Egypt presidential challenger alleges campaign harassment

Egypt’s only contender for the presidential election next year, Ahmed al-Tantawi, has criticised security forces harassment of his campaign workers and supporters.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is generally likely to seek for re-election. The former army leader was elected in 2014, a year after he led the military removal of elected Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

Tantawi, the first officially announced contender for the next election, resorted to social media to accuse security personnel of targeting his campaign staff and supporters.

“In recent days the pace and severity of the illegal and immoral actions undertaken by the security forces against my campaign have intensified,” Tantawi wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday.

“Recently, they arrested, detained and disappeared many of my supporters, and six of them were remanded in custody by the emergency justice system on typical charges,” he alleged.

On Tuesday, the Egyptian Front for Human Rights said emergency courts had extended the detention of a Tantawi supporter.

Detained since August 30, Amr Ali Atiya was accused of “terrorism” and spreading “false information”, as were two members of Tantawi’s campaign who have been held since September 4, EFHR said.

On Wednesday night, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights said it was withdrawing from a national dialogue, launched with great fanfare months ago, after the arrest of one of its participants, Mohammed Zahran.

Sisi won the presidency with nearly 97 per cent of the vote in 2014 and was re-elected in March 2018 by a similar margin, his only official electoral opponent an ardent political supporter.

Analysts universally expect Sisi to announce his candidacy for next year’s election, though he has not yet done so.

The 12-party Civil Democratic Movement, one of the few opposition organisations left, warned on Monday that delaying a political change in Egypt will lead it “to the brink of an explosion”.

Late last month, supporters of opposition activist Hisham Kassem said he had begun a hunger strike after the opening of his trial, which they denounced as “political”.

Kassem’s Free Current coalition, formed in June by opposition parties, advocates economic liberalisation and calls for an end to the army’s stranglehold on the Egyptian economy.