Egypt’s 2018 Elections’ Schedule Will Be Out Next Week
Egypt’s 2018 presidential elections’ schedule will be announced formally on Monday, 8th of January, in a global press conference by Egypt’s National Election Authority (NEA), according to their Chief Mahmoud El-Sherif.
The maximum budget of electoral campaigns for every candidate in the first electoral round is 20 million EGP, which is about $1.1 million. However, they are allowed to spend only 5 million EGP in the run-off round, El-Sherif added.
Although current president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has not yet formally announced to run for a second term, it is predicted to happen. It is very likely for him to win, in light of the lack of competitive candidates. Another thing that raises El-Sisi’s chances is the public campaign “Alashan Tebneeha,” which calls for El-Sisi to run for a second term. According to the campaign founder, Mohamed Al-Garhy, they have collected 12,132,460 valid signatures.
The second potential candidate is the former Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik. Although not certain if he has changed his mind, but he announced through a video that went viral that he will be running for the 2018 presidential elections.
The third candidate who officially announced his decision to run in the 2018 elections is Khaled Ali, a Former Presidential Candidate and Human Rights Lawyer. However, he has been facing some legal issues that involves “obscene hand gestures in court” according to Egypt Today, which may disqualify him but nothing is assured yet.
