Lawyer emerges as contender

CAIRO: A prominent Egyptian human rights lawyer stepped forward Monday as a candidate in next year’s presidential election, emerging as the first open challenger to President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s authoritarian rule after years of growing repression.

The lawyer, Khaled Ali, is not expected to pose a serious challenge to el-Sissi, whose crackdown on civil rights in Egypt has seen many of his opponents jailed, silenced or banished into exile.

But Mr Ali’s candidacy could offer a focus for criticism of Mr el-Sissi at a time when he is grappling with a sharp economic downturn and a jolting surge in violent attacks by Islamists linked to the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

At a packed news conference in Cairo, Mr Ali, who rose to prominence last year in rare protests over the government’s decision to transfer two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia, said Egypt was in the grip of a deep crisis. His presidential bid was an attempt “to save Egypt from this dark destiny”, he said.

Yet the challenge faced by the lawyer was apparent even as he spoke. Ali said he was forced to hold the news conference at the offices of a rival political party because the security agencies had shut him out of larger sites, he said.

Hours earlier, security officers raided a printing press in the city and confiscated his political brochures.

Mr el-Sissi has yet to declare his candidacy, although supporters say they have collected 3 million signatures calling on him to run. Anwar Sadat, a nephew of the former president of the same name, has indicated he will also run.

In any event, the election looks set to take place amid the harshest political repression in Egypt in decades.

Mr el-Sissi has banned public protests, fragmented the opposition and exerted an iron grip on the news media.

Just last weekend, a well-known activist from Nubia, in southern Egypt, died in detention, apparently after lapsing into a diabetic coma.

On Friday, five Western ambassadors voiced rare criticism of Egypt over the detention of a human rights lawyer who was stopped at Cairo’s airport in September on his way to a UN meeting.

On Sunday, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry summoned the ambassadors — from Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy — and said their intervention was “unacceptable”.

During his news conference, Mr Ali threatened to boycott the vote if the conditions for a fair election were not in place next year. But he might not even be able to begin his campaign if he cannot overcome a major legal hurdle first.

He faces a three-month jail sentence for public indecency that was imposed after he was accused of making a vulgar hand gesture outside a Cairo courthouse in January when he scored a legal victory over Mr el-Sissi in the islands case.

An appeal against the conviction, which Ali says is politically motivated, is scheduled for Wednesday. If he fails, he could be disqualified from running for president.

A government-sponsored youth conference taking place in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh this week offered critics a new opportunity to criticize Mr el-Sissi. Social media activists hijacked the conference hashtag, #WeNeedToTalk, to highlight the lack of freedoms in Egypt.

The slogan circulated alongside photographs of Egyptian security forces beating protesters, or images of pro-democracy activists like Alaa Abd el Fattah, who has been in prison since 2013.

Some focused their ire on the actress Helen Hunt who addressed the conference Sunday, accusing her of legitimising Mr elSissi’s rule.