El-Sayed El-Badawi has confirmed his party is engaged in talks on founding a political alliance to support newly-elected President El-Sisi, as advocated by Amr Moussa, ahead of parliamentary poll Head of the Wafd Party, El-Sayed El-Badawi, said his party has started to attend talks advocated by former presidential candidate and Hosni Mubarak-era foreign minister Amr Moussa aimed at establishing an alliance to support newly-elected President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, state-owned news agency MENA reported. Last week, Moussa met with several parties, including the liberal Free Egyptians Party, the centre-left Egyptian Social Democratic Party (ESDP), the Mubarak-era leftist Tagammu Party, and the liberal Wafd Party for talks about a possible alliance. Other prominent figures attending the meeting included former General Intelligence head Mourad Muwafi. The main purpose of the alliance would be to act as "guardian of the constitution," Moussa told Al-Ahram news Wednesday. In a statement issued Saturday, El-Badawi said the alliance would aim to turn the constitution into an implemented national programme towards establishing a modern and fair democratic state. El-Badawi underlined that the alliance has not yet been established and that meetings between different parties are still focused on negotiations. Both the Social Democratic Party and the Wafd Party have been critical of a recently-passed parliamentary law that leaves only a small portion of parliamentary seats open for party lists, which are also closed in the new law, in contrast with the 2011-2012 law that allowed open lists. The new law stipulates the election of 20 percent of parliamentary seats through party lists, unlike the two-thirds elected through party lists in 2012. Procedures for Egypt's parliamentaryelections must commence before 17 July, according to the 2014 Constitution. http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/103725.aspx
