Critics say President Sissi has ‘made election completely colorless’ with ‘laws engineered to take politics out of new parliament.’ None of the key liberal figures that helped fuel the 2011 uprising, like Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei or former presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahi, are running in next week’s election. Shadi Hamid, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy, predicted that the next parliament will be, “a place for people to vent a little, while telling the international community Egypt is making progress and allowing opposition, which is what Mubarak did.”