Members of parliament at the House of Representatives raced on Tuesday afternoon to sign forms supporting the candidacy of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, in order to make him legible for competing for a second term.
The General Secretariat of the House of Representatives allocated a hall to collect MPs’ signatures.
Approximately 464 MPs, including Parliament Speaker, Ali Abdelaal, signed their names as supporters, while the ‘25-30’ bloc did not sign the forms. Some of the bloc’s members said that they were still considering the decision whether to sign forms or not.
Undersecretary of the House of Representatives, Mahmoud al-Sherif, was one parliamentarian who signed the nomination form for Sisi. He remarked that MPs are convinced the president has initiated a process of comprehensive reform and must complete it.
Similarly, MP Maysa Atwa said that Sisi is the best candidate for the Egyptian presidency, saying that there is strong support for the president to complete the development process.
Beyond the House of Representatives, hundreds of people headed to notary offices across different governorates on Tuesday to sign forms supporting a second presidential term for Sisi.
Meanwhile, rights lawyer and activist Khaled Ali received a single signatory of support, from Port Said, while Ahmed Shafiq received another from Minya, despite withdrawing from the presidential race.
The signatories come as the National Elections Commission (NEC) announced that several conditions must be met by presidential hopefuls, in order to be considered a legible candidate. These include the submission of their criminal record, financial disclosure, the support of 20 MPs, and the candidate’s recognition of their civil and political rights – which was set as a condition for the first time.
Despite the commission’s terms being met with criticism regarding the difficulty of achieving 20 signatories in the laid out timespan, Ramy Mohsen, the director of the National Center for Parliamentary Consultancy, responded at a press conference on Tuesday, by saying that the Constitution states, in Article 142, that any presidential candidate must be nominated by at least 20 MPs, or supported by at least 25,000 eligible voters in at least 15 governorates, with at least 1,000 supporters from each governorate.