The Egyptian Salafist Nour Party has refused to back Amr Moussa, the chairman of the committee that drafted the 2014 constitution, to head the upcoming parliament.
According to Al-Mesryoon newspaper, the Nour Party accuses Moussa of seeking to exclude them from the political scene because of their religious background. The vice president of the Nour Party, Al-Sayed Mostafa, told the newspaper that his party also rejects Moussa because of his links to the Mubarak regime.
Moussa, the founder of the Egyptian National Alliance and a career diplomat under long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak, had earlier rejected the membership of the Nour Party in his new electoral alliance, saying he is seeking to form “an alliance of like-minded parties”.
Both Moussa and the Nour Party backed the Egyptian military’s overthrow of the country’s first freely elected president, Mohamed Morsi, last summer.