LONDON: The Wafd Party’s higher commission voted on Saturday not to nominate party chairman El-Sayed El-Badawi as a candidate in Egypt’s presidential elections in March.
In a secret ballot 42 of the party’s 45-member commission voted against El-Badawi’s nomination, local media reported. The announcement followed a five-hour meeting in closed session at the party’s Cairo headquarters.
Earlier this week — and two days after the Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi submitted his candidacy papers to the National Election Authority — El-Badawi had announced plans to run for election.
At that stage already all the candidates who had previously announced their intention to run, except for the president, had withdrawn their candidacy.
Meanwhile, a leading member of an opposition campaign that had been challenging El-Sisi in the upcoming elections, was attacked outside his home on Saturday in what his lawyer described as a failed kidnap attempt.
Hisham Genena, a former anti-corruption watchdog chief, had been working to elect former military chief-of-staff Lt. Gen. Sami Anan, the last challenger seen as a potential threat to the re-election of Sissi.
Anan’s campaign came to an abrupt halt when he was arrested this week and accused of running for office without military permission.
Wafd Party votes against backing chairman against Sisi in Egypt’s presidential elections
Wafd Party votes against backing chairman against Sisi in Egypt’s presidential elections
Syria Kurds chief says ‘all efforts’ being made to salvage deal with Damascus
- Abdi said the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurds’ de facto army, remained committed to the deal
- The two sides were working toward “mutual understanding” on military integration and counter-terrorism
DAMASCUS: Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said Thursday that “all efforts” were being made to prevent the collapse of talks on an agreement with Damascus to integrate his forces into the central government.
The remarks came days after Aleppo saw deadly clashes between the two sides before their respective leaders ordered a ceasefire.
In March, Abdi signed a deal with Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa to merge the Kurds’ semi-autonomous administration into the government by year’s end, but differences have held up its implementation.
Abdi said the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurds’ de facto army, remained committed to the deal, adding in a statement that the two sides were working toward “mutual understanding” on military integration and counter-terrorism, and pledging further meetings with Damascus.
Downplaying the year-end deadline, he said the deal “did not specify a time limit for its ending or for the return to military solutions.”
He added that “all efforts are being made to prevent the collapse of this process” and that he considered failure unlikely.
Abdi also repeated the SDF’s demand for decentralization, which has been rejected by Syria’s Islamist authorities, who took power after ousting longtime ruler Bashar Assad last year.
Turkiye, an important ally of Syria’s new leaders, sees the presence of Kurdish forces on its border as a security threat.
In Damascus this week, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan stressed the importance of the Kurds’ integration, having warned the week before that patience with the SDF “is running out.”
The SDF control large swathes of the country’s oil-rich north and northeast, and with the support of a US-led international coalition, were integral to the territorial defeat of the Daesh group in Syria in 2019.
Syria last month joined the anti-IS coalition and has announced operations against the jihadist group in recent days.
