Egypt’s Presidential Elections 2018 : A-Single-Candidate race already !! “Updated”

On Monday, Egypt’s National Elections Authority “NEA" announced the timetable of the Egyptian Presidential elections 2018 which will be held in March.
According to NEA, the presidential bid race will start officially on 20 January when it opens its doors for the Presidential hopefuls to present their official requests for candidacy.
I forgot in my initial post to mention the requirements for the Egyptian presidential office post in accordance with the Egyptian Constitution articles No.141 and 142 as well the Presidential Elections law of the Year 2014 specifically its article No.1.
Here are the requirements the Presidential hopefuls must meet to become official Presidential candidates

• A presidential candidate must be an Egyptian born to Egyptian parents, and neither he or his parents or his spouse may have held any other nationality.
• He or she must enjoy civil and political rights, must have performed the military service or have been exempted according to the law.
• He or she should not suffer from any physical or mental disease that can affect her or his ability to perform presidential duties.
• He or she shall not be less than forty calendar years of age on the day of commencing candidacy registration.
• He or she should not have been sentenced before by court for a felony or a crime involving immoral act and if she or he were convicted, then they should be acquitted in the appeal or the retrial
• He or she must be a bachelor’s degree holder.
• He or she must secure the endorsement of a minimum of 20 MPs or 25,000 citizens from across at least 15 governorates with 1000 endorsement from each governorate.

Now up till this moment, President Abdel Fattah El-Fatah El-Sisi has not mentioned that he intended directly or officially to run. In previous statements, speeches and interviews, he said that he would do whatever the people wanted him to do aka he would run if the people wanted him to do so.

Sisi's presidential campaign in 2014 "Twitter"

Interestingly despite he has no declared his presidential bid officially, Popular campaigns to gather endorsements for his presidential candidacy from all over the country were formed and supported financially by businessmen from several months ago.

The organizers of those popular support campaigns claim that they managed millions of endorsements to secure his presidential candidacy despite he did not declare his intention all that time !!!

What if anything happened and he decided not to run !!
It is worth to mention that those campaigns had a green light to collect endorsements from ministries, public sector companies and private companies when opposition parties and activists cannot even organize a peaceful political gathering !!!

Anyhow Sisi has not only managed to secure the public endorsements but he also managed to secure the endorsement of not less 500 MPs in the past two days as well.
Amazingly more than 500 MPs suddenly appeared in the House of Representatives in the past two days !! That number did not show up when Tiran and Sanafir isles were given up by the parliament in a disgraceful deal !!

I think Sisi will address the public and declare his candidacy by next week.
By the way, If he runs and wins “99.9% will happen”, he won’t be able to turn for a third presidential term according to Constitution article No. 140. I expect that this constitutional article will be amended in the upcoming four years at any time.
Now there is no strong competitor or rival for Sisi.

Ahmed Shafik declared that he would not run for the presidency this time last week. I cannot blame him for what happened to him. He is not ready to take the risk, especially that his daughters and their families are in the UAE.
I won’t forget the role of the UAE in that.

There are few bets on Khaled Ali that he would stir things in these elections despite that 99.9% he will fail if he manages to run in the first place.The thing is that famous labor activist and the leftist lawyer can stir things up a little bit and force the media in Egypt to discusses matters it should discuss but it forced not to do.

People forget that Ali has to win the appeal against the 3-month prison sentence handed to him in September 2017 for offending public decency.

Khaled Ali and his campaign are going to hold a press conference on Thursday to declare their position on whether they are going to continue or not.

Updated: In a press conference held at his presidential campaign headquarter in Cairo Downtown ’s, Khaled Ali announced that he and his campaign to continue in the presidential race despite he rejects the timetable declared by the NEA saying that it “empties the presidential campaigns from their target and propose”. It is true.

He also slammed the NEA for leaving the banners of Pro-Sisi supports across the country because it violated the Presidential elections laws and the NEA’s orders about the time of the Presidential campaigns directly. He called the NEA to remove those banners. He called the NEA to do something concerning how employees in public companies and ministries as well institutions are forced to sign Pro-Sisi endorsements.
The father of two called his supporters as well the supporters of 25 January to gather more than 25,000 popular endorsements and to send it to his campaign so it would present those endorsements to the NEA on 25 January 2018.

He also called his supporters to organize a human chain from his presidential campaign HQ to the NEA HQ in Cairo Downtown on the same day. Khaled Ali also called his supporters to carry the photos of the nation’s martyrs, political detainees as well the victims of forced disappearance in Egypt in the human chain.

Former MP and veteran liberal politician Mohamed Anwar Al-Sadat who also declared his intention to run the for the presidency in October was more realistic and slammed the timetable of the presidential elections describing it as “too short”. The famous nephew of the late President also announced that he would announce his final decision from the elections next Monday in a press conference.

Updated: In a big surprise that no one anticipated, former Chief of staff and Once-SCAF leading figure Sami Anan announced late Thursday night that he would the Presidential elections 2018 representing Egypt Pan Arabism Democratic Party !!!!! Do not even ask what is that party because it is the first time I hear about it.

Of course, I cannot ignore the first woman who declared that she would run for the presidency : The always controversial Mona Prince. Prince is not giving up and she got all faith to support her in her candidacy.

As you can see this is a single-candidate presidential race.

I do not think that any person in Egypt including Abdel Fattah El-Sisi himself if he were not the President if he were a civilian with no opposition or even rival voice allowed in the media in the past 4 years could collect 25,000 endorsements from at least 15 governorates in 9 days !!
After second thinking, there is only one person who can do it and get more than 70 million endorsements in 9 days from the 28 governorates: Mohamed Salah !!