The head of Egypt's constitutional drafting committee, Amr Moussa, said that he is not willing to run in upcoming presidency elections, expressing his support for Egypt's military chief, Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, if he runs.
"Amr Moussa supports the will of the majority of having chief Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi as the president of the country, so he decided that he is not willing to run this year for president,” Yara Khalaf, a spokesperson for Moussa, told Al-Ahram Online.
Khalaf said Moussa’s team will publish updates if he changes his mind. Another spokesperson, Ahmed Kamel, added that Moussa has declared this many times in press releases that he will not run for president.
During a recent panel hosted by the Ministry of Youth, Moussa said "If Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi refuses to run [for the presidency], we will urge him to do so."
While El-Sisi had initially announced that he would not seek power, he has more recently said that the possibility is open.
A number of campaigns have sprung up to pressure the general to run for president in elections expected in the first half of 2014.
Moussa, who came fifth in Egypt's first post-revolution presidential election in June 2012, also headed of the 50-member committee tasked in August with amending the 2012 constitution drafted under the rule of ousted president Mohamed Morsi.
Moussa served as a minister of foreign affairs under Hosni Mubarak in the 1990s before assuming the role of the secretary general of the Arab League from 2002-2011.
