CAIRO: Egyptian presidential candidates and political party leaders have launched a campaign in support of prominent opposition figure and potential presidential candidate Ayman Nour. The campaign, launched yesterday, aims to gather signatures to present a request to pardon Nour to Egypt's ruling military council tomorrow. The Solidarity with Ayman Nour Front prepared a conference to launch the initiative after a court verdict last week confirmed Nour's exclusion from political life in Egypt. Nour's supporters intend to ask Egypt's ruling military council to either pardon Nour or to lessen his sentence, powers granted to the council under Article 56 of the 2011 Constitutional Declaration. “I will not ask for a pardon, but I will not refuse my friends' help,” said Nour. In 2006, Nour was found guilty of forging over 1,000 of the signatures used to create his political party, al-Ghad. Nour and his supporters maintain that the charges were trumped up to punish Nour for daring to run against then-President Hosni Mubarak. The Cairo Court of Cassation rejected Nour's request for an appeal last week. The rejection essentially upholds the guilty verdict. As forgery is considered a crime of dishonor, the Egyptian penal code prevents Nour from holding any public office until five years after the end of his original sentence. It would keep Nour from politics until 2016. The conference was attended by many prominent figures, including: Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, likely presidential candidate; Dr. Abdul Galil Mustafa, General Coordinator of the National Assembly for Change; Mahmoud Amer and Ali Abdel-Fattah, representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood; Ahmed Bahaa Din Shaaban, founder of the Socialist Party; Ramy Lakah, head of Masrena; Mohamed Bayoumi, secretary-general of Al-Karama Party and the representative of the Hamdeen Sabbahi, another likely presidential candidate. Presidential candidates Mohamed el-Baradei and Sabbahi Kamel have expressed their solidarity with Nour and support the initiative, but did not attend the conference. Abu Ismail said Nour must run for parliamentary elections in order to get his pardon. For his part, Nour said he will present Abu Ismail's suggestion to the military council. Nour also said he will begin the legal procedures with Abu Ismail to cancel the court ruling against him. Nour said his political exclusion is an offence, commenting that ousted President Hosni Mubarak and his son can still legally contest elections while Nour is prohibited from doing so.
