DHAKA: Egypt will hold parliamentary elections ‘between February and March’, to be followed by a presidential vote in early summer.

Egypt foreign minister Nabil Fahmy said on Friday, reports The Jerusalem Post.

The elections will replace the leaders appointed after the army ousted elected president Mohamed Mursi in July.

Fahmy also told media in an interview that the Freedom and Justice Party, the political arm of Mursi’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, ‘is still legal in Egypt’ and free to participate in the parliamentary election.

Speaking during a visit to Spain, he said presidential elections would be announced ‘by the end of next spring’ and that the elections would be held ‘a maximum of two months after the announcement’.

‘So you’re looking at elections in the summer for president, that’s the last step,’ he said.

Fahmy’s comments provided the most specific timeline yet for the end of the interim army-backed government and a return to electoral politics in the Arab world’s most populous country, which since Mursi’s ouster on July 3 has seen some of the worst violence in its modern history.

BDST: 1842 HRS, NOV 08, 2013
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