Road to Egyptian Presidential elections: The wacky race

Despite the fact that we do not know when they will be held exactly, there have been some interesting updates in the past two weeks that give an indication of how strange and wacky this presidential election edition will be.

Abdel Sanad Yamama, Fouad Badrawi , Hazem Omar , Ahmed El-Fadaly and 
Emad Saadallah

We last left the Egyptian presidential election coverage with Al-Wafd Party announcing that its current leader, Abdel Sanad Yamama, would run in the upcoming election against incumbent President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. However, in a typical Al-Wafd fashion, veteran members of the party, including members of its high committee, which allegedly supported Yamama's candidacy by an overwhelming majority, opposed the decision.

This revealed an interesting fact: the high committee of the old liberal party had not convened in the first place and was not called to any meeting to choose its candidate for the elections. This was according to those veteran members, such as former Al-Wafd leader Mahmoud Abaza.

Fouad Badrawi vs Abdel Sanad Yamama

Al-Wafd veteran leading member Fouad Badrawi then announced that he would run for the presidential elections, calling for a meeting of the High Committee to choose between him and Yamama, as it was his right.

Just like Yamama, Badrawy stated that he fully respects President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as a leader.

However, his friends at the party's High Committee convinced him to run in the upcoming elections.

Yamama still acts as if he were the only Al-Wafd party's presidential candidate and that nothing happened.

The usual internal fights of Al-Wafd have found their way to the presidential elections. It is puzzling how Al-Wafd Party still has internal fights when it has disappeared from the streets. Young Egyptians may not believe that this was a party with popularity pre-2011.

We will see which man will get Al-Wafd Party's ticket. I can't believe I am saying this.

The People's Republican Party's Ticket

Yes, we have a party that is called the Republican People's Party "RPP" or as commonly known for those who still are keen to follow up politics "Abu Hashima's Party".

Despite being founded in September 2012 by former government officials, governors and ministers "including former NDPians", the RPP got huge publicity in the media publicly when the famous Egyptian tycoon joined in March 2020 as its vice president.

Abu-Hashima's money made the party resurface again.

Its leader and founder is Senator Hazem Omar.

Despite being unknown publicly, the RPP managed to secure 67 seats in the House of Representatives and 17 seats in the Senate in the latest elections before Senator Ahmed Abu Hashima would join. Now Omar says that it is Egypt's second biggest party !!

The PRP describes itself as a liberal-left centrist party that calls for "taking all measures necessary to protect vulnerable classes from economic liberalization and privatization policies." Abu Hashima's membership in a left-leaning party is an irony in Egyptian politics.

Before Eid, the PRP announced that its board would meet to decide whether to field a candidate in the presidential elections or not. On July 5, the board met and announced that it would choose a member to run for the presidential elections.

Some news websites were wondering whether the party's leader, Hazem Omar, or his deputy, Ahmed Abu Hashima, would run against Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Senator Hazem Omar 

Despite the fact that I prefer Abu Hashima because it will be a proper circus, the party's board elected on Saturday Omar to be its candidate in the upcoming Presidential elections.

Now who is Hazem Omar?

The leader of the PRP was appointed as a senator in the Senate by President El-Sisi in October 2020.

Senator Omar is currently the head of the foreign relations committee in the Senate.

Omar is also the Chairman of Vilamoura for Tourism & Real Estate Development, which he founded in January 1997. Before Vilamoura and according to his Linkedin profile, he was also the CEO of Otco SAE from April 1989 to September 2003. I can't find what Otco is except that it was a trading company specializing in imports and exports.

All that we know about his educational background is that he is an engineer.

The Return of El-Fadaly

The upcoming presidential elections in Egypt are already shaping up to be a wacky race, but the announcement that Ahmed El-Fadaly will be running on behalf of the Independence Current Coalition takes the cake.

El-Fadaly is a controversial figure who has been accused of mobilizing thugs to support the Mubarak regime during the Battle of the Camel in Tahrir Square in February 2011.

Ahmed El-Fadaly 

There is video evidence of El-Fadaly's involvement in the battle, but he has denied the accusations, claiming that he was the victim of a smear campaign.

El-Fadaly also leads a cartoonish party called the Democratic Peace Party. 

He claims that he ran in the presidential elections of 2005, the famous multi-candidates presidential elections, but I checked, and his name was missing from the final list of presidential candidates.

The Democratic Peace Party's platform is vague and uninspiring, and it is unclear how El-Fadaly plans to save Egypt from the poverty it is currently suffering from.

The Child of the East Candidate

From the start, there were indications that the upcoming presidential race would be wacky, and Emad Saadallah was living proof.

Saadalla is a man in his 50s with blonde dyed hair and blue lenses. He claims to be a world-top plastic surgeon who works in Dubai.

He announced that he wants to run for the presidential office on Twitter and TikTok. He supports Israel and wants to change the Egyptian flag.

Saadalla claims to be mentioned in the Bible and the Book of Revelations as the long-awaited "Child of the East" that was predicted by American psychic Jeanne Dixon.

This gives us a glimpse of what we are dealing with here.

Dixon was a famous American psychic who made many predictions about the future. 

Saadalla 

Some of her prophecies about Egypt include the Sphinx speaking again in the 20th century as a warning to humanity, Egypt becoming a major centre of spiritual power in the 21st century, and a new pharaoh rising in Egypt in the 21st century who would usher in a new era of peace and prosperity for the country.

She also made some prophecies about a child she called the "child of the East," who would be born in the Middle East in the 20th century and have a great impact on the world. 

She said that the child of the East would be a spiritual leader who would unite people of all faiths, bring peace to the world, and die for their beliefs. Believers say that many of her prophecies have been proven to be true.

Thus, Saadalla believes that he is the Great Child of the East, although Dixon did not say that the child would rule Egypt.

Aside from being the prophesied Messiah. Saadalla got a lot of unpacking.

He is not from a big clan from Qena, as he claims, but rather descended from a famous family in Mounfia, which rejects him.

His name has appeared in the media since the 2000s in the realm of conspiracy theories, such as when he wrote about an atheist organization trying to infiltrate Egyptian society.

Saadallah's campaign quickly faded away on Twitter and TikTok after becoming a joke on Twitter.

That's our wrap-up from the Pre-Presidential elections in the past two weeks.

Presidential hopeful Ahmed Tantawy is quite active. To the point that I believe he deserves a standalone post.