CAIRO: Egypt’s presidential frontrunner Abdel Fattah
Al Sisi sought to ease concerns yesterday that he would restrict freedoms, insisting that democratic principles and human rights were guaranteed under the new constitution.
Sisi, who is expected to easily win the May 26-27 election, said last week that democratic aspirations expressed in mass protests since 2011 were affecting national security and slowing a much-needed economic recovery. “The future of freedoms and democracy is protected by the constitution which the people agreed on,” Sisi told a gathering of intellectuals and thinkers yesterday, a statement from his campaign office said.
Egyptians adopted a new constitution in January after a previous version was suspended when Sisi ousted Islamist president Mohamed Mursi in July last year. Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood movement had boycotted a referendum on the new constitution.
Sisi said he understood the concerns of intellectuals, saying there was “no place for a religious or military state” in Egypt. “It is always a difficult equation a state faces: how to achieve sufficient security that is satisfactory enough for the people without breaching the principles of democracy and human rights and without oppressing the innocent,” the retired field marshal said.
AFP
