After months of shying away from directing any criticism at Defence Minister Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, former presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahi said he had serious doubts that Al-Sisi would restore democracy if elected president. He also held Al-Sisi, whom many see as the real decision maker in Egypt following the removal of former president and Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi, 3 July 2013, responsible for numerous human rights violations that took place over the past eight months. Sabahi, who came third with 4.6 million votes in the 2012 presidential race after Morsi and former prime minister Ahmed Shafik, is the only candidate so far to announce officially that he will run for president. Al-Sisi has not made a similar announcement yet, but it has been taken as a fact that he will run, especially after he said last week “[I would] never turn my back to my people” in the case they wanted him to become president. Until Al-Ahram Weekly went to print, no official date had been announced for the poll by the Presidential Electoral Commission overseeing the presidential elections. Defence Minister Al-Sisi would have to resign from his military post, according to Egyptian law, if he wants to run for president. The fact that the campaign in support of Al-Sisi to become president started long before the official announcement of registration for candidates has been a serious source of worry for those aspiring to compete for the top post. The defence minister clearly enjoys wide popularity amid a campaign in his support in the state and private media, claiming he was the only person capable of running Egypt at this critical time, especially while facing armed terrorist groups and a sharply deteriorating economy. Khaled Ali, the youngest candidate to run in 2012, announced Sunday that he would not compete again, saying he was not ready to take part in a “farce” in which results are known in advance. Ali, who ran on a socialist platform and won 130,000 votes only in 2012, added that all state institutions and the media were campaigning for Al-Sisi, making it impossible to have fair and free elections. Sabahi has reportedly been facing pressure within his campaign to announce his withdrawal, including coming from some of his closest friends and allies who backed him in 2012. Those included Abdel-Hakim Abdel-Nasser, the son of late president Gamal Abdel-Nasser whom Sabahi considers to be his mentor and model, and Khaled Youssef, a prominent movie director who filmed the mass demonstrations that took place on 30 June to demand Morsi's removal. Both Nasser and Youssef declared they would support Al-Sisi, and called upon Sabahi to pull out of the race in order to “maintain national unity” and not to show splits within the camp of political parties that supported the ouster of the Brotherhood's Morsi after only one year in office. An opinion poll released this week by Baseera Centre showed that Al-Sisi enjoyed the support of 51 per cent of those surveyed, compared to one per cent only who said they would vote for Sabahi, and 45 per cent who said they had not made up their minds yet. Informed sources told the Weekly that divisions within Sabahi's camp existed over mainly generational lines. The older supporters of the 60-year-old candidate believe that insisting on competing against Al-Sisi would be a political disaster for Sabahi, while the younger members of his movement, Al-Tayar Al-Shaabi, or the Popular Current, believe that he must run in order to represent the goals of the 25 January Revolution that led to the removal of former president Hosni Mubarak after 30 years in power. The fact that Sabahi decided to go public with his criticism of Al-Sisi, shedding doubt on his record in respect to democracy and human rights, implied that he was tilting more towards the younger members of his campaign. In an interview with Reuters early this week, Sabahi insisted that he would not pull out from the race, and greeted reporters by saying “Welcome to the office of the next president of Egypt.” Sabahi, who went to jail at least 17 times for short periods under former presidents Anwar Al-Sadat and Mubarak, said that Al-Sisi was “politically responsible” for the human rights violations that took place following Morsi's removal, and warned that he was surrounding himself with supporters of the Mubarak regime. “The transitional government (after Morsi) did not show respect for democratic values and pluralism. Even the constitution that Egyptians approved (in January) has not been respected. What we are going through now does not reflect what the Egyptian people want and deserve in terms of freedoms and social justice,” Sabahi said in a rally Friday aimed at demanding the release from prison of dozens of youth activists who belong to parties that opposed the Muslim Brotherhood. Sabahi confirmed that he respected the army as a national institution, and the role Al-Sisi played in siding with the demands of the people who demonstrated against Morsi and the Brotherhood on 30 June. But he preferred that the army stay away from politics and allowed the establishment of democratic, civilian rule in Egypt. He also criticised the presidential election law that was issued last week by Interim President Adli Mansour, particularly because it stated that decisions taken by the Presidential Election Commission could not be appealed in front of any court of law. After initially saying that he would pull out if that law remained unchanged, he later said that members of his campaign insisted that he should not withdraw following a lengthy meeting held Sunday. “But if we felt that there were no fair conditions to compete in elections, we will reconsider our decision again,” Sabahi said. Despite the sharp criticism Sabahi encountered from Al-Sisi supporters in state and private media after his decision to run, the more radical youth groups that emerged after the 25 January Revolution do not trust his intentions, and claim he is running in coordination with the army to portray that Egypt is about to witness democratic elections. During the rally in support of jailed activists Friday, a group of youth interrupted Sabahi's speech and chanted slogans against him, accusing the Nasserist politician of being an “agent for the military”
