After two days of voting, polling stations in Egypt have closed, wrapping up the second stage of parliamentary elections in the North African region. The countrydoes this as President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi continues a crackdown on the media and opposition parties.

While the first phase of voting took place on October 24th – 25th in 14 provinces including the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and the country’s south, the two-day second round of votes began on Saturday, October 7th, with voters flocking to polling centres in 13 provinces, including Cairo, the Nile Delta and along the Suez Canal, to select candidates for 568 of the 596 lawmakers’ seat available in the lower house of the country’s parliament. General-turned-President Sisi, who cast his ballot Saturday, will appoint the remaining 28 deputies.

Precautionary measures were also taken to stem the spread of COVID-19, amid warnings by the government about a second wave of the pandemic. Egypt has shown a slight increase in daily confirmed cases in the past two weeks.

Although some 63 million of Egypt’s more than 100 million population was eligible to vote, the National Election Authority recorded just over 9 million votes – approximately 28 percent of voters. All of this occurring despite a recent move by the Egyptian government to deal with citizens who fail to perform their civic duty.

Runoffs are due to be held later in November and in December, and the winners will take up their posts in parliament in January. The new legislature, which is to sit for five years, will be the second to convene under Sisi, whose supporters saturated the outgoing 2015 parliament against a small opposition bloc known as 25/30.

Since he took office in 2014 following his role in the 2013 military ouster of his Islamist predecessor, Mohammed Morsi, Sisi’s government has launched a severe crackdown on dissent, targeting journalists, bloggers, lawyers, and intellectuals.