Disqualified presidential hopeful Hazem Salah Abu Ismail called on his supporters Friday to continue their sit-in at the headquarters of the Presidential Elections Commission in Heliopolis until it reverses its decision and allows him to run in the election.
“Your presence at the commission achieves great results every hour you spend in sitting-in,” Abu Ismail said in the statement, adding that the demonstrators are not protesting against the exclusion of a presidential hopeful but rather against reproducing the collapsed regime.
Abu Ismail said that he has new documents which he will submit to the State Council’s Administrative Court as part of the suit he filed against the commission after his exclusion.
Hundreds of Abu Ismail supporters participated in Friday’s demonstration in Tahrir Square, and some of them raised Saudi flags. They chanted slogans in support of Abu Ismail and against the ruling military council.
State-run al-Ahram newspaper reported that some protesters announced that they will stage a sit-in at Tahrir square in solidarity with Abu Ismail’s supporters who are outside the elections commission.
The commission disqualified Abu Ismail on Saturday, along with ten other presidential aspirants, after receiving documents from the United States, via Egypt’s Foreign Ministry, showing that his mother became a US citizen in 2006, shortly before she died.
Abu Ismail says the documents — voter registration and passport applications — are fake and that his mother only held a green card.
Under a law issued after the fall of former President Hosni Mubarak early last year, both parents of a presidential candidate must hold only Egyptian nationality.
Other presidential hopefuls, politicians, and even Salafi leaders have criticized Abu Ismail’s supporters’ protests against his disqualification from the presidential race.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
