Egypt elections obliterate Coptic voice

Even with sweeping wins in the run-offs today, the voice of the Christian community has already been drained out of Egypt’s new parliament

ICC Note:

In the best case scenario for Coptic Christians – who comprise roughly ten percent of Egypt’s population – will end up with one percent, or five seats, of Egypt’s incoming 508-seat parliament.

By Yasmine El-Rashidi

12/5/2010 Egypt (Ahram) – Egypt’s minority Christian Coptic community know they are fighting a losing battle for political representation. In a best-case scenario following today’s run-offs they could end up with five seats, or one percent, in the incoming 508-seat parliament. In a worst-case scenario, they will end up with half that amount.

At the polls today, just two Coptic candidates are left in the running: the suave Wafdist multi-millionaire Ramy Lakah, and Sameh Sadek, a lesser-know figure with shallow pockets. Both these men – whose manifestos centre around calls for religious unity and an ‘Egypt for all’ – are running in Shubra, a largely working-class district in Cairo with a high Christian presence.

The possibility of another parliamentary seat secured by the Copts today, possibly lies in the hands of the lesser-known Sadek, a member of the Democratic Front Party who is running as an independent. His opponent, Lakah – a big man with the vocal leverage of money as well as ideas – has allegedly withdrawn from the run-offs, but even if he has a change of mind as candidates are known to do, he is likely to be kept out of the parliamentary chambers, following the footsteps of equally prominent, equally surprising, losers this year, such as secretary general of the liberal Wafd party Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour.

For Egypt’s Copts, who officially make up between six to ten percent of the country’s 80 million population, this election year has been a brutal one. Long the subject of alleged persecution and marginalization, the election run-up was marred with markers of the endeavoured annihilation they have been crying foul against for years.

The ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) fielded just 10 Coptic candidates out of if its 780 nominees vying for the 508 available seats this year. Of a total 5,725 candidates running for election, just 81 – less than 2 percent – were Copts. This official selection, which was confirmed a couple of weeks before the 28 November first election round, irked the Coptic community. Former Coptic MP Mona Makram Ebeid called the choice “political”, and in Alexandria, members of the community publicly spoke out in critique of the NDP for failing to fairly consider the estimated 690 names put forward by the Coptic Church.

Then, just days before the election, clashes broke out between anti-riot police and the Coptic community of Omraneya in the Pyramids district of Cairo. The government had ordered a halt on construction work on a community building, saying that the construction permit was for a “community centre”, not a “church”. Residents claim the tension broke out over the construction of a staircase, not the dome that the police alleged.

Demonstrators subsequently surrounded the premises, protesting the construction halt and what they criticized as part of widespread government-supported alienation and persecution. The riots, which saw police fire tear-gas and rubber pellets, ended with two dead, dozens injured, 133 arrested, and 156 people facing charges with possible maximum sentences of life in jail. The government’s NDP spokesman Ali El-Din Hilal said the Copts incited the conflict, placing the blame on them. Egypt’s Patriarch Pope Shenouda III immediately denounced the violence. He has not, to-date, responded to the outcome of the elections, and his office is not offering comment.

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