Egyptians urged to boycott vote after withdrawals
CAIRO: Five Egyptian public figures, including two former presidential hopefuls, called Sunday for voters to boycott the March presidential election after the withdrawal of all candidates but the incumbent Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Sisi, who has been in power since 2014, appears set to run unopposed after all other presidential hopefuls were either jailed or announced they would not take part in the election on March 26-28.
Nominations for candidates remain open until Monday.
The undersigned “condemn all security and administrative practices that the current regime took to prevent any fair competition against it in the upcoming elections,” they said in the statement.
The document was signed by a barred presidential hopeful’s top aides – Hisham Geneina, a former anti- corruption chief, and Hazem Hosni, a political science professor at Cairo University.
They had been part of the team campaigning for General Sami Anan, a former armed forces chief of staff.
Anan was accused of illegally announcing, on January 20, his intention to run for president before getting the military’s approval.
Sunday’s call for voters to boycott the election was also signed by 2012 presidential candidate Mohamed Anwar Sadat, a dissident and nephew of the former president of the same name.
On Jan 15, Sadat said he would not throw his hat into the ring this time because the climate was not conducive to free and fair elections. The boycott call was also signed by moderate Islamist and 2012 presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh, a former senior leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. — AFP
Fawza al-Yussef, regional official
said.
Rebel backer Turkey is one of the sponsors of the talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Monday and Tuesday, along with Damascus allies Russia and Iran.
Turkey’s air and artillery strikes on Sunday were even fiercer than the preceding days, said an AFP correspondent on the SyrianTurkish border who saw towers of smoke rising into the sky.
Turkish channel NTV broadcast live footage Sunday showing rocket fire targeting Mount Barsaya.
Turkish troops and their Syrian opposition allies said last Monday that they had captured the hill, before losing it a few hours later.
Turkish relations with the US have dipped over their stances on the YPG – which Ankara says is a “terrorist” offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The PKK, which has waged a war against the Turkish state for three decades, is proscribed as a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies.
US President Donald Trump earlier this week urged Erdogan to “de- escalate” his forces’ assault on Afrin as he expressed concern about “the destructive and false” anti-American rhetoric emanating from Turkey. Adding fuel to the fire, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Saturday urged the US to “immediately withdraw” its personnel from Kurdish-held Manbij. — AFP