CAIRO: Friday saw a massive demonstration in Tahrir called: “The Friday for Protecting the Revolution and Self-Determination.” Today, supporters of the ultra-conservative hard-line Salafist Abu Ismail have commenced an open ended sit in, to protest the recent ruling of the elections commission that disqualified Abu Ismail from the presidential election. The commission said his mother had once held a US passport, which disqualified him from the race.
The US State Department, according to the commission, produced the relevant documentation He was widely supported and many expected him to win. Some of his campaign promises included segregating women and men in the work place, a ban on alcohol, the enforcement of sharia law - and separate beaches for visiting foreigners, so Egyptians would not have to suffer the indignity of seeing women wearing bikinis in public. In Egypt, where conspiracy theory is the national pastime, the disqualification of Abu Ismail, and 9 other candidates, was seen as an elaborate plan by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (the custodial government in the transitional period) to control the executive office, and in a country where the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists combined, have roughly 70 percent of both houses of parliament. By any measure, there is an intense power struggle going in Egypt, since the 2011 popular uprising that toppled Mubarak. BM Salafists are occupying Tahrir – photo by Pete Willows for Bikya Masr.
