Khaled Ali, the youngest presidential candidate, translates in word and spirit the principles of the 25 January Revolution: bread, freedom and social justice. Yet, he is unlikely to win in the elections, writes Khaled Dawoud Khaled Ali, a human rights lawyer and labour activist, was nearly the last candidate to declare his intentions to join the first truly pluralist elections for the post of president in Egypt's history. On 27 February, one day after he turned 40, the minimum age required by law to run for the country's top post, Ali announced he was planning to run as an independent candidate on a mainly leftist platform clearly biased in favour of Egypt's mostly poor population made up of peasants and workers. Having limited financial resources, Ali opted to seek the backing of 30 members of parliament for his presidential bid, instead of collecting 30,000 proxies from 15 Egyptian governorates, or becoming the official candidate of one of dozens of newly created or older political parties, as required by the presidential elections law. Many of the MPs who supported Ali were equally young in age, and saw in him a representative of the entire generation of young Egyptians who sparked the 25 January Revolution in protest at poverty, unemployment and their exclusion from politics during the three decades of the rule of ousted former president Hosni Mubarak. Years before the 25 January Revolution, Ali had been known as a human rights activist who could be easily spotted in almost all protests and demonstrations against Mubarak until his removal in February 2011. However, Ali did not only protest against Mubarak's heavy-handed police state that tolerated dissent as long as it stayed away from taking action in the street. He was also clearly biased in favour of Egypt's poorer workers and peasants, a class to which he himself belongs. Born in 1972 in the small village of Meet Yaeesh in Daqahliya governorate, Ali does not shy away from the fact that he belonged to a poor family made up of eight children and an ordinary father and mother who worked hard to make ends meet. In fact, he is proud to refer to his background and the fact that his father, who worked as a coast guard, managed to provide a university education for six out of his eight children. Starting in high school, he worked in summer jobs to provide an income to help his family. He lifted heavy sacks of rice in a nearby factory as a daily wage labourer, worked at a small biscuits factory, and as a server at a local coffee shop. After he graduated from the Law Faculty at Zagazig University in 1994, Ali moved to Cairo and soon joined the emerging human rights movement mainly made up of former leftists who had lost their faith in communist ideology after the fall of the former Soviet Union. He was among the many young lawyers who joined the Hisham Mubarak Centre for Human Rights in 1999, working in particular on labour union issues and workers' rights. All trade unions in Egypt at the time were under the tight control of the state security, or political police attached to the Interior Ministry, as they had been since the 1952 Revolution led by the late president Gamal Abdel-Nasser. Ali fought hard to assert the right of Egypt's workers to form their own independent unions, and he won several rulings confirming that government-sponsored union elections had been rigged in 2001 and 2006. Equally importantly, Ali launched another initiative to confirm the right of Egyptians to protest peacefully, also while working at the Hisham Mubarak Centre. On 6 April 2008, when the city of Mahalla in the Delta witnessed extensive strikes to demand better wages and working conditions, Ali was at the forefront of activists who joined the protests. These led to the launch of the now well-known 6 April Movement that later played a key role in the 25 January Revolution against Mubarak. Dozens of protesters were arrested, and Ali, together with other lawyers, formed the National Front to Defend Egypt's Demonstrators. In 2009, he formed his own non-governmental organisation, the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights, and continued to fight in the courts on behalf of Egypt's workers and peasants. He won several key rulings that put on hold a number of deals to sell public-sector factories and companies to the private sector, after proving that corrupt practices and irregularities had been involved. However, his most prominent achievement was in winning a historic ruling from the Administrative Court only a few months before the uprising against Mubarak to the effect that the government would be obliged to set a minimum wage for millions of workers equal to LE1,200 or $200. At least 40 per cent of Egyptians are believed to be living under the poverty line, or on a minimum of $2 per day, according to United Nations figures. The Mubarak government ignored the ruling, as it usually did with sentences that went against its interests, and even though the first parliament after the 25 January Revolution passed a law that required setting a minimum and maximum wage for civil servants, the exact figures have not yet been determined. ALTHOUGH ALI insists that he is