The Copts of Shubra and Rūd al-Faraj, two Cairo neighborhoods with a good deal of Copts, went home straight after church last Sunday instead of heading to the polls to vote in the parliamentary elections, as told by their priests.

Security officials at the Muhammad Farīd School in Shubrā did not allow candidate Rāmī Lakah’s delegates to enter, nor did they allow his supporters to go in and vote.

Al-Shurūq al-Jadīd claims that two secret alliances were formed between Albert Ishāq and Fādī al-Habashī on one side, and Rāmī Lakah and Ridā Wahdān on the other. Lakah’s supporters accused Fādī al-Habashī of using his political influence to have forty of Lakah’s campaign organizers arrested.

It was also reported that in the Rūd al-Faraj district, women were offered to be driven to the Makārim al-Akhlāq school in a microbus, handed twenty pounds to vote for Sāmih Antwān, and then taken back home in a different microbus.