Subtitles:
*Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour: We have contacted some public figures, some have declined due to the difficulty of the political game.
*Dr. Refa’at Al-Said: Although we enjoy Coptic support, their number in the party is small, we will not stop to beg for nominees.
*Diaa Eddin Dawoud: Their lack of confidence in the election process causes them to decline nomination.
*Dr. Yonan Labib Rizq: The NDP does not nominate anyone unless they have a chance of winning. The Wafd has been hurt by their alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood.
"Copts on our ballots" is a slogan now being bandied about by all parties taking part in the elections over the next few weeks. Over the last few days political parties have been exerting a lot of effort to implement the concept of "Copts are fellow citizens, and should become partners in the political process."
The NDP has leaked through unofficial press-releases, that their ballot tickets will include at least 7 Copts. The Wafd-party spoke of a historical heritage, which dictates a special place for Christian nominees. The Tagammu Party is the loudest in calling for Coptic rights and denouncing their persecution, even the Muslim Brotherhood has declared that they will nominate a Copt and support him.
Out of 444 nominees the NDP, ruling party, could only find three Coptic nominees to place on their ballot tickets. The Tagammu Party has only 5 and the Wafd Party only 9 candidates. The Nasserist Party could not find any Copts to place on their ballot tickets, despite many efforts to do so. All the parties have exerted great effort in searching for Coptic nominees and yet come up with only this small number. Are the parties to blame or the Copts or are they both to blame?
The NDP nominated only three, one from Cairo, the present Minister of Economy Dr. Youssef Boutros Ghali. And if we consider him as a member of the cabinet instead of as a Copt than we are left with only two original Copts; Mr. Adel Nathan from Alexandria and Medhat Fou’ad Shehata from Wadi El-Natroun, Beheira district. Both are businessmen. The first had no political activity in the past nor was he even active in the church, but recently he financed the renovation of the Sidi Bishr mosque. This cost half a million pounds and was one of the municipal improvement projects in Alexandria carried out in partnership with other businessmen. These actions caused him to be well known and liked locally and became his passport to the nomination. He is of Upper Egyptian origin and owns a construction company. The second nominee is also a businessman and owns an agricultural development company as well as several livestock farms. His electoral district, however, includes a large number of the Christian monasteries in Egypt and this may be one of the reasons for choosing him.
The NDP party, however, couldn’t find anymore nominees in the rest of Egypt. In fact the total number of Coptic nominees on the ballot tickets is less than 1% of the 444 nominations. This contradicts the statements made by the NDP leadership, that the number of Christians or Copts will not be small.
As for the nine from the Wafd party, which is 5 % out of 250, this is not in line with their declared position and their slogan of " the religion is for God and the nation is for all." In fact the Wafd has been trying to increase the number of nominees, but many of the public figures they contacted have declined to be nominated.
One in particular, Mr. Gamal Zahel, a businessman, declined, for among other reasons, for the fact that he was not on good terms with the church at this moment. He did not want to affect the party itself or the party’s relationship with the church to be influenced by his being nominated by them. Mr. Mounir Fakhri Abdel Nour, a member of the upper council of the Wafd party, explains that the low number of nominees is not due to the policy of the Wafd Party as much as it is due to Copts declining nomination. Especially public figures amongst the Copts, and he gave as an example a well known, young Coptic author who was approached and decided to test the waters for himself. After a couple of days on the streets he came back to say that ’it was not his game’.
The article continues by asking the Wafd party about the danger involved in nominating individuals who were not members of the party and who did not actually agree or adopt the principals of the party. The Wafd party said that it was not a major problem because there are many common issues, which all the parties and everybody agreed about, such as economic issues and unemployment. Such issues are common and could be used as common ground between the party and these individuals. Even so some of those who the party had nominated and who actually won in the elections in the past had resigned from the party after winning their seats in parliament.
Mr. Mounir Fakhri responded to this by saying that those who joined the party and later decided to resign from it could not be blamed for this because the party had made some mistakes in the past. These included allying themselves with the Muslim Brotherhood in 1984 and refusing to endorse President Mubarak’s nomination for the presidency in 1987, which resulted in many members leaving the party and boycotting the elections in 1990. There were also the continuous attacks upon the July Revolution and too much time was wasted in settling up old scores, when they should have been focusing on the future.
