Former presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh said his campaign members are deciding between two options, "either to back Mohamed Morsy or to invalidate their votes."
He said his campaign will not, in any case, back former Mubarak-era minister Ahmed Shafiq.
Abouel Fotouh said in a statement Saturday afternoon that he will not call for boycotting the presidential election because that would facilitate voter fraud. To win over him and his supporters, Abouel Fotouh said that Morsy must reassure different political forces and help foster national unity.
"Our dispute with Morsy is political, while our dispute with Mubarak's candidate is criminal,” Aboul Fotouh said in a statement. “Bring down the remnants and do not boycott the election. We are still waiting for Morsy's response to our four demands."
Abouel Fotouh listed his four demands for Morsy in the statement.
Firstly, he asked that the constituent assembly represent the different political groups and segments of society ¸and that it include a considerate proportion of jurists and constitutional experts. He also asked that Morsy support him in electing national figure as the assembly’s head. The assembly’s decisions should also be issued only after the approval of two thirds of its members, and its composition should be confirmed before the completion of the runoff election, the statement also said.
His second demand was that Morsy announce his two vice president candidates and define their powers before the runoff elections.
Abouel Fotouh’s third demand was that a coalition cabinet be formed, lead by a national figure from outside the Freedom and Justice Party, and that its members be chosen according to efficiency and not the political affiliation in order to reflect a spirit of national consensus.
In the statement, he also said that the sovereign ministries should be headed by technocrats who do not belong to any political parties.
His final demand was that the presidential institution be made completely independent from any political parties or movements.
"The electoral vote is an individual responsibility of every citizen which he or she will be held accountable for only before God the Almighty, so it should not be subject to instructions from the outside or the inside,” the statement quoted Abouel Fotouh as saying to his campaign members on Friday. “But we must all agree that we can not under any circumstances vote for the candidate of the remnants and re-produce the old regime.”
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
