the president will deliver a speech on the national mission he will accomplish in the second presidential term.

He stressed that the session will be attended by Prime Minister Sherif Ismail, the heads of parties and representatives of the government, referring that the government shall submit its resignation following the end of the first presidential term; the head of Parliament will declare the name of the new prime minister.

According to Article 140 of the Constitution, “The president of the Republic shall be elected for a period of four calendar years, commencing on the day the term of his predecessor ends.”

Article 231 reads that Sisi’s first presidential term started on June 3, 2014, when the presidential election results were declared, and shall be finished before that period.

Egypt’s presidential election, which took place between March 26 and 28, witnessed a competition between only two candidates: incumbent President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi and head of El-Ghad Party Moussa Moustafa Moussa.

Sisi garnered 97.08 percent of valid votes in the 2018 presidential election, where more than 21.8 million people voted for him. His hardly-known competitor, El-Ghad Party chairperson Moussa Moustafa Moussa, received 656,534 votes, making up 2.9 percent of the valid ballots.

The turnout stood at 24,254,152 voters; 41 percent of the electorate.

In 2018, void votes made up 7.27 percent of the total votes, amounting to 1.762 million ballots. If void votes are not excluded from the result, Sisi's share of the total votes would be 90 percent.

In the 2014 vote, 23.4 million people voted for Sisi, void votes reached 1million ballots, and Sabahy amassed 740,000 votes. After winning a second term with 97 percent of the vote in Egypt’s 2018 presidential elections, incumbent President Sisi is expected to take his new oath of office in parliament.