CAIRO - An administrative court Thursday ordered the Notary Public of the port city of Alexandria to allow citizens to file proxies authorising former chief of the UN nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei to request an amendment to the Egyptian Constitution on their behalf. "The Notary Public should immediately implement the ruling, and allow citizens to authorise ElBaradei to ask for amending the Constitution," the court said. It added that the Notary Public, which had rejected the registration of such proxy authorisations, was committed to registering these hand-written proxies. Mr ElBaradei, a Nobel peace prize winner, has launched a campaign for political change in Egypt, promising that he will collect a million signatures to demand changes to the Constitution. Ahmed Nassar Iraqi, an activist who filed the lawsuit against the governmental agency, said he would start registering the proxies as of tomorrow. "Now, we can officially collect signatures to amend the Constitution and then register them. A broader campaign will start as of this week," Iraqi said. ElBaradei is visiting Alexandria today as part of his public campaign in the Egyptian governorates to gather support for his reform approach. "This ruling is a very welcoming note for ElBaradei," Iraqi said. "The campaign to collect signatures to amend the Constitution is slow, because Egyptians are afraid of any confrontation with the regime," ElBaradei said.
