Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, head of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, said Monday that the army did not field any candidate in the presidential elections.
State-run MENA news service quoted Tantawi as saying that the armed forces are impartial to all candidates.
Activists and experts told Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper on Monday that former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman is the army’s candidate for the presidency.
“The SCAF will do anything to make Suleiman win,” said activist George Ishaq, while Ammar Ali Hassan, a journalist and political researcher, said the junta pushed Suleiman in response to the Muslim Brotherhood fielding Khairat al-Shater, a view that was stated before by the Financial Times.
Hassan said that if Suleiman wins, he would reproduce the former regime.
Amr Hashem Rabie, an expert at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, considered it an attempt to abort the revolution and stop tracing the corruption of the former regime.
In an interview published in the state's Al-Akhbar newspaper on Monday, Suleiman said his bid for the presidency does not have the support of Egypt's military rulers.
Suleiman, 74, announced his candidacy on Friday and showed he still wields political clout by collecting around 72,000 signatures of eligible voters in one day, more than twice the 30,000 required. The deadline for submitting signatures was Sunday.
Suleiman's military background suggested to many that he had the backing of the ruling army council that took over from Mubarak in February last year.
