Sisi’s last real challenger quits Egypt presidential race
CAIRO: A rights lawyer seen as the last real challenger to Egypt’s Abdel Fattah al-Sisi quit the race to be president, the latest in a string of potential candidates to withdraw or be jailed.
Sisi, who has ruled the North African country with an iron fist since being elected in 2014, earlier in the day became the only candidate so far to formally submit his bid to stand in the election.
Since December, one by one, all of his other likely challengers have either ruled themselves out of the race or been sentenced to time in prison.
On Wednesday it was the turn of Khaled Ali, a leftist human rights lawyer who was seen as the strongest candidate still standing against Sisi following the elimination of two others.
“Today we announce our decision that we will not run in this race,” Ali said at a news conference in Cairo.
A presidential candidate in 2012, the 45-year-old Ali said he had been forced to pull out of this year’s election to be held on March 26-28.
There were, he said, “signs that pointed to a will to poison the whole operation and to corrupt and empty it of its supposedly democratic content.”
They included the arrest of some of his campaign activists, a tight schedule that made it difficult for potential candidates to gather the needed endorsements for their applications, and a generally unfair climate.
Ali had yet to submit his candidacy for the election.
As a lawyer, Ali has handled high-profile cases including one where he tried to get the courts to stop the transfer of the islands of Tiran and Sanafir to Saudi Arabia, a move Sisi completed despite rare street protests after the agreement was signed in 2016.
From the start “our announcement was met with an angry and irresponsible reaction, manifested in the arrest of a large number of the campaign’s youth,” he said.
The short timetable meant it was difficult for candidates to gather the necessary endorsements ahead of Monday’s deadline, he said.
The National Election Authority announced on Jan 8 that the deadline for applications would be Jan 29.
Presidential hopefuls must collect endorsements from at least 20 lawmakers, or at least 25,000 registered voters, with a minimum of 1,000 signatures from each of at least 15 provinces, according to Egyptian law.
Ali also cited a case filed against him, where he was sentenced in September in absentia to three months in jail on accusations of “offending public decency”, a ruling he appealed.
This was in relation to a photograph that appeared to show Ali making an obscene gesture while celebrating a court ruling in the case of the islands’ transfer to Saudi Arabia.
Ali alleges the picture was fabricated.
The case was pursued “for nothing except to provide a legal excuse that would prevent us from running,” he said. — AFP