CAIRO, Dec. 31 (Aswat Masriya) - The Free Egyptians Party will hold Thursday elections for its chairmanship amid internal disagreements over membership in the Coalition to Support the Egyptian State in the upcoming parliament.

The position became vacant after Egyptian businessman Ahmed Said resigned as chairman in 2014, then the party’s secretary general Essam Khalil took over as acting chairman.

Founded in April 2011, following the Jan. 25 Uprising, the Free Egyptians has won 65 seats in the recently-held parliamentary elections, the largest number of seats for a single party.

Egypt's newly-elected unicameral parliament includes 596 members, 448 of which were elected through the individual seat system, 120 through a party/coalition lists system, and 28 are appointed by the president.

Five candidates are competing for the Free Egyptian Party’s chairmanship, the state newspaper Al-Ahram said on Thursday. They are Mohamed al-Biyaly, Essam Khalil, Abdel Nasser Youssef, Mina Assad, and Samir Francis. The elections’ results are expected to be announced on the same day.

The paper added that the party is currently witnessing a crisis related to a number of its members who insisted on signing the document of the Coalition to Support the Egyptian State despite the party’s decision to shun the parliamentary coalition led by ex-military intelligence general Sameh Seif Alyazal .

The party was founded by telecommunications tycoon Naguib Sawiris and a number of public figures and political activists. 

In August 2011, ahead of the country’s first parliamentary elections after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak as president, the Free Egyptians Party led the Egyptian Bloc coalition that consisted of the left-wing, old-guard Tagammu Party and the post-Jan. 25 Egyptian Social Democratic Party. The coalition came third in the 2011 elections. 

In 2014, the party became a full member in Liberal International, a “network for promoting liberalism, strengthening liberal parties and for the promotion of liberal democracy around the world,” as the organisation identifies itself on its website.