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Final results show Christians under-represented in new Egyptian Parliament

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Published: 15:00 GMT Standard Time - Tuesday 24 January 2012

Final results show Christians under-represented in new Egyptian Parliament

Country/Region: Middle East and North Africa, Egypt

Final results of the Egyptian parliamentary elections confirm a resounding victory for Islamist groups, while the country’s Christians are woefully under-represented, filling just seven of the 498 seats.

As expected from the first two of three rounds of voting, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) has emerged with the largest share of the vote, giving them 47 per cent of seats in the People’s Assembly.

protests-outside-Egyptian-parliament-4x3.jpg
The Egyptian parliament was the site of protests during the revolution
Jano Charbel / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The final results of the staggered elections were announced on Saturday (21 January) by the High Judicial Elections Committee. The hard line Salafist al-Nur party’s coalition came second, taking about 25 per cent of the seats. The liberal Wafd party came third, trailed by the Egyptian Bloc coalition. The latter includes the Free Egyptians, which is headed by Christian businessman Naguib Sawiris and is favoured by many of the country’s Christians.

Despite comprising around ten per cent of the population, Christians fill only 1.4 per cent of the seats in the new parliament. Christian candidates won just two seats in the elections; five Christian candidates were subsequently appointed to the parliament by the head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, who, acting in the place of the president, has the right to appoint ten MPs. Ousted President Hosni Mubarak traditionally used this allocation to boost the representation of Christians and women.

Christians’ concerns

Egyptian Christians are concerned about their future under the new parliament. A Christian activist group released a statement, addressed to the Islamist majority, on Sunday, the day before the parliament’s first scheduled meeting. The group expressed discontent with the election results and asked the Islamists if they will treat the country’s Christians as equals and how they intend to deal with Christian women who will not be covering their hair or faces.

The new parliament will have significant influence in shaping the country’s future, as it will choose the 100-member body that will draw up the new constitution.

Under a temporary power-sharing agreement, the FJP’s secretary general, Mohamed Saad Katatny, was expected to be installed as the parliament’s speaker with al-Nur and Wafd representatives serving as deputy speakers.

It remains to be seen whether or not the FJP and al-Nur will join forces in parliament, but the two groups have thus far expressed different priorities. The former has said that it will focus on economic and social issues, while the latter wants to pursue a more overtly Islamist agenda, focusing on issues such as women’s dress, alcohol consumption and the contents of popular culture.

Elections for the upper house, the Shura Council, will start on 29 January, with presidential elections scheduled for completion by the end of June.

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  • In another chilling sign of Egypt’s move towards becoming an Islamic state, it was announced in March that a religious police force had been established to uphold Muslim morals. The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice shares its name with the notorious religious police of Saudi Arabia. For some months previously, vigilante Salafist gangs had been operating as self-appointed enforcers of morals, raiding shops and harassing staff and customers. The Christian community is concerned that it may now be subjected to the demands of sharia law. Pray that this will not happen and that the Islamisation of Egyptian society will be checked and then reversed. Subscribe to the prayer points rss feed 14 hours ago

  • Christian girls in Egypt are extremely vulnerable to being kidnapped by Salafists who forcibly convert them to Islam and marry them to Muslim men against their will; over 500 have been victims of this heartless campaign since the revolution of January 2011. The Association of Victims of Abduction and Enforced Disappearance (AVAED), an Egyptian Christian organisation, says that the authorities collude with the Salafists. Give thanks for the safe return of Agape Essam Girgis (13), who was abducted from el-Ameriya on 23 December 2012. Sadly, most cases do not have a happy ending. Pray that the Lord will comfort those families whose daughters are still missing and intervene mightily to deliver the Christian girls from the hands of their captors. Subscribe to the prayer points rss feed Tue, Jun 2013 00:00

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