Egypt's House of Representatives elected MP Ali Abdelaal as parliamentary speaker on Sunday after he won the majority of votes, beating out contestant MP Ali Mesilhy for the position. Here is what we know about the new speaker:
Ali Abdel Aal Sayyed Ahmed was born on November 29, 1948, and graduated with a law degree in 1972. In 1973, he was appointed as deputy to the top prosecutor and started teaching university classes in 1974.
Abdelaal obtained a PhD in 1984 and was appointed as cultural attache for Egypt in Paris between 1987 and 1991. He also served as a constitutional adviser to parliament in 1992 and participated in the development of the first Ethiopian draft constitution in Addis Ababa in 1993.
He was a constitutional adviser to the Amiri Diwan of the State of Kuwait between 1993 and 2011. He has also been assigned to teaching positions at the Police Academy and the Military College of Management Sciences.
In recent years, he was a member of the committee of 10 constitutional experts who developed the Egyptian Constitution in 2014. He was also a member of the committees that developed the House of Representatives and the exercise of political rights and districting laws.
For parliamentary elections, Abdelaal was elected to the House of Representatives in Aswan on the For the Love of Egypt electoral list. He secured the nomination for parliamentary speaker through FLE's pro-state parliamentary bloc Support Egypt.
Abdelaal has also authored over 19 law books and is a professor of law at Ain Shams University.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
