Hundreds joined marches after Friday prayers heading to Tahrir Square to participate in a demonstration protesting former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq’s participation in the presidential election runoff.
Shafiq will compete against the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsy in the presidential runoff in mid-June. Protesters are calling for Shafiq to be banned from the race and for an investigation into corruption allegations against him.
Dozens of lawyers staged a march from the Lawyers Syndicate on Ramses Street to Tahrir to demand that the political isolation law be approved and applied to Shafiq to bar him from holding office. They described Shafiq’s presidential candidacy as a “political farce” and threatened an open-ended sit-in.
The protesters chanted against Shafiq and raised banners calling on the general prosecutor to investigate the corruption claims filed against him. They also called for the first round of the presidential election to be redone.
A march to the square departed from Istiqamah Mosque in Giza. They demanded Shafiq be disqualified from the runoff and chanted slogans against the ruling military council, including, “Down with the military rule,” and “Get out Musheer,” in reference to head of the council Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi.
In the Mohandiseen neighborhood of Cairo, another march began at Mostafa Mahmoud Mosque. The protesters chanted slogans demanding Shafiq be excluded from the presidential race.
Dozens of protesters staged a march following Friday prayers from Khazendar Mosque in Shobra, meeting other two marches from the Nour and Fatah Mosques heading to Tahrir Square.
A number of revolutionary movements took part in the march including The April 6 Youth Movement, Kefaya, Youth for Freedom and Change, and Revolutionaries Without Affiliation. They chanted, “Oh Field Marshal, tell the truth, you forged [the election] or not?” and “Oh judges, what is up, why wasn't Shafiq banned?”
Sheikh Gomaa Mohamed Ali said during the Friday sermon in Tahrir Square: “The electoral process as a whole was not fair and it included multiple rigging incidents.”
He described the members of the Presidential Elections Commission as “people of misdirection and false speech and sons of Mubarak.” He added that as long as this commission monitors the election, it can never be fair.
He called on the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to issue a decision disbanding the current commission, stressing that revolutionaries would not accept Shafiq as the president of Egypt. Ali called on all revolutionary youth and political movements to unite in order to “eliminate the remnants of the former regime.”
Dozens of Brotherhood and Salafi Dawah members were present in Tahrir Square campaigning for Mohamed Morsy. They took down banners that read “No to remnants, no to Brotherhood,” and “No Shafiq, no Morsy” and prevented them from being put back up.
Al-Masry Al-Youm reported that the April 6 Youth Movement's Democratic Front planned to stage a march after Friday prayers from Fatah mosque in Ramses Square to the Supreme Court then to Tahrir Square. Marchers will gather signatures of citizens in support of the political isolation law, which would ban high-ranking former regime officials from running for office until 2021.
Demonstrators had started flocking to Tahrir Square Friday morning to participate in the protest against former regime figures participating in politics, specifically against the presidential candidacy of Shafiq, Hosni Mubarak’s final prime minister. Many revolutionary groups had called for the protest.
The Muslim Brotherhood announced it would take part in the protest symbolically as the majority of its members would be busy campaigning for Morsy. The Salafi Dawah and it’s political arm the Nour Party and the liberal Wafd Party rejected the protest although they support its objectives.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
