Coptic Lawyer Says He'll Run for President of Egypt

There was an exchange about this last night in the comments to a post from last week, but it was a link to Al-Riyadh, and non-Arabic readers won't have seen it. (Nor will those who don't read comments, or keep checking them after the original post has been up a while.) Here's the story in English. As I commented to the commenter, I expect the first Coptic President of Egypt will be even longer in coming than a female Pope in Rome, but you have to admit, he's getting press for being the first candidate to announce. (Gamal Mubarak is presumably still making up his mind, plus, his father, at 81, hasn't actually said yet he won't seek another term.)

Besides being a publicity stunt, it's also reminiscent of the proliferation of minor and fringe candidates in Egypt's first-ever direct Presidential election, in 2005. There were initially 30 candidates, and in the end 10 were allowed to run by the electoral commission. You can take a look at the list in Wikipedia, or these BBC profiles, and I'll wager even the serious students of Egypt won't recognize names or parties below the top three (Husni Mubarak, Ayman Nour, and Nu‘man Guma‘a, at the time the head of the Wafd). The Muslim Brotherhood was barred from running, and some parties boycotted. Even so, one of the 10 was disqualified before the vote. But such sterling candidates as Ahmad al-Sabahi of the Umma Party weren't disqualified; as you'll note in the BBC profile of all the final nine, linked above, he was 90 years old at the time. (So Mubarak was not the oldest candidate.) As the BBC notes, he wanted to make men wear the fez (tarbush) again. As the BBC does not note, his other claim to fame was he had written many booklets on fortune-telling, good luck charms, and the like. Given the fact that he is quoted as saying he would get 95% of the vote for President, he apparently wasn't very good at it. Mubarak, of course, squeaked by with 88% of the vote.

Ramzy, the Coptic lawyer, is in a different category: his throwing the hat in the ring is symbolic, and it has drawn some attention, whereas Sabahi was just a crank with a "party" of his close friends.