CAIRO: Supporters of Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi announced on Sunday that they have collected more than 12 million signatures from people urging him to run for a second four-year term, a mostly symbolic gesture as there is little doubt he will contest, and win, next year’s elections.
El-Sisi, elected in 2014, has yet to formally announce his candidacy.
He has said he will make his decision after gauging popular reaction to a “factsheet” of his achievements due to be publicized next month.
With his win in the 2018 vote an almost foregone conclusion, a large voter turnout would take on added significance, affirming El-Sisi’s candidacy as the people’s choice. His likely opponents — the list so far includes a prominent rights activist, a former prime minister and an opposition politician thrown out of parliament — are not expected to pose a serious challenge to him securing a second term.
Mohammed El-Garhy, the chief coordinator of the group that gathered the signatures, told a news conference on Sunday that “the supreme goal of our campaign is to safeguard the Egyptian state.”
He was alluding to the widespread conviction among El-Sisi’s supporters that his policies since 2013 have protected Egypt from the chaos and bloodshed seen in fellow Arab countries like Libya, Yemen or Syria.
The group has carried out a large-scale publicity campaign, with giant posters of the president looming over some of Cairo’s busiest roads.
The group is called “So You Can Build It (Egypt),” a play on the mega projects that El-Sisi has undertaken since assuming office.
These include the expansion of the Suez Canal, the construction of new cities, including a new administrative capital east of Cairo, a network of roads and low and middle-income housing projects.
The president has also introduced ambitious and politically risky economic reforms.
El-Sisi’s 3 1/2 years in office have also seen an uptick in terror attacks in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula.
On Saturday, El-Sisi repeated his vow that his military would use its “full range of violence” against the militants.
“We must, with God’s help end terrorism there (in Sinai),” he said on Saturday in a ceremony marking the end of new tunnels under the Suez Canal to link mainland Egypt to Sinai.
Last month, terrorists in Sinai killed more than 300 worshippers praying at a mosque. The president later gave the army and police a three-month deadline to “restore” security and stability in Sinai.
On Sunday, the Interior Ministry said police staged a pre-dawn raid on a Nile delta farm used by militants as a hideout, killing nine of them when they returned fire.
Separately, it said police also busted a cell of Brotherhood-linked militants in Cairo, the capital, arresting nine and seizing arms, explosives and written material linking members of the cell to a July terrorist attack in the Greater Cairo area.
12 million want El-Sisi to run for second term, say supporters
12 million want El-Sisi to run for second term, say supporters
UN rights chief Shocked by 'unbearable' Darfur atrocities
- Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur
PORT SUDAN: Nearly three years of war have put the Sudanese people through “hell,” the UN’s rights chief said on Sunday, blasting the vast sums spent on advanced weaponry at the expense of humanitarian aid and the recruitment of child soldiers.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a conflict between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that has left tens of thousands of people dead and around 11 million displaced.
Speaking in Port Sudan during his first wartime visit, UN Human Rights commissioner Volker Turk said the population had endured “horror and hell,” calling it “despicable” that funds that “should be used to alleviate the suffering of the population” are instead spent on advanced weapons, particularly drones.
More than 21 million people are facing acute food insecurity, and two-thirds of Sudan’s population is in urgent need of humanitarian aid, according to the UN.
In addition to the world’s largest hunger and displacement crisis, Sudan is also facing “the increasing militarization of society by all parties to the conflict, including through the arming of civilians and recruitment and use of children,” Turk added.
He said he had heard testimony of “unbearable” atrocities from survivors of attacks in Darfur, and warned of similar crimes unfolding in the Kordofan region — the current epicenter of the fighting.
Testimony of these atrocities must be heard by “the commanders of this conflict and those who are arming, funding and profiting from this war,” he said.
Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur.
“We must ensure that the perpetrators of these horrific violations face justice regardless of the affiliation,” Turk said on Sunday, adding that repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure could constitute “war crimes.”
He called on both sides to “cease intolerable attacks against civilian objects that are indispensable to the civilian population, including markets, health facilities, schools and shelters.”
Turk again warned on Sunday that crimes similar to those seen in El-Fasher could recur in volatile Kordofan, where the RSF has advanced, besieging and attacking several key cities.
Hundreds of thousands face starvation across the region, where more than 65,000 people have been displaced since October, according to the latest UN figures.
