(AFP Photo)
Chairman of Al-Wafd Party El-Sayed El-Badawi reiterated his party’s conditions for engaging in national dialogue and participating in upcoming parliamentary elections.
In a discussion with Slovakia’s ambassador to Egypt on Saturday at the party’s headquarters in Dokki, El-Badawi said his party demanded the appointment of a new prosecutor general, chosen by the Supreme Council of the Judiciary.
The party leader also said, according to state-owned news agency MENA, that it was critical that the current cabinet of ministers be sacked and replaced, a demand that has been made by the National Salvation Front (NSF) and the Salafi Al-Nour Party, who have both called for the sacking of current Prime Minister Hesham Qandil.
El-Badawi was scheduled to meet with an International Monetary Fund (IMF) delegation on Monday. The delegation is in Egypt to meet with a number of high-level government officials and leaders of the country’s political opposition.
Head of Al-Tayar Al-Sha’aby and one of the NSF’s leading figures Hamdeen Sabahy expressed his disapproval of the current $4.8bn IMF loan being discussed, saying he “refuses the loan if subsidies were eliminated prices were raised, which would hurt the poor.”
Last month Al-Wafd reaffirmed its commitment to an elections boycott, emphasising that it stood by the joint decision made by the NSF to refrain from engaging in political dialogue or participating in elections for the House of Representatives and the Shura Council if the group’s demands were not met by President Mohamed Morsi’s government.
