Presidential hopefuls are conducting their unofficial campaigns on the internet despite the fact that presidential campaigning is prohibited by law until candidate registration ends on 30 April.
Potential candidate Hamdeen Sabbahi's Facebook page has announced the launch of a campaign titled "One Egyptian pound from every Egyptian" to encourage his supporters to donate a minimum of LE1 to finance his campaign.
Sabbahi's page directs users to another page called "We make Egypt's president with Egyptians' money" in order to register their contact information to contribute to the campaign.
The campaign calls on university students to sign signatures for Sabbahi, adding that campaign representatives have been assigned to public and private universities to collect the proxies.
Former Muslim Brotherhood leader Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh's campaign Facebook page and website have criticized the performance of state employees responsible for processing the signatures, saying they are biased toward certain candidates.
On the Facebook page of Ahmed Shafiq, a former prime minister, he called on his supporters to participate in a campaign titled "Be effective," which urges youths to travel outside Cairo to support him.
Meanwhile, Hatem Bagato, the secretary general of the Presidential Elections Commission, told Al-Ahram newspaper that the law clearly bans all forms of election publicity — direct and indirect — in audio, visual and electronic media throughout the period of mandated electoral silence.
Farouk Sultan, the head of the commission, had earlier said at a press conference that the law stipulates campaigning must stop on the same day candidate registrations begin, and that breaking this provision constitutes a criminal violation.
Social networking sites have played a key role in Egyptian politics since the popular uprising that ousted former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak early last year.
Egypt currently has about 10 million Facebook users out of the country’s some 80 million, according to Socialbakers, a site that maintains detailed statistics on Facebook use around the world.
All significant presidential hopefuls have been active in setting up Facebook pages and Twitter accounts.
