CAIRO - A new campaign led by self-styled independent activists asking President Hosni Mubarak to stay on as Egypt's president was launched in Cairo Thursday, overlapping with a campaign supporting his son and another pushing for change. "For more stability in Egypt, we ask President Mubarak to run for Egypt's presidency for a new term," said activist Abdel Fadil Mohamed, the co-ordinator of the so-called Popular Campaign to Advocate Mubarak. The campaigners, most of whom are young people who are former members of political parties including Mubarak's National Democratic Party, are urging the President to lead "Egypt's ship for the shore of peace". "Urging Mubarak to stay on as our president is not our only aim. We also want to tell the world that Mubarak has public support apart from the ruling NDP," Mohamed said. He added that the campaign had representatives in all of Egypt's governorates, and aims to collect around 30 million signatures of Mubarak supporters. "We will set up 50 offices in the governorates of Assiut, Minya, Sohag and Alexandria. These offices will put posters up on walls and hold forums to inform people about Mubarak's achievements," Mohamed, a former member of the NDP, said. He pointed out that Magdi el-Kordy, who is leading a campaign supporting Gamal Mubarak for presidency, had been a member of Mubarak the father's campaign. "El-Kordy was supporting President Hosni Mubarak and was a member of our team. However, he has shifted his support to Mubarak the son," Mohamed said. El-Kordy, a former member of the leftist Al-Tagamu party, is waging a one-man campaign for Gamal's candidacy in next year's presidential elections. He has plastered posters of Gamal across working-class areas of Cairo, and vows to soon bring them to other provinces. “I can see him completing the process after his father. I was impressed by his visits to shantytown areas and his bias towards the class that I and most Egyptians belong to,” el-Kordy said. He also started yesterday a new website for Internet users to log in and sign a document supporting Gamal to run for presidency. Gamal Mubarak, 47, is the head of the NDP's policies committee. Despite claims that he is being prepared to take over his father's seat, party officials have sought to distance themselves from el-Kordy's coalition. “The poster campaign is an individual act. The ruling party has nothing to do with it,” Mohamed Kamal, the secretary of training and political education in the NDP, said. "President Hosni Mubarak is the only person who will have the final say on the party's next nominee." Mubarak, who has been in power for nearly 30 years, has yet to say if he will seek a new term. The two campaigns were invoked by a similar one led by the banned Muslim Brotherhood, calling for reform and change in Egypt and in support of Mohamed ElBaradei, the former chief of the UN nuclear watchdog. The Brotherhood and ElBaradei's National Coalition for Change have launched two websites for collecting signatures from those supporting ElBaradei, who returned home earlier this year. Around 700,000 ElBaradei supporters signed his change document to the moment, according to a Brotherhood source.
