Egypt’s Salafi parties have agreed to run with a united candidate list and platform in the upcoming parliamentary elections slated for November, said Mohamed Yousry, spokesman for the Nour Party, on Thursday.
Yousry, of the Alexandria-based party, said that Nour and the other two Salafi parties, Fadila and Asala, will join forces in the elections. Both Fadila and Asala are still unofficial.
He also said that the party, which aims to compete for all of the new parliament’s 504 seats, will coordinate with the Wafd Party and the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, so that none of the parties nominate candidates in the same constituent districts. He added that candidates that the Nour Party will field in the elections have not yet been determined.
Salafis, who adopt a strictly conservative interpretation of Islam, were relatively apolitical during former President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year reign. But following the 25 January revolution, several Salafi groups organized themselves into political parties, leading some experts to believe that they could garner up to 15 percent of the new parliament’s seats.
Karim Radwan, member of the Freedom and Justice Party’s executive committee, said that his party has already determined the names of the candidates it will field for the parliamentary elections.
He added that the party will run candidates for seats in both single-winner and list-based electoral districts, and that its candidates this year will be significantly different from those who were fielded by the Brotherhood in the last parliamentary elections.
Translated from the Arabic Edition
