CAIRO: A former Egyptian lawmaker said Monday he will not run in the March presidential election, saying the political “climate” wasn’t conducive to campaigning.
Mohammed Anwar Sadat, nephew of Egypt’s late leader Anwar Sadat, told reporters his decision was partially taken to protect his campaign workers from intimidation or arrest by authorities.
“We don’t want people in the campaign to be hurt,” he said.
He said he has no intention to contest a “lost battle” and cited emergency laws in force since last April and a 2013 ban on unauthorized demonstrations as further reasons for his decision.
“My decision not to run primarily has to do with the climate in which you don’t feel there will be a genuine competition or equal opportunities,” he said.
Sadat, an outspoken critic of the government, was thrown out of parliament last year amid allegations he had leaked official documents to foreign diplomats.
He is the second presidential hopeful to pull out of the election, which is virtually certain to be won by incumbent Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, who has yet to formally announce his candidacy.
Last week, former prime minister and career air force officer Ahmed Shafiq also pulled out of the race, saying he was not the “ideal” person to lead the country at this stage. He was harshly criticized by pro-government media after declaring his intention to run.
Shafiq finished a close second behind Muhammad Mursi in the 2012 elections. The following year, El-Sisi led the military’s ouster of Mursi and was elected in 2014 after a landslide win.
Under the constitution, any would-be candidate must have formal “recommendations” from at least 20 lawmakers or 25,000 support signatures from voters, with a minimum of 1,000 each from 15 of Egypt’s 29 provinces.
Most lawmakers have already endorsed El-Sisi, who has led a heavy crackdown since 2013 that has jailed thousands of opponents, mainly Islamists but also secular activists, including many of those involved in the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
Under El-Sisi’s rule, street protests have been effectively banned, human rights groups have been placed under severe restrictions and many critics in the media have been silenced.
But the general-turned-president has also spent much of the past four years trying to revive the economy while fighting an increasingly emboldened insurgency by Islamic militants.
Sadat claimed his supporters were harassed and threatened by security agents as they processed paperwork to nominate him.
“We dream of ... an election where the winner is not known until the last moment,” he said.
Another hopeful, rights lawyer Khaled Ali, has also claimed the climate is biased in favor of El-Sisi. Ali became known when he won a court case that annulled Egypt’s transfer of two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia. The government went ahead with the transfer after the agreement was hurriedly ratified by parliament.
Ali was convicted and sentenced to three months in prison in September for allegedly making an obscene gesture while celebrating the court’s ruling last January. He is appealing the verdict, but if his conviction is upheld he will not be eligible to run.
Former Egyptian lawmaker pulls out of presidential race
Former Egyptian lawmaker pulls out of presidential race
Trump says change of power in Iran would be ‘best thing’
- Trump’s comments were his most overt call yet for the toppling of Iran’s clerical establishment
- USS Gerald R. Ford — the world’s largest warship — would be “leaving very soon” for the Middle East
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said Friday that a change of government in Iran would be the “best thing that could happen,” as he sent a second aircraft carrier to the Middle East to ratchet up military pressure on the Islamic republic.
Trump’s comments were his most overt call yet for the toppling of Iran’s clerical establishment, and came as he pushes on Washington’s arch-foe Tehran to make a deal to limit its nuclear program.
At the same time, the exiled son of the Iranian shah toppled in the 1979 Islamic revolution renewed his calls for international intervention following a bloody crackdown on protests by Tehran.
“Seems like that would be the best thing that could happen,” Trump told reporters at the Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina when a journalist asked if he wanted “regime change” in Iran.
Trump declined to say who he would want to take over in Iran from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but he added that “there are people.”
He has previously backed off full-throated calls for a change of government in Iran, warning that it could cause chaos, although he has made threats toward Khamenei in the past.
Speaking earlier at the White House, Trump said that the USS Gerald R. Ford — the world’s largest warship — would be “leaving very soon” for the Middle East to up the pressure on Iran.
“In case we don’t make a deal, we’ll need it,” Trump said.
The giant vessel is currently in the Caribbean following the US overthrow of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. Another carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, is one of 12 US ships already in the Middle East.
‘Terribly difficult’
When Iran began its crackdown on protests last month — which rights groups say killed thousands — Trump initially said that the United States was “locked and loaded” to help demonstrators.
But he has recently focused his military threats on Tehran’s nuclear program, which US forces struck last July during Israel’s unprecedented 12-day war with Iran.
The protests have subsided for now but US-based Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah, urged international intervention to support the Iranian people.
“We are asking for a humanitarian intervention to prevent more innocent lives being killed in the process,” he told the Munich Security Conference.
It followed a call by the opposition leader, who has not returned to his country since before the revolution, for Iranians at home and abroad to continue demonstrations this weekend.
Videos verified by AFP showed people in Iran this week chanting anti-government slogans as the clerical leadership celebrated the anniversary of the Islamic revolution.
Iran and the United States, who have had no diplomatic relations since shortly after the revolution, held talks on the nuclear issue last week in Oman. No dates have been set for new talks yet.
The West fears the program is aimed at making a bomb, which Tehran denies.
The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, said Friday that reaching an accord with Iran on inspections of its processing facilities was possible but “terribly difficult.”
Reformists released
Trump said after talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week that he wanted to continue talks with Iran, defying pressure from his key ally for a tougher stance.
The Israeli prime minister himself expressed skepticism at the quality of any agreement if it didn’t also cover Iran’s ballistic missiles and support for regional proxies.
According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, 7,008 people, mostly protesters, were killed in the recent crackdown, although rights groups warn the toll is likely far higher.
More than 53,000 people have also been arrested, it added.
The Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) NGO said “hundreds” of people were facing charges linked to the protests that could see them sentenced to death.
Figures working within the Iranian system have also been arrested, with three politicians detained this week from the so-called reformist wing of Iranian politics supportive of President Masoud Pezeshkian.
The three — Azar Mansouri, Javad Emam and Ebrahim Asgharzadeh — were released on bail Thursday and Friday, their lawyer Hojjat Kermani told the ISNA news agency.
