Egypt's voting system and key parties

Cairo: Egyptian voters in a third of the country's 27 provinces were set to cast their ballots on Tuesday in the final round of landmark parliamentary elections.

The two main Islamist parties have so far claimed a crushing victory in the first elections since a popular uprising ended Hosni Mubarak's three-decade rule.

The third and final phase of of the staggered vote will take place over two days in the Nile Delta provinces of Qaliubiya, Gharbiya and Daqahliya; the New Valley province; the southern governorates of Minya and Qena; the border province of Matruh; and in North and South Sinai.

Voters are being asked to elect 498 members of the People's Assembly - the lower house of parliament - while 10 members will be appointed by the country's interim military leader, Field Marshal Hussain Tantawi.

The ruling military has decided on a complex election system in which voters cast ballots for party lists, which will comprise two-thirds of parliament, and also for individual candidates for the remaining third of the lower house.

Ballot papers ask electors to cast three votes - two for individual candidates and one for a party list. Voters will be called to the ballot boxes again on January 29 for elections to the Shura Council, the upper house of parliament, which has a mainly consultative role.

The two houses will then be tasked with drawing up a constitution before presidential elections which are to be held before the end of June 2012 under the timetable announced by the military leaders.

The powerful Muslim Brotherhood, banned under Mubarak, is fielding candidates through its Freedom and Justice Party and is expected to become the biggest parliamentary group but without an outright majority.

It has claimed first place in the first two rounds of voting. The moderate Islamist movement, intermittently banned since its foundation in 1928, is the best organised political party in the country.

Al Nur, the largest party to represent the ultra-conservative Salafi brand of Islam, came second in the election's first two phases. Together, the two main Islamist parties have won 65 percent of the votes for party lists.

The Kotla Masreya (Egyptian Bloc) is the largest liberal coalition, grouping around 15 parties including the Free Egyptians Party founded by Coptic telecoms tycoon Naguib Sawiris.

The Al Thawra Mustamirra (The Revolution Continues) bloc, founded in October, brings together a group of leftist parties. How much power the new parliament will be given by the ruling military remains unclear.

The procedure to elect a full assembly ends in February, after Egypt's military ruler decreed on Sunday that the multi-phase elections for parliament's consultative upper house, the Shura Council, will be held over a shorter period.

With the final elections wrapping up earlier, the two houses will now be able to move more swiftly towards writing a new constitution. The election for a new president is to take place by June.