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Wednesday, 20 April 2016

What we’re tracking on 19 April 2016

Unless Speaker of the House Ali Abdel Aal has changed his mind, the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the Ismail government’s agenda today. Prime Minister Sherif Ismail is also expected to give a final speech to the House on his government’s vision, Ahram Online reports.

US Secretary of State John Kerry is expected in town today to meet with President Abdel Fattah El Sisi and Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry. No preview of the agenda for the brief stopover has been released as yet. Kerry, who will arrive in Cairo after meeting Iran’s foreign minister in New York yesterday, will then join US President Barack Obama in Saudi Arabia for the GCC summit in Riyadh. Kerry’s public agenda will be posted here some time later today and is your best starting point to track down what he might be saying in Cairo, if the State Department decides to go into detail.

Renaissance Capital’s inaugural Egypt Corporate Access Day begins today in Cape Town and will connect South African investors to key decision makers from select high-profile companies in Egypt. The two-day event ends Thursday.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won their respective parties’ primaries in New York, according to projections by multiple media outlets. Clinton’s win is already being interpreted in the business press as having “halted [rival Bernie] Sanders’ momentum,” while Trump is now firmly in the running for the final sprint to lock down the delegates he needs to avoid a contested convention. As usual, we’ll be reading coverage from Politicoand the New York Times, which are in the uncomfortable position this morning (as of this writing) of having identical front-page headlines: “Trump trounces rivals in New York.” Tap here for Politico’s version, and here for the NYT’s.

Ohmygodno. Please. Anything but that. Apparently, we’re going to have to vote again — probably before the end of this year, Al Shorouk reports. A cabinet committee has been racking-up the hours recently to complete a draft Local Administration Act to fast-track it through the House within two months alongside a bill that would set up a National Elections Authority as a single regulator of elections. What’s the rush? They want us to head back to the polls for local elections by the end of the year.

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