Nour Blazes Anti-Mubarak Poll Campaign Trail

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt, 27 August 2005 — Ayman Nour, the main challenger to veteran President Hosni Mubarak in next month’s first contested election, is waging an aggressive campaign against his rival never before seen in Egyptian politics. Egypt’s 77-year-old leader is widely expected to win a fifth term on Sept. 7 but Nour is determined to spoil the party and his fire-and-brimstone speeches appear to be catching on.

“If free and fair elections are held, Mubarak won’t get more than 10 to 15 percent of the vote,” said Nour, the leader of the Ghad (tomorrow) party who claims to represent the reformist camp. “If there is massive fraud, we shall respond accordingly and people are no longer afraid to speak out and take to the streets,” he told reporters on the campaign trail in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.

On Thursday, thousands of Alexandrians — not all of them Ghad supporters — gathered outside the city’s central train station to listen to the 42-year-old lawyer heaping scorn on Mubarak. “We want freedom, we want to end 24 years of oppression, economic crisis and joblessness,” Nour thundered from behind a podium painted in orange, his party’s trademark color.

“Down with oppression, down with emergency laws, yes to freedom,” Ghad supporters chanted as bewildered pedestrians looked on. Traffic came to a halt when his motorcade drove along the seafront with Nour standing up through his black’s Mercedes sun roof, waving to the crowd.

“He surely looks better than Mubarak,” said a bystander as his friend snatched a picture. Nour toured the city flanked by his two teenage boys and his wife Gamila Ismail, a former television anchor who acts as his spokesman. “Mubarak, Numan, Ayman Nour is the one!” chanted Ghad party members in reference to the president and Numan Gumaa, who chairs the liberal Wafd party and is also in his seventies.

While many see Gumaa as a token opposition candidate and few take the other eight contenders seriously, Nour has been crisscrossing the country since the start of the campaign on Aug. 17.

He is currently on trial on what he says are trumped up charges of forgery aimed at discrediting his campaign. The next hearing is set for Sept. 25.

A thick crowd soon formed outside the square’s sitting area where Nour’s virulent anti-Mubarak speech was broadcast on giant screens. “I came straight from work, I heard Ayman Nour was in town and I want to learn more about his program. We surely need new blood,” said Amal, a 25-year-old seamstress.

“I don’t have time to read the papers and anyway they mostly cover Mubarak’s campaign. I am determined to make the right choice even if the election will probably be rigged,” she said, echoing a sentiment shared by many Egyptians.

Nour uses his rallies to blast what he says is a litany of campaign violations by Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party, from biased media coverage to the uncanny number of Egyptians above the age of 120 registered to vote.