CAIRO: A “name-and-shame” list of former National Democratic Party (NDP) members will be distributed to voters ahead of elections next month in a bid to crowd out former members of the dissolved party from the new parliament.
Activists prepared the list on Thursday, the second day of registering applications for parliamentary candidacy.
The list will be distributed in a bid to deter citizens from electing candidates affiliated with the former ruling party in Egypt’s first parliamentary elections since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in February.
Daily News Egypt obtained a copy of the list which also specifies their individual constituencies and includes the names of candidates who were not members of the previous parliament but are described as "former regime loyalists."
George Ishaq, former coordinator of the Kefaya Movement for Change and member of the National Council for Human Rights, told Daily News Egypt that the list is part of a campaign by some political powers to counter attempts by members of the dissolved party to join the new parliament.
"We will be distributing the list to citizens so they can identify those [candidates] who have corrupted Egyptian political life," he said.
Ishaq denied reports of his intention to run for parliament.
Activists and political powers have repeatedly demanded the implementation of an exclusion law that would ban members of the former regime from political participation.
Many have described former members of the NDP running in the upcoming elections in large numbers as “catastrophic.”
“It is a disaster. It is sad to see that the political exclusion law hasn’t been enacted. This is the least that could have been done after the revolution,” Tarek Al-Malt, official spokesperson of Al-Wasat Party and a candidate in Beni Suef, previously told DNE.
The People’s Assembly elections are set to begin on Nov. 28 while voting for the Shoura Council is scheduled for Jan. 29 next year. The People’s Assembly is scheduled to hold its first session on March 17 and the Shoura Council on March 24.
A committee will then set out to draft a new constitution within six months, after which presidential elections are to take place
The second day of submitting applications at appeals courts around the country, witnessed a low turnout — much like the first day.
In Al-Arish, only six parliamentary hopefuls submitted their papers on Wednesday, all vying for individual seats for the People’s Assembly, but none for the Shoura Council.
Political parties are still finalizing their electoral lists, and the elections commission is expecting a rush of paperwork to be handed in early next week.
Member parties of the Democratic Alliance are working hard to make their final decisions.
"We are members of a large electoral alliance so preparing our electoral lists will need more time than other parties that are preparing independent lists. We are settled on 80 percent of the names," said Essam El-Erian of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the leading party in the alliance.
Other members of the alliance will submit their lists together next week, including Al-Ghad, Al-Karama, Al-Assala and the Arab Democratic Nasserist Party.
The left Popular Socialist Alliance Party, a member of the Egyptian Bloc alliance, is also still working on its final list of candidates, according to Abdel Ghafar Shokr, a prominent party leader.
"We will present our applications with the bloc on Saturday," said Ahmed Saeid of the presidential council of the Free Egyptians party.
Adel Afify, head of the Salafi Al-Fadila Party, said their applications will be ready just in time to meet the deadline since they needed more time to prepare a new list after recently leaving the bloc.
Al-Adl Party will hand in papers next week, according to Ahmed Shokry, one of its founders.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s main leftist party, Al-Tagammu, remains vague amid tension between its leaders and the youth, who are calling for the resignation of the party’s top members.
Both Al-Wafd and Al-Wasat announced they will submit their papers by the beginning of next week.
Al-Wafd recently broke its alliance with the FJP, even though the two had initially spearheaded the Democratic Alliance.
The elections come at a critical time for Egypt on the security, economic and political fronts.
Deputy Prime Minister Hazem El-Beblawi submitted his resignation Tuesday in protest at a violent crackdown on demonstrators marching for Coptic rights on Sunday, which left 25 dead. It was, however, rejected by the ruling military council.
The week’s events have raised concerns over whether elections can be secured appropriately. –Additional reporting by Essam Fadl and Hatem El-Buluk