Mr. Mounir Fakhri went on to add that in the last elections the Wafd party nominated as many as 16 Coptic candidates, which was in fact 3 times more than all the other parties put together.
It was also noted that the Copts were fearful or not very confident in the electoral process and that was another reason why they were avoiding nomination.
It is obvious that the parties are facing problems finding Coptic nominees. This is reiterated by Dr. Refa’at Al-Said who is the general-secretary of the Tagammu Party. He says that there are simply not many Copts or women who take an active part in political life and when you don’t have that many members in the party you are obviously left with a limited choice of nominees.
But the question is: Why do Copts avoid joining political parties, despite the fact that the leadership of these parties declared that they support Copts and will fight for their rights?
The reason is that Copts are not confident in the political process or have no confidence in the political process in Egypt, despite the historical heritage that the Wafd talks about. It is obvious that the NDP has committed a major error with the small number of Coptic nominees that it has come up with. On being asked why the Tagammu Party did not search for nominees outside the party Dr. Refa’at Al-Said said that the party did not approve of begging for nominees and that the party could not be confident in anyone who did not come from within the party itself.
Then why do Copts avoid political life, despite the fact that political parties are concerned with their issues?
Copts suffered political denial and persecution even before 1952, for example in the Wafd party Mr. Makram Ebeid could never hope to attain the leadership. A situation which has repeated itself today, where Mr. Saad Fakhri Abdel Nour is the eldest and has the most respectable history in the party, but could also never hold this position and no-one would ever think of giving it to him. And if this happens in such an old and established party like the Wafd, what can we expect from the others? The fact is that the pressure, which has been placed on Copts in the past, has caused them to avoid public life, even civil jobs and positions in government.
If the NDP were to nominate a larger number of Copts and some of them were to succeed, for example seven, that would give Copts more confidence and would make them respond more positively to approaches from other parties. When asked if five was not a small number for his party to nominate Dr. Refa’at Al-Said answered we ’don’t have the luxury of being able to nominate anyone, we have to take those who really have a good chance of winning because our funds are limited. So we cannot nominate those who have no chance of winning and if the Wafd Party, the Tagammu Party and others were able to nominate some Copts they were much luckier than the Nasserist Party, which was unable to nominate one single Copt.’
The Nasserist Party exerted great efforts in trying to convince some of its Coptic members to agree to be nominated in the coming elections, but they all refused adamantly, among them a professor at the Zagazig University and a doctor in Dumyat.
Mr. Diaa Eddin Dawood comments on the problem by saying that those who are nominated and actually succeed in the elections do not do so because they belong to a certain party. They succeed because of the services they give or present to their local communities or because they belong to certain families or major clans, and this makes choosing Copts difficult. Before the revolution Copts were usually nominated by the Wafd Party and usually succeeded because they belonged to the Wafd party. But now the situation is different and it is possible for Muslims to relate to a Coptic Christian who offers services to the community. The other problem is that they have no confidence in the election process and that is another reason why they avoid nomination. He expressed his personal opinion that if these coming elections were very clean and honest many more Copts and Muslims would agree to take part in the election process.
Dr. Yunan explains that the low number of Coptic nominees on ballot tickets by pointing out that the NDP has a policy not to nominate anyone who doesn’t have a good chance of winning the elections. They must also have strong family links or clan links to the local community or must own a considerable amount of property and financial assets. Copts cannot run on their strong clan links and those who have money or are businessmen avoid political life, thinking that it would be better for their businesses.
As for the Wafd party, the Copts no longer have much confidence in them since their alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood in 1984. There was bad blood between the Copts and the leader of the Wafd Party anyway. They considered Mr. Fouad Sarag El-Din to be responsible for the rift between Mr. Makram Ebeid and Mr. Nahas, a prime minister before the revolution. As for the Tagammu Party, Copts have shown themselves, in the past, to be generally more right wing or generally to avoid the left wing parties.
Finally it is hoped that the new directives, such as the overseeing of the elections by the judiciary, will encourage Copts to run as independents, which is expected. It is possible that some may win and compensate for the failure of the parties to including them on their tickets.
