's refusal to rule himself out as a presidential candidate in 2011 has taken many by surprise, reports Gamal Essam El-Din In an interview with CNN television channel on 5 November, , the director- general of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), surprised many by refusing to rule out the possibility that he would be a candidate in Egypt's 2011 presidential elections. "One should never say never," replied El-Baradei, before adding the proviso that there would have to be "built-in guarantees" that the election be run properly before he agreed to run. "I will only consider it if there is a free and fair election and that remains a question mark in Egypt," El-Baradei told CNN. El-Baradei's name has been a fixture on lists of possible presidential candidates since the beginning of the year. Others include the Secretary- General of the Arab League Amr Moussa; winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry Ahmed Zuweil; former chairman of the Bar Association Sameh Ashour; chief of General Intelligence Omar Suleiman and the younger son of President Hosni Mubarak, Gamal. The first call for El-Baradei to run as president came from the liberal-oriented Wafd Party. Osama El-Bahrawi, Wafd's secretary-general in Tanta, the capital of Nile-Delta governorate of Gharbiya, said that "when a large number of Wafd members knew that El-Baradei would step down at the end of November as chief of IAEA, they urged that the party choose him as its candidate for the 2011 presidential elections." El-Baradei's father, Mustafa, was a member of the pre-1952 Wafd Party and chairman of the Bar Association in the 1970s. A supporter of democratic and liberal ideals, he often found himself at odds with the regimes of Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Anwar El-Sadat. El-Bahrawi said the proposed nomination of El-Baradei will be on the agenda of the Wafd's second annual conference, scheduled for 13 November. El-Baradei insists he has not been contacted by "Wafd or any other political party", adding that he has "been focussing on my IAEA job and I have yet to take a decision regarding my future." El-Baradei's answer on CNN was welcomed by a broad swathe of the opposition. The Free Constitutional and Social Party, led by Mamdouh Qenawi, an appointed member of the Shura Council, announced on Saturday that "El-Baradei is more than welcome to join the party's higher council and run as its candidate in the presidential race of 2011". Nagui El-Shehabi, chairman of the Geel (Generation) Party, argued that "the nomination of El-Baradei will lend credibility to the presidential elections of 2011", adding that "El-Baradei will be a real rival to the ruling National Democratic Party's [NDP] candidate, turning the election into a serious multi-candidate race rather than a one-man show as was the case in 2005." The protest movement Kifaya urged El-Baradei to join the presidential race. Kifaya leader George Ishaq told Al-Ahram Weekly that "El-Baradei's words to the CNN show that he has a strong wish to play a role in the future of his native country... we also have a role to encourage him and create a consensus around his candidacy so that he can defeat the NDP's nominee, win the election and usher Egypt into a new era of real political reform." The 6 April movement, a loose alliance of mostly young, cyberspace activists, has already launched a campaign in support of El-Baradei. According to the group it will extend beyond their usual web-based domain. They say they will organise public rallies and plaster the streets of Egypt's towns and cities with posters. But there are those who sound a note of caution. Osama El-Ghazali Harb, chairman of the liberal-oriented United Front Party, warns that while El-Baradei is a man whose abilities have received international recognition, "the main opposition parties are controlled by old-guard officials who will oppose the nomination of outsiders such as El-Baradei." Hussein Abdel-Razeq, a leading member of the leftist opposition party Tagammu, warns that it is "a waste of time to propose a list of potential nominees as long as elections in Egypt continue to preclude any guarantees of integrity and fairness." Essam El-Erian, a leading figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, notes that "as long as President Mubarak is on top of the NDP I cannot see any possibility of El-Baradei or others winning an election." There was no public reaction from leading NDP officials were muted. Gamal Mubarak, chairman of the NDP's powerful Policies Committee, had earlier refused to comment on any of the possible candidates whose names are being mooted. On 2 November he said the "names are just hypothetical" and that it should "be left to the constitution to regulate [the election] when the time comes". Moufid Shehab, NDP stalwart and minister of state for legal and parliamentary affairs, was recently more forthcoming. "It is not enough to be a prominent academic or someone who has commanded international recognition to be president of Egypt," he said. Independent analysts were quick to join the fray. "El-Baradei's CNN remarks will have come as an embarrassment to the NDP and the regime. Their message was clear, that elections in Egypt will remain flawed in the absence of international monitoring," said constitutional law expert and political activist Yehia El-Gammal. "What El-Baradei has done," argues Al-Ahram political analyst Amr El-Chobki, "is not just politely to reject the current constitution and call for greater guarantees for fair and free elections", but he has also alerted the international community to the flaws inherent in the amended Article 76 of the constitution which "make it almost impossible to break the NDP's monopoly on power". In an interview with the independent television channel Dream last year El-Baradei said "Egypt is in urgent need of a new constitution that embraces the ideals of good governance, respect for the rule of law, an independent judiciary and the effective separation between powers." El-Baradei, 67, has been director-general of the IAEA since 1997. He was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the IAEA in 2005.
