A proposed government-aligned parliamentary bloc seeking a 400-member majority received a sudden blow as major member parties recently walked out.
Mostafa Bakry, a leading MP with the Coalition to Support the Egyptian State, said the decision made by the nascent Mustaqbal Watan Party (50 seats) is “a serious development that will have a negative impact on the coalition”. He told Al-Masry Al-Youm that the withdrawal represents a problem for the coalition, which hopes to combine two thirds of the House of Representatives’ 568 members.
“There is something with the way the coalition is managed…no party should impose its own agenda,” Bakry added.
Commenting on the withdrawals, Mustaqbal Watan’s chairman Mohamed Badran said during a party conference on Sunday that he decided to walk out when he felt that the coalition was “giving out indulgences of nationalism”. “We left the coalition so as not to let anybody turn the Parliament into a cake (to be shared).”
The veteran Wafd Party (45 seats) also said at the end of the meeting on Sunday that 90 percent of its members were against joining the coalition, saying it was going to form its own bloc.
The Free Egyptians Party, the political party with the biggest number of seats in Parliament (65), also shunned the bloc, declaring its intentions to dismiss members who violate that decision.
The Coalition to Support the Egyptian State is led by the pro-government For the Love of Egypt electoral alliance which own all of the 120 seats allocated for list-based candidates. It is understood that it aims to secure a vast Parliament majority to back legislations proposed by the government and the presidency, a notion that invited parties saw as encroaching on their independence and voiding opposition within the chamber.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
