Candidates for the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) opposition group who are running in 28 November parliamentary elections accused certain licensed Egyptian political parties of conniving with the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) to eliminate them from the upcoming races.
MB candidates said the elections would be neither fair nor transparent, predicting that they would be rigged like the last elections for the Shura Council, the upper house of Egypt's parliament.
At a conference held at the Egyptian Lawyers Syndicate on Sunday, MB candidates accused the liberal Wafd Party as being among the first to conspire against them with the NDP.
“The Wafd Party will take all our parliamentary seats,” said MB parliamentary bloc member Ahmed Rami.
Leading MB member Mohamed Saad al-Katatni, for his part, accused the leftist Tagammu Party of working with the ruling party against the Islamist group.
“The elections will be rigged following suspicious political deals struck between the NDP and a number of other parties that have made common cause with the government," said Mostafa al-Sayed, an MB candidate for Alexandria.
“Our nominees were subjected to frequent harassment by security forces,” said MB candidate Mohamed al-Beltagi. “They were banned from hanging campaign posters, for example, and from holding meetings with members of their constituencies.”
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
