Nearly 100 people have expressed interest in running against President Hosni Mubarak. This week the Presidential Election Commission will decide which ones qualify. Gamal Essam El-Din reports The deadline for submitting an application to become a presidential candidate is 8pm tonight. After that, the Presidential Election Commission (PEC) will begin examining the applications to decide who qualifies to run in the nation's first multi-candidate elections. Tomorrow, said PEC spokesman Osama Atawiya, the commission will announce a preliminary list of all the candidates who have registered since the application process began on 29 July. Afterwards, there is a strong possibility that appeals might be filed against some of the candidates. In fact, a lawyer has already filed an appeal against the nomination of Ghad Party Chairman Ayman Nour on the grounds that he is being tried on forgery charges. One of the presidential hopefuls has also appealed against President Hosni Mubarak's nomination. Candidates who have not fulfilled the nomination conditions will then be given a chance to do so within 24 hours. If they don't, their applications will automatically be rejected. They will, however, have a chance to appeal that decision within two days. The commission will then meet to examine these appeals and come up with final decisions. Only after these procedures are over -- by 13 August -- will the final list of candidates be published. At that point, Atawiya said, the commission will design the final ballot card, which will include each candidate's name next to the symbol assigned to them. Until Al-Ahram Weekly went to press, the number of those who requested applications was approaching 90. On the first day alone, nearly 15 people registered. This number rose to 36 on the second day, 43 on the third day, 62 on the fourth day, and 75 on the fifth day. When the doors close tonight, the number could climb to 100. Fifteen of the potential candidates are from political parties; the remainder are hoping to run as independents. At 8am on the first day of the nomination process, Ayman Nour was aiming to be the first to register at the commission's Heliopolis office. He had dispatched his lawyer and some of his supporters to camp out in front of the office as early as 4am. Nour had hoped that his early arrival would allow him to pick the crescent as his election campaign symbol. The commission has a list of 20 symbols; each candidate is asked to pick two symbols as first and second options. The symbols are used to help the illiterate identify their favoured candidates. National Democratic Party (NDP) candidates in parliamentary elections have traditionally been given the crescent symbols for their election campaigns. It has been commonly assumed that the crescent -- being a symbol of Islam -- would be a favoured choice for both literate and illiterate voters alike. According to Interior Ministry statistics, there are an estimated 32 million registered voters in Egypt. The adult illiteracy rate is almost 40 per cent. An estimated 92 per cent of Egypt's 72 million inhabitants, meanwhile, are Muslims. Ahmed Abu Zeid, a senior NDP MP, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the crescent is definitely a good symbol for candidates to use. However, he said, "I think that this 'crescent' strategy has become something of a relic, especially after the 2000 parliamentary elections, when a majority of NDP candidates lost seats even though all of them were campaigning under the crescent symbol." In the end, President Hosni Mubarak was given the crescent -- despite Nour's attempts to be the early bird. NDP campaign headquarters said Mohamed Dakrouri, Mubarak's lawyer, was able to reach the commission first and register on the president's behalf. Nour -- who ended up having to pick the palm tree symbol -- cried foul, insisting that he had arrived first. He described the discrepancy as the first example of the PEC's bias in favour of the incumbent. At the same time, Nour also said that PEC Chairman Mamdouh Marie assured him that the commission was planning to deal with all the candidates in a completely impartial manner. Other party nominees were involved in their own disputes. The Ahrar Party, for one, initially surprised the PEC with two nominees, party chairman Helmi Salem and member of the party's supreme committee Talaat El-Sadat. A third party leader, Mohamed Farid Zakareya, said he also intends to nominate himself. Two nominees from another party, Anwar Afifi and Ahmed Gebeili of Al-Demoqrati Al-Shaabi, also submitted applications, despite the fact that the party is frozen. Until Wednesday night, almost 70 independent candidates had registered. They include lawyers, doctors, retired police and army officers, agronomists; Egyptians living abroad, and imams. Around four women also came to apply. One of them, 30-year-old and unemployed, said she wants "to be president so that she can fight unemployment". The media has covered these potential candidates extensively, with much of that coverage seemingly emphasising that none of the hopefuls could really compete with Mubarak. Another problem was that most of these candidates were unaware of the stringent conditions stipulated by the PEC with regards to independent candidates, who must obtain the backing of 250 elected officials, including 65 MPs from the People's Assembly, 25 members of the Shura Council, and 140 officials from provincial local councils. An independent candidate also has to obtain an additional 20 backers from the two parliamentary houses or local councils. As all of these bodies are overwhelmingly dominated by the NDP, it is highly likely that most of these independent hopefuls won't actually make it to the campaign trail itself. Abu Zeid expects the first multi-candidate presidential elections in Egypt to boil down to President Mubarak vying against 14 partisan candidates. Of the latter, Ghad's Ayman Nour and Wafd's Nomaan Gomaa will pose the most serious challenges. "Regardless of the fact that Mubarak is expected to win, the presidential election this year will be a unique and exciting experience," Abu Zeid said.
