CAIRO, Jan 13 (Aswat Masriya) – The Supreme Elections Commission (SEC) issued a decision on Tuesday regulating campaigning for and financing the upcoming parliamentary elections.

The decision regulates a candidate's right to  campaign for his platform among voters, the committee said in a statement.

As per the decision, the time for advertising and campaigning begins when the final list of candidates is announced and continues until noon of the day before polls open.

The SEC has also set a maximum campaigning budget:  500,000 Egyptian pounds in the first round and 200,000 pounds in case of a run-off round for individual candidates. The amounts are doubled for every fifteen candidates running on one party list.

Any candidate is allowed to receive donations from any Egyptian citizen or party, as long as each donation does not exceed 5 percent of the campaigning budget.

The decision grants the candidate the right to use mass media for campaigning.

The SEC announced last week that it would not wait thirty days from the day of the announcement, as allowed by law, to open the door for candidacy applications. It said that the door for application will be opened sooner.

The first phase of the elections will be on March 21-22 for Egyptian expatriates and March 22-23 for locals. The second phase is to be held on April 25-26 for expatriates and April 26-27 for locals.

Egypt has been without a lower house of parliament since June 2012 after the lower house was dissolved by Supreme Constitutional Court.

The parliamentary elections are considered the last step in the political roadmap that was announced by the military after the ouster of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi in July 2013 following mass protests against his rule.