Egypt's Islamist Nour Party to include women and Copts in electoral list - member

Saturday 13-12-2014 PM 09:22
Egypt's Islamist Nour Party to include women and Copts in electoral list - member
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CAIRO, Dec 13 (Aswat Masriya) - Egypt's Salafi al-Nour Party announced on Saturday that its electoral list for the upcoming parliamentary elections will include Copts, youth, women, and other marginalised groups, as stipulated in the elections law.

Salah Abdel Maaboud, an upper board member of the party, added that the crisis of some Copts refusing to join the party's electoral list has been resolved.

The party will announce its final candidates for individual and party lists' seats in 10 days at most, according to Abdel Maaboud.

Egypt's cabinet approved on Wednesday a draft law regulating electoral districts, in preparation for the coming parliamentary elections.

The law is yet to be issued by the president to come into effect.

Egypt's coming parliament will be made up of 567 seats, as per the drafy law; 420 members will be individually elected, 120 will join the parliament through electoral lists, and 27 members will be appointed by the president.

The draft divides Egypt into 232 electoral districts.

The draft was referred to the State Council and the Supreme Electoral Commission for revision, said Refaat Qomsan, the prime minister's advisor.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi told an American economic delegation in November that Egypt's parliamentary elections are scheduled to be held in the first quarter of 2015.

Al-Nour Party ranked the second biggest Islamist party in Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), before the FJP was dissolved by a court order in August. It garnered 20 percent of the seats in the 2012 parliamentary elections.

Egypt has been operating without a lower house of parliament since the Supreme Constitutional Court deemed its People's Assembly unconstitutional in June 2012.

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