Media host and elected MP Tawfik Okasha has criticized a proposed coalition supporting the state within the House of Representatives, saying that the proposition of the bloc is evidence that the country is still “run by a security, un-innovative mentality”.
For the Love of Egypt, an electoral alliance that acquired all of the 120 seats allocated for list-based competition, had declared plans to form the Coalition to Support the Egyptian State, a majority pro-state parliament bloc of political parties and independents. Since the declaration, political parties had voiced suspicion of the bloc’s goals and the extent to which it could affect their decision-making within the House of Representatives.
“Security (apparatuses) is the chief financier of the FLE coalition through businessmen,” Okasha, a longtime and fervent backer of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, told ONTV satellite channel in an interview late Sunday.
“More than 140 MPs have told me security was contacting them and asking them to attend the coalition’s meetings,” said Okasha, who also owns al-Faraeen satellite channel. Okasha has been the subject of activists’ ridicule since the 2011 uprising for his abnormal political analyses.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
