While other presidential candidates have been busy campaigning, Mohamed El-Baradei has been moving more slowly, reports Mohamed Abdel-Baky "I will not campaign for the presidency until I see Egypt on the right track," says presidential candidate Mohamed El-Baradei, explaining his apparent absence from the presidential elections race and the political landscape in Egypt in general. Over the past three months, El-Baradei has not shown up for any presidential rally or even public Iftar during Ramadan unlike most other presidential candidates. His only public appearance was last month at a meeting with a group of public figures on the occasion of Al-Azhar's release of a document relating to Egypt's coming constitution. Most of the time El-Baradei has been addressing the public through his Twitter and YouTube accounts, where almost half a million people follow him in Egypt and abroad. His twitter messages, which do not usually exceed 140 letters, focus on commenting on current events. "New electoral laws will lead to an unrepresentative parliament and the perpetuation of Mubarak's democracy; please do not abort the Egyptian revolution," El-Baradei commented via his Twitter account on Tuesday on the new parliamentary elections law that is soon to be approved by the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). Compared to other presidential candidates like former foreign minister and Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa and Islamic thinker Mohamed Selim El-Awwa, El-Baradei seems to be out of the competition at this stage, as both of them have been holding rallies in different cities across Egypt almost every week. At the moment, El-Baradei's road to the presidency faces many challenges, according to Abdel-Rahman Samir, a senior aide to the El-Baradei campaign, including from campaigns that have targeted El-Baradei's public image. Even after the fall of former president Hosni Mubarak, El-Baradei still suffers from defamation campaigns against him, most famously accusing him of being "a foreign agent", "irreligious", or a man who "conspired to help the US to invade Iraq." "Some campaigns led by former Mubarak regime officials have said that El-Baradei has spent most of his life abroad and does not understand Egypt's nature and how to govern such a complex country," Samir said. He added that some Moussa supporters had been using this argument over the last two months in order to argue that Moussa was better than El-Baradei. In January 2010, El-Baradei returned to Egypt after serving for two terms as director-general of the IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog. Thousands of Egyptians were waiting for him at the airport in order to ask him to run for president against Mubarak, but El-Baradei refused, arguing that he would not run unless there was a change in the constitution. In 2010, El-Baradei was in campaign mood as he attended rallies in many cities across Egypt prepared by his supporters, shaking hands and kissing babies and enjoying intense coverage form the Egyptian and international media. However, since his announcement that he would now be prepared to run for the presidency he has been extremely cautious about his public appearances. El-Baradei's supporters outside Cairo have faced difficulties in campaigning for him as a result. During the recent Eid holiday, for example, Eid banners carrying photographs of El-Baradei were torn down in Suez and Ismailia while banners for Moussa and other candidates were always visible. Media reports have indicated that one member of the El-Baradei team was abducted by a group of thugs in Alexandria and only released some days later. Some El-Baradei supporters have migrated to other campaigns as a result, especially to that of Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh, a former Muslim Brotherhood leader and a presidential candidate. In a recent Facebook poll sponsored by the SCAF, El-Baradei came first in intentions to vote in the presidential elections with 25 per cent of the votes, while Moussa got only seven per cent. However, experts say that such polls do not represent the majority of the Egyptian people, as only eight million use Facebook in Egypt, while over 40 per cent of the population is illiterate. Some observers believe that El-Baradei wants to distance himself from the current battles between Islamist and secular camps in order not to lose support in the presidential election. Another challenge facing El-Baradei is the loss of the support of political forces that used to support him before the 25 January Revolution. Among these is the National Association for Change (NAC), a group created by politicians and public figures last year to help El-Baradei in his demands for reform. Spokesperson for the group Hamdi Qandil recently criticised El-Baradei, saying that he had ignored the NAC. "I do not believe he could be a good president for Egypt, and I will not vote for him if he runs for president," Qandil said. Perceived absence from the public sphere has been a point of weakness in El-Baradei's campaign, and it is being used by other political forces to claim that he is an elitist and intellectual candidate. In an interview with an Egyptian private-sector TV channel, Essam El-Erian, a leader of the Muslim was not the candidate of the ordinary citizen. "Our experience with El-Baradei shows that he cannot win the hearts and minds of the people in Egypt and that he tends to distance himself from the political forces at a time that we should be united together," El-Erian said. Meanwhile, activists within the El-Baradei campaign told Al-Ahram Weekly that El-Baradei had been working on his programme over the last two months and that this would be released to the public soon. El-Baradei's main priority was to build networks of supporters in as many governorates as possible in order to launch a major campaign for the presidency after the parliamentary elections, the activists said. "He believes that all the political forces should save their energy and resources for the coming parliamentary elections and that it is not the right time to campaign for the presidency," an El-Baradei activist said. According to activists in the El-Baradei campaign, it has had some success in creating such networks of supporters in 10 governorates. The main goal of these would be to create ways of engaging ordinary citizens in the El-Baradei campaign and creating grassroots momentum. "The strategy is to work horizontally not vertically. We do not want to depend on El-Baradei's personality for everything," the activists said.
