Updated on
Summary Islamist parties won 65 percent of all votes cast for parties in first round of parliamentary polls.
Islamists trounced their liberal rivals in the opening phase of Egypts first election since the fall of Hosni Mubarak, figures showed on Sunday, with one in four voters choosing hardline Salafists.Islamist parties won 65 percent of all votes cast for parties in the first round of parliamentary polls last week, while the main secular liberal coalition managed just 13.4 percent.Among the Islamist vote, the moderate Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) of the Muslim Brotherhood won 36.6 percent, followed by the hardline Salafist Al-Nur party with 24.4 percent and the moderate Al-Wasat with 4.3 percent.We welcome the Egyptian peoples choice, FJP spokesman Ahmed Sobea told AFP. Egypt now needs all parties to cooperate together to get it out of its crisis.The Brotherhood had been widely forecast to triumph in the first free election in decades. It is the countrys most organised political group and is well known for its charity work and opposition to Mubaraks 30-year regime.But the showing from Salafist groups, which advocate a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia, was a surprise, raising fears of an ultra-conservative and overtly religious 498-member new lower parliament.The Salafis, newcomers who founded parties only after the toppling of Mubarak in February, trailed the FJP only slightly in the city of Alexandria and won a majority in northern Kafr el-Sheikh and Damietta provinces.Followers of the Salafi strain of Islam advocate a stricter segregation of the sexes, the full veiling of women and a ban on alcohol.Parliamentary candidate Abdel-Moneim El-Shahat last week raised hackles when he accused the late Egyptian writerNaguib Mahfouz, a Nobel prize winner, of inciting promiscuity, prostitution and atheism.
Featured
