CAIRO — The liberal New Wafd Party is the oldest political party in Egypt. It was founded in 1918 by Egyptian leader Saad Zaghloul under the emblem of Egyptian nationalism, which seeks to preserve national unity among Muslims and Christians.

In May 2010, Sayyid al-Badawi took leadership of the party, which has entered all of the Egyptian elections that have been held since the outbreak of the January 25 Revolution. The party won 45 seats in the latest parliamentary elections, held in two rounds in October and November of 2015. The party came third in these elections after the Free Egyptians Party (FEP) and the Nation’s Future Party.

Badawi, in an interview with Al-Monitor, addressed the negative phenomena that marred the electoral process. These included bribery of candidates as well as vote buying. Badawi said there is an “unclean” route that one has to take to cast a vote. Meanwhile, he praised the state’s impartiality and said it was an unprecedented position in the past 60 years of political life in Egypt.

Badawi said the parties that won parliamentary seats by buying members of parliament are “temporary” parties that only have a short lifespan because they are not based on political grounds but rather can be attributed to certain people. In his view, as soon as these people disappear for one reason or another, these parties will also disappear, as opposed to the Wafd Party, which was founded on national tenets nearly 100 years ago.