Last Mubarak premier backs Sisi for president

CAIRO: Former Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq says he will back army chief General Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi for president, adding to speculation that the man who led the overthrow of President Muhammad Mursi could become head of state.
Shafiq, a former air force commander who came second in last year’s presidential election, said he would not run if Sisi stood in the election expected next year.
The comment suggests why, just months before the election, there are no declared candidates as politicians wait to see if Sisi is going to run before announcing their own intentions.
In separate comments, former Arab League chief Amr Moussa, who also ran in last year’s election, said Sisi would win by a landslide. Egyptians had become “angry and afraid of anarchy and terrorism” and wanted a decisive leader, he said.
Sisi has said he does not seek authority though speculation he will run has mounted since he toppled the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mursi from the presidency on July 3. He is feted on state TV, while his picture appears across Cairo. In an interview with Dream 2 television, Shafiq said he would run for president if he had broad support but he would not contest an election if Sisi did.
“May God give him good fortune. We would all support him and I am the first one to support him,” said Shafiq, who came second to Mursi in the presidential election in 2012. “If Sisi is nominated I will not run.”
Amr Moussa, who came fifth in last year’s election, told Al-Shorouk newspaper that he did not intend to run.
He said Egyptians wanted a president able to take “decisive decisions regardless of their political impact.”
A military president “immediately comes to the Egyptian mind,” he said, adding that Sisi was the most popular person in the country.
“If he runs he will win a landslide, according to the current situation and the current moment,” he said.
Hamdeen Sabahi, a leftist politician who came third in the 2012 election, has also said Sisi would win, while sidestepping questions on his own intentions.