CAIRO, Egypt -- The
Egyptian military on Thursday denied a report by a Kuwaiti daily
claiming that its chief had made up his mind to run for president.
The military's spokesman
said the nation's top soldier will, if he decides to run for president,
announce his intention in an address to the "glorious people of Egypt"
-- and not through a third party.
The spokesman, Col.
Ahmed Mohammed Ali, was responding to comments attributed by the Kuwaiti
daily to Field Marshal Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi that he has decided to run
for president.
Field Marshal
Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi is widely expected to run for president, but he
has yet to announce his candidacy. Speculations are rife in the country
that he will do so in a televised address to the nation later this
month.
The spokesman insisted
that what Kuwait's al-Seyassah newspaper attributed to el-Sissi was the
daily's own "interpretation" and not "direct comments" by the military
chief. Ali's statement was posted on his official Facebook page.
El-Sissi, 59, led the
popularly backed military coup in July that ousted Egypt's Islamist
President Mohammed Morsi. El-Sissi's popularity has since soared, with
many Egyptians now viewing him as a saviour and demanding that he run
for president. Presidential elections are expected in the spring,
followed by parliamentary elections.
If el-Sissi runs, the
career infantry officer is likely to win a landslide victory, but he
will then face the unenviable task of finding remedies to a multitude of
pressing problems, from a terrorist campaign by Islamic militants in
the strategic Sinai Peninsula and tenuous security to a deepening
economic crisis and persistent street protests by Morsi's supporters.
In a separate
development, authorities on Thursday set Feb. 19 as the starting date
for the trial of ousted President Hosni Mubarak and his two sons on
charges that they had illegally seized 125 million pounds of state funds
earmarked for the maintenance of presidential palaces.
Mubarak was ousted by a
popular uprising in 2011. He was detained along with his sons -- wealthy
businessman Alaa and one-time heir apparent Gamal -- in April that
year. Mubarak and his security chief were convicted and sentenced to
life in prison in June 2012 for the killing of protesters in the 2011
uprising that led to his ouster. Their conviction was overturned and
they are now being tried again.
Alaa and Gamal Mubarak
were acquitted of corruption charges in the same trial, but the
prosecution successfully appealed the verdict and they are being retried
in the same case as their father's.
The Mubarak sons have
been in detention since April 2011. Their father was ordered released
last year, but he has since been placed under "house arrest" in a
Nile-side military hospital in a southern Cairo suburb.
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