While various parliamentary election candidates have paid visits to Coptic churches to greet them for the New Year, the Salafi Nour Party refrained from this common practice.
In Daqahlia, Yousry Hany, candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, along with other of the group’s leaders, paid a visit to churches in the governorate. Churches there were also visited by the Wafd and Nasserist parties.
In Belqas governorate, Bishop Bishoy, secretary of the Holy Synod, refused to meet any candidate, saying the church must keep away from politics.
Meanwhile, the Freedom and Justice Party has accused the Nour Party of misleading voters, as the latter is an ultra-conservative religious party but is fielding secularists and socialists in the elections. “Let them prove this claim,” said Ashraf Thabet, member of the Nour Party’s supreme committee.
Translated from Al-Masry Al-Youm
