“We support Field Marshal Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi for the presidency. We do not accept any split among our ranks,” said hundreds of Tamarod movement members in a mass rally held on Monday to announce their support for the nomination of Al-Sisi for the presidency. “Our committees across the 26 governorates have decided to support Al-Sisi. He is our candidate. If any member of the movement decides to support another candidate, he will have to represent himself,” said Mahmoud Badr, founder of the movement that led the mass protests against former Islamist president Mohammed Morsi on 30 June last year, leading to his ouster. Badr was referring to an earlier decision made by the majority of Tamarod members last week to support Al-Sisi. While the army chief has not yet officially announced his candidacy for the presidency, he is widely expected to be Egypt's next president. A split in the movement came after leftist leader Hamdeen Sabahi declared his intention on Saturday to run for the presidency. Some senior members of the movement then announced their support for Sabahi and attended the press conference in which he announced the step. A statement signed by a group of 50 Tamarod co-founders and officials, including Hassan Shaheen, Khaled Al-Kadi and Mohamed Abdel-Aziz, was published on the group's Facebook page to announce their support for “the fighter Hamdeen Sabahi.” They cited his opposition to “networks of corruption” under the rule of ousted former president Hosni Mubarak and to “the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood organisation” under the rule of Morsi as reasons for their support. Tamarod's website, however, shows the movement's support for Al-Sisi's presidential bid. The movement's representatives in the governorate of Qena and the Delta area, which includes the governorates of Alexandria and Port Said, also announced their “full support” for the defence minister on its website. Shaheen, Abdel-Aziz and Al-Kadi then had their memberships frozen on Sunday for “violating the group's decision” to back Al-Sisi, a statement posted on Tamarod's official website said. On Monday, the movement's leaders said that Shaheen and Abdel-Aziz were still members of the Movement and that they were free to choose the candidate they wished to support as long as they spoke only for themselves and not on behalf of the movement. “Shaheen and Abdel-Aziz are valuable and respected members of the movement. They spent months in the streets to organise the protests against Mohamed Morsi, and they are still in Tamarod,” Badr said. During Monday's press conference, it was undeniable that there were divisions among movement members over the presidential candidates, however. Some members shouted during the conference that the movement had been established to oust Morsi and restore the Egyptian revolution and not to mobilise the people to elect Al-Sisi as president. Badr responded to the protests by saying that restoring the Egyptian revolution “includes electing a successful president who will lead the country to democracy and prosperity.” He said that the existence of different opinions within the movement regarding the presidential elections did not mean there was a split. “I believe that this is a healthy sign and that the movement recognises the freedom of expression; therefore, all members should express their point of view without any restrictions,” he said. The divisions over the choice of presidential candidate have raised questions over the future of the movement. Some experts believe that the movement should now be dissolved or changed into a political party. Mohammed Nabawi, a senior member of the movement, accused Sabahi of trying to hijack the movement and causing the split by inviting senior members to the conference at which he had announced his presidential bid. He added that Sabahi “knows very well that the movement unanimously supports Al-Sisi” and said that Sabahi had nevertheless sought to imply that there were splits within the movement. After the revolution, some of the youth movements that had helped to topple the former Mubarak regime were dissolved, including the Youth Revolution Coalition (YRC). “Tamarod was established for a specific goal, which was to mobilise the Egyptians to topple Morsi and Muslim Brotherhood rule. The movement has achieved this goal,” Amr Bakli, a political analyst specialising in the youth movements, said. He added that Tamarod did not have the potential to be transformed into a political party. “The founders of the movement are Nasserists, while the majority of the members are liberals. So, if they agree today on something, they will definitely disagree about it tomorrow,” he added.