running as a candidate "for all Egyptians" and that he is not only representing Egypt's left, nearly all analysts have put him into that box. There are at least three other candidates seen as close to the left: Abul-Ezz El-Hariri, running on behalf of the Popular Socialist Alliance Party; former judge Hisham El-Bastawisi on behalf of the Tagammu Party; and independent Nasserist candidate, Hamdeen Sabahi. "All these candidates are respectable people who are part of the leftist movement in Egypt, and that's why I can't claim to be the candidate of the left," Ali said. While he recognises that all 12 other candidates have also said in their programmes that they will work to achieve "social justice", Ali says that he is the only one who has truly fought on behalf of that cause over the past 20 years, many times facing arrest and harassment by Mubarak's security agencies for doing so. "For me, social justice is not just a slogan. My platform is directed at Egypt's poor and middle class who make up my main constituency of possible voters. Even if I do not succeed in the elections, I hope I will raise awareness of the priority of achieving social justice in Egypt," he added. Running with the electoral slogan of "we will achieve our dream," Ali has concentrated his election platform on improving the living conditions of Egypt's majority of poor people. He has promised to continue his battle for setting a minimum wage in Egypt, saying that the maximum wage in government bodies should not be more than 15 times that much. Clearly reflecting his socialist ideology, Ali is nearly the only candidate who has mentioned the possibility of "nationalising" private companies if this serves public interests. He has also called for setting limits on ownership by foreigners of property in Egypt, empowering workers and peasants by allowing them to own shares in the companies they work in, imposing progressive taxes on high-income people, increasing local agricultural production to achieve self-sufficiency, establishing free health and education services and redistributing wealth to serve the country's poor and families on limited incomes. Ali is also a strong supporter of women's rights and of the rights of minorities. He was the only candidate to announce that, if elected, he would appoint three deputies: a Coptic Christian, a woman and a third representing Egypt's young people aged between 15 and 40, who make up more than 60 per cent of its population. On foreign policy, Ali has been a staunch opponent of Israel's occupation of Palestine, and he has taken part in nearly all popular protests calling for an end to that occupation and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. He was also among the scores of lawyers who fought in the courts under Mubarak to stop the exports of natural gas to Israel, and he is likely to seek a review of the Peace Agreement signed between Egypt and Israel in 1979 if he is elected as president. Ali is also critical of Saudi Arabia and the oil-rich Gulf states, which he charges with standing against Egypt's 25 January Revolution for fear that the wave of protests would quickly move to their own countries. "Saudi Arabia has no interest in seeing the revolution in Egypt succeed. That's why it has not offered us any help since Mubarak's removal," Ali said. "KHALED ALI says all the right things, but he has no chance of winning," comments Hassan Nafaa, a political science professor at Cairo University and a key figure in the 25 January Revolution against Mubarak. "He is sincere, a hard worker, full of energy, and he truly believes in social justice. Yet, his main problem is that he has no constituency beyond a small circle of human rights activists and some independent small labour unions." As a result of a dominant culture that prefers experience over talent and energy, Ali is unlikely to gain the confidence of many Egyptian voters, young and old alike. "Many people would tend to believe that he needs more time to become ready for the post of president," Nafaa said. Ali's critics also point out that despite his activism and presence among the youth movements that sparked the 25 January Revolution, he was unable to unite them around himself as their candidate. "The youth movements are deeply divided, and they have failed to unite in one party that supports the principles of the 25 January Revolution," Nafaa said. Other liberal analysts also criticise Ali's largely socialist economic programme, which they see as outdated and hindering of efforts to attract investment to Egypt. However, the most serious criticism that faces the youngest presidential candidate is that he does not sound serious enough in his desire to fight for the presidency. When some figures known for their support of the 25 January Revolution proposed that there should be only one candidate representing their ideas, Ali was the first to announce his backing of the initiative and that he was ready to pull out of the race. "I said this because I am a man of principles. But I was misunderstood. Right now, there is no more talk of pulling out, and the results I will achieve will be a surprise for everyone," Ali said in an interview.
