Egypt Announces List Of Presidential Candidates
By Ria Novosti
Egypt’s presidential election commission has released the final list of 13 presidential candidates that will run to fill the office that has been vacant since Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in February 2011.
The commission disqualified 10 of the 23 candidates that initially registered for the May elections.
All 13 of the final candidates are men. The oldest presidential candidate is 70 years old; the youngest just turned 40.
Egypt’s first female presidential hopeful, Bothaina Kamel, was disqualified in the initial stage after failing to collect 30,000 signatures in her support.
Despite the disqualification of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood’s first choice, Khairat el-Shater, and ultraconservative Islamist Hazem Abu Ismail, three of the leading candidates represent the Egyptian strain of political Islam: Moderate Islamist candidate Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh, who defected from the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Morsi, candidate of the nation’s most powerful political group and Mubarak’s foreign minister and former Arab League chief Amr Moussa.
The first round of Egypt’s presidential election is scheduled for May 23-24. The presidential campaign starts on April 30 and finishes at midnight on May 21.
The president will be elected for a four-year term.
