Mortada Mansour withdraws from presidential elections

Head of the Zamalek Club, Mortada Mansour, announced his withdrawal from the presidential race in a press conference on Saturday.

After seeing two officers riding a bus in Old Cairo, Mansour said he realized that they represented former Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and that he and his supporters should put their weight behind his presidential bid.

Mansour, who appeared 45 minutes late in blue-tinted aviator sunglasses, spent most of the press conference tangentially discussing many of the issues, often profanely.

His language and jokes prompted laughter from much of the audience, which included a few supporters among a gathering of local journalists. At times his supporters called out to Mansour in agreement, although there was some laughter in the audience at the audacity of his statements.

He made references to the “War on Terror,” a term frequently used by government supporters to refer to the current crackdown on Islamists, including the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group.

The former presidential candidate even alleged that an attack on a traffic policeman on Friday was carried out with Israeli involvement, and questioned the import of the Camp David Accords.

He criticized presidential hopeful Hamdeen Sabbahi’s political stances, especially his calling for the cancelation of the Protest Law and for a reduction in activist Ahmed Douma’s prison sentence. Mansour’s later comments about Sabbahi even contained homophobic slurs.

Former lawyer Mansour also said that it was illegal for the Public Notary to open so Sabbahi could hand in endorsements required for his official candidacy. 

Elected head of the Zamalek sports club for the third time in March, Mansour did not say how many endorsements he had received during his short-lived presidential campaign.