AFRICA/EGYPT - 24 Copts appointed in the electoral lists of the Salafi party

Cairo (Agenzia Fides) - The Egyptian Salafi leader Yasser al-Borhamy announced yesterday that 24 Christian Copts have been included in the electoral lists of the ultraconservative al-Nour Islamist party, also highlighting the distributions of Coptic candidates in different districts. This was reported by local sources to Agenzia Fides. Yasser al-Borhamy also reported that there will be 42 women in the Salafi lists.
The presence of Christian Copts in the lists of the Salafi al-Nour Party is a "necessary act" to which the leaders are required by the electoral law, and is within the pre-constitutional requirements that the political parties must fulfill in order to be admitted to the upcoming parliamentary elections. The current rules stipulate that in the next parliamentary assembly at least 24 seats will be reserved to Christians, while 56 seats will go to women. Among the social groups to which the Constitution reserves shares of parliamentary seats there are also young people, workers and peasants.
Among the Coptic candidates on the lists of the Conservative Party there is also Coptic Salafist activist Nader El-Serafy, co-founder of "Copts 38", the lay movement founded in 2011 to demand the restoration of canonical dispositions established by the Coptic Orthodox Church in 1938 - and later repealed – that admitted 9 conditions under which Christian Copts were granted to divorce.
Responding to controversial remarks by those who criticize his choice, El-Sarafy has repeatedly stressed that the Coptic Church has never condemned the choice of Christians who choose to serve in the Islamist parties. In his view, the presence of baptized people in the lists of al-Nour embodies "an optimal model of exercising citizenship", showing that people of different religious beliefs can coexist in the same political formation pursuing programs that focus on the national interest. (GV) (Agenzia Fides 11/09/2015)