CAIRO: Egypt has two more possible presidential candidates after Mahmoud Abaza and Osama Ghazali Harb have said they are looking into making a run against the ruling National Democratic Party’s (NDP) candidate, like President Hosni Mubarak or his son Gamal, in 2011. The announcements come as speculation continues to run high over who might contest the election in two years.

Abaza, the head of the al-Wafd Party and Harb, who runs the still not official Democratic Front Party – the government has yet to give permission to form the party – expressed their readiness to run in the 2011 presidential elections as candidates for their respective parties, despite referring to the harsh Constitutional conditions, which stands as an obstacle to any public figure to run for Egypt’s top post.

Abaza’s announcement comes as media reports have signaled that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed el-Baradei might enter the race as al-Wafd’s candidate. He told local newspapers that the possibility is still on the table and he has not ruled out a campaign.

Harb stressed that there are no real political parties in Egypt, including the governing NDP and he described the ruling party as just “the government and local administrations under a partisan umbrella or rather a partisan umbrella for an authoritarian bloc,” adding that Egypt’s failure in all areas is “strong evidence on the death of political life in Egypt since 1952.”

Harb rejected popular writer and novelist Alaa al-Aswany’s accusations directed at the Egyptian opposition when he called them a “weak opposition” and that the opposition parties themselves are “tools directed by the ruling authority to bleach the image of the state.” Harb countered, saying in apparent agreement that “the results of the forthcoming legislative elections, for example, are settled in advance by the authoritarian bloc,” adding that this bloc discusses the distribution of seats in Parliament and “thus guarantees the results of the presidential elections.”

He called the Constitutional regulations for candidacy in the presidential election as “scandalous” in reference to the controversial Emergency Laws of the country.

He affirmed that Egypt is the only country operating with this “dysfunctional and crippling Constitution.” He continued to say that “the fact is the government distributes the seats of Parliament. I mean the al-Wafd Party would get 20 seats and Tagama’a would get 2 seats.”

Harb stressed the need to change the overall situation, politically, in order to save Egypt, calling for the “mobilization of popular forces and public opinion to change it if necessary.”

Hamdy Hassan, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood bloc in Parliament told al-Youm al-Saba’a that political parties are treated as “lambs” in the sense that “the NDP has resorted to citing them only when it needs more impressions and media hype,” stressing that the NDP in its 6th annual conference deliberately implanted the idea of “no point in regime change” in the minds of all Egyptians.

Abaza, however, noted that Egypt during the last 30 years, has changed significantly, “but its political structure has not changed, denying the party invitation to the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed el-Baradei to run for the Presidency on behalf of the party,” in an apparent reason for his possible candidacy.

**reporting by Mohamed Abdel Salam

BM

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