CAIRO: Objecting to their names being stricken off the local council elections' candidate list, Copts from Abou Tashet and Farshout in the Upper Egyptian Qena governorate sent an official letter to President Hosni Mubarak, announcing their boycott of the April 8 elections. The news was reported on the almesryoon.com website, on which the Copts who filed the complaint said that they were among the founders of the National Democratic Party (NDP) in Qena. They claimed that their decision to boycott the elections is a reaction to their surprise at not finiding their names nor those of any other Copt on the candidates list, despite assurances by the party's secretary general in Qena that they would be able to run in the elections. Meanwhile, protests involving some 600 NDP members, who had resigned from the party's chapter in Daqahleya governorate in objection to obstacles they encountered while attempting to register as candidates for the coming elections, continued for the third day. The protesters claim that the party's leading representatives had deliberately barred some members from running in the elections. They also initiated a campaign called "Nationalists Against Corruption in which they plan to gather 100,000 signatures in a petition condemning the NDP's representatives in Daqahleya. In Daqahleya, some 500 independent and Muslim Brotherhood potential candidates for the local council elections were denied an opportunity to run in the coming polls, despite securing a court order permitting them to contest municipal seats.
