Politics of Egypt takes place in a framework of a semi-presidential republic, whereby the President of Egypt is de facto both head of state and head of government, and of a party system dominated by the National Democratic Party. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament, the People’s Assembly and the Shura Council. 

Background
Egypt has been a republic since 18 June 1953. President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak has been the President of the Republic since October 14 1981, following the assassination of former-President Mohammed Anwar El-Sadat. Mubarak is currently serving his fifth term in office. He is the leader of the ruling National Democratic Party. Prime Minister Dr. Ahmed Nazif was sworn in as Prime Minister on 9 July 2004, following the resignation of Dr. Atef Ebeid from his office.

Egypt is regarded by many as being ruled by a military dictatorship. Although power is ostensibly organised under a multi-party semi-presidential system, whereby the executive power is theoretically divided between the President and the Prime Minister, in practice it rests almost solely with the President who traditionally has been elected in single-candidate elections for more than fifty years. Egypt also holds regular multi-party parliamentary elections. The last presidential election, in which Mubarak won a fifth consecutive term, was held in September 2005 (see below).

In late-February 2005, Mubarak announced in a surprise television broadcast that he had ordered the reform of the country's presidential election law, paving the way for multi-candidate polls in the upcoming presidential election. For the first time since the 1952 movement, the Egyptian people had an apparent chance to elect a leader from a list of various candidates. The President said his initiative came "out of my full conviction of the need to consolidate efforts for more freedom and democracy." However, the new law placed draconian restrictions on the filing for presidential candidacies, designed to prevent well-known candidates such as Ayman Nour from standing against Mubarak, and paved the road for his easy re-election victory.

Concerns were once again expressed after the 2005 elections about government interference in the election process through fraud and vote-rigging. In addition, violence by pro-Mubarak supporters against opposition demonstrators and police brutality were evident during the elections. This poses major questions about the government's purported commitment to democracy.

As a result, most Egyptians are skeptical about the process of democratisation and the role of the elections. A very small proportion of those eligible to vote actually turned out for the 2005 elections. Newspapers, however, have exhibited an increasing degree of freedom in criticizing the president, and the results of the recent parliamentary elections, which saw Islamist parties such as the banned Muslim Brotherhood winning many seats, genuinely indicate that a change of some sorts is underway.