Despite 10 of their members initially being included on Sameh Seif El-Yazal’s For the Love of Egypt electoral list, the Al-Wafd Party announced that they would not join Seif El-Yazal’s Egypt’s Support parliamentary coalition, Al-Wafd’s news website reported.
The announcement came in a meeting between members of the party’s higher committee Sunday, and came in tune with their initial refusal to join a parliamentary coalition.
Al-Wafd is seeking to establish its own coalition inside the parliament, to be called Al-Umma Al-Masriya (The Egyptian Nation); however, the party has yet to define the ethos and constituting members of this tentative coalition.
In a move that has caused extensive tension between members of various political parties and within the parliament, Sameh Seif El-Yazal, the leader of the winning electoral list For the Love of Egypt, issued calls for an expansive parliamentary coalition under the title of ‘Egypt’s Support’.
Al-Wafd is the third largest party to abandon El-Yazal’s coaliyion, following the Free Egyptians Party (FEP) and Future of a Nation (FNP), amid claims that the coalition seeks to “take over” the parliament like the former National Democratic Party of Hosni Mubarak’s parliament.
Al-Wafd had 10 winning candidates on the For the Love of Egypt list. Party president El-Sayed El-Badawi had joined the list after failing to form his own in the first half of 2015.
During the elections, the Al-Wafd Party faced significant competition from the FEP and FNP, following which El-Badawi made claims that rival parties were “buying off” Al-Wafd candidates.
