Spokesmen for the 6 April reform movement have announced that the movement had distributed 15,000 leaflets listing the demands for reform called for by potential presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei.
Leaflets have reportedly been distributed in the Sayeda Zeinab and Shubra districts of Cairo, the electoral constituencies of Parliamentary Speaker Fathi Sorour and Finance Minister Youssef Boutros-Ghali, both of whom belong to the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) of President Hosni Mubarak.
In a statement on Sunday, the movement declared it had managed to collect the signatures of 25 NDP members in Sayeda Zeinab. Security services, however, confiscated all signatures obtained in Shubra, briefly detaining two 6 April members.
More signatures were reportedly obtained in different districts of Cairo and Alexandria, meanwhile, where the movement has urged members of the public to exercise their constitutional rights and demand the abolition of Egypt’s longstanding state of emergency.
In a related development, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) opposition group on Sunday said that security forces had arrested four group members in the northern province of Beheira for adding their names to ElBaradei’s petition.
The MB, which supports ElBaradei’s National Association for Change (NAC), says it has collected 341,000 signatures on its website within the last 24 days, reflecting “a positive response on the part of the public.”
NAC officials, for their part, say the association had so far collected a total of 88,000 signatures. The campaign aims at acquiring 10,000 signatures a day in order to reach a total of one million by October.
ElBaradei and the NAC are demanding the abolition of Egypt’s emergency law; electoral supervision by the judiciary and civil society; equal media coverage for all presidential candidates; allowing Egyptian expatriates to vote from abroad; and the abolition of the current restrictions on independent presidential candidacies.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
