Former Egyptian vice president to run for president
Saturday, April 7th, 2012 2:39:12 by Taimoor Tariq
Omar Suleiman, the former intelligence chief of Egypt will run for president in the upcoming elections despite refusing earlier this week.
Suleiman will now be concentrating on getting the 30,000 signatures he needs before Sunday’s deadline.
The 74-year-old briefly served as vice president of Egypt during the uprising.
Suleiman will be up against Muslim Brotherhood candidate and millionaire businessman Khairat al-Shater, who was mobbed by crowds of supporters in Cairo as he handed in his official papers on Thursday.
With the backing of the liberal Wafd party, former prime minister and head of the Arab League Amr Moussa represents the most popular secularist choice. He could be a counterweight in the Islamist-dominated parliament.
However, it is still not clear whether Salafai Islamist Hazem Abu Ismail will run for the election or not.
On Friday, his supporters demonstrated at Cairo’s Tahrir Square where the claimed that there was an official plot to stop him from taking part in the elections.
Egyptian authorities say that Ismail’s mother is under investigation over allegations of having a US passport which would disqualify her son from May’s presidential election.
Tags: Egypt, Presidential election Egypt
Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=18294
Posted by Taimoor Tariq
on Apr 7 2012. Filed under Politics.
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The U.S. is obviously terrified that the Muslim Brotherhood has nominated its No. 2 leader, Khairat Shater, to run for president. The prospect of another Iran friendly regime in Egypt is the worst possible nightmare for Washington and Israel. Now comes Oman Suleiman, the CIA’s man in the Mubarak regime, and the former interlocutor of Egyptian and Israeli conspiracies to isolate Gaza and starve Hamas, as the official candidate to save the U.S. and Israeli interests in Egypt. It becomes apparent, therefore, whom the U.S. controlled and funded International Republican Institute (IRI) was working for! 43 of its members – including 19 Americans- one of them the son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, were arrested by the Egyptian authorities last February for suspicious illegal activities. And the fact that the IRI is funded by the U.S. Congress, which also allocate contingency funds for CIA operations, makes clear who is behind the Oman Suleiman candidacy.
Now the only thing that remains to be seen is: How many millions the CIA will spend to promote Oman Suleiman’s candidacy, and what NGO organizations will create under the pretext of promoting democracy in Egypt- to spend those millions for his campaign. Omar Suleiman, also known by the nickname “the spymaster,” is definitely the “off the shelf” CIA presidential candidate on a mission to resurrect the Mubarak regime under his authority, and to reinstate the priority of the U.S. and Israeli interests in Egypt. Nikos Retsos, retired professor