Clerics Fired for not Promoting NDP Candidates During Sermons

Clerics Fired for not Promoting NDP Candidates During Sermons

The Egyptian ruling party’s means of campaign propaganda advocacy and attack appears not to have changed from former elections.

The NDP’s advertising campaign is among the artifacts that survived the electoral contest as it relies on much negative and unfair campaigning, smear campaigns and slandering as elections draw near. This is evident in the recent case of the ruling party’s appointed minister of endowment, Hamdy Zaqzouq, who decided to curtail the license of two clerics and replace them for refusing to promote the achievements of NDP candidates during their sermons in the mosque or after prayers.

The clerics, who have been indefinitely banned from their mosques, maintained that the NDP’s candidate supporters had frequently visited the mosques to promote their nominees’ platforms stressing that they were taking advantage of the premises. They highlighted that 3 weeks earlier the minister had in fact ordered them not to allow any campaigning in the mosques stressing that mosques are places of worship, hence, contradicting his own orders.