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Sabahi gathers required recommendation forms to run for Egypt's presidency

Hamdeen Sabahi

The campaign of presidential hopeful Hamdeen Sabahi said on Thursday that it had gathered the required number of recommendation forms for him to run for Egypt's presidency, Al-Ahram's Arabic news website reported.

Hossam Moenes, coordinator of Sabahi's electoral campaign, said the team had managed to gather the 25,000 notarised recommendation forms, with at least 1,000 from 15 governorates, as per the country's election law. He did not specify, however, the exact number of forms the campaign had gathered.

The announcement means that the leftist politician Sabahi will become the second candidate to have fulfilled the requirement for the vote, slated to take place 26-27 May.

On Wednesday, the campaign for former military chief Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi announced that it had gathered far more than the required number of forms, with over 500,000 recommendations, according to his campaign's legal advisor Mohamed Abou Shuqqa.

El-Sisi, who first rose to popularity after leading the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July of last year, is widely expected the win the presidential polls by a landslide.

Sabahi's supporters have complained of harassment and bias in favour of El-Sisi while campaigning across the country.

Moenes's announcement comes a day after one of Egypt's most prominent liberal parties, the Constitution Party, said that it would support Sabahi in the elections.