Egypt's main Salafist party opposes Amr Moussa as parliament speaker

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.