Constitution Party co-founder Mohamed ElBaradei will hold a press conference upon returning to Egypt Tuesday to declare his stance on the formation of a presidential council, privately owned Al-Shorouk newspaper reported.
ElBaradei is ready to join the council if he is accepted by national forces, Al-Shorouk said, quoting a source close to ElBaradei.
A Nobel laureate and former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, ElBaradei announced in January that he would not compete in the presidential election due to the lack of a democratic atmosphere.
According to the source, ElBaradei considers the presidential council proposed by revolutionary forces as “the only exit to the current crisis,” since it would run the country until the new president takes office, as well as supervise the drafting of the constitution and the runoff election.
ElBaradei’s media office said he will arrive in Cairo on Tuesday at 7 pm on board an EgyptAir flight from the Austrian capital of Vienna.
His supporters have issued calls on Twitter and Facebook to receive him at the airport. They say they consider it his ‘second arrival’ after the first one he made in February 2010.
The 16–17 June runoff between Ahmed Shafiq, Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister, and Mohamed Morsy, the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate, is expected to go ahead regardless of any political moves — the legal body overseeing the election has already thrown out complaints about the process.
Three candidates knocked out during the election’s first round said Monday that violations had rendered the outcome invalid, challenging the legitimacy of the contest less than two weeks before the runoff. In a joint statement, Hamdeen Sabbahi, who placed third; Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh, who placed fourth; and Khaled Ali, who placed seventh, listed irregularities in the first round, including an allegation that the ballots of 1.5 million voters were systematically rendered void.
