CAIRO: The leftist Tagammu opposition party froze the membership of the coordinator of a group promoting the nomination of Gamal Mubarak — son of incumbent President Mubarak — for the presidency in 2011, party co-founder Fathia El-Assal told Daily News Egypt on Wednesday. “We decided to freeze Magdy El-Kurdi's membership and [interrogate him] for adopting a political stance that violates the party's principles,” El-Assal, also a prominent columnist, added. “We, as a party, do not support Mubarak, the son, for president...we don't support individuals. Rather, we seek democracy,” she noted. The campaign was recently launched by a newly-formed group called “The Popular Coalition to Support Gamal Mubarak.” Wall posters that put forward President Hosni Mubarak's 47-year-old son, also head of the policies secretariat of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), as a potential candidate for the 2011 presidential poll were recently spotted on walls in some lower-income neighborhoods. Some posters carried the slogan “Gamal…Egypt” with his photo on them. On Monday, El-Kurdi told Dream TV's “Al-Ashera Masa'an” talk show that Gamal Mubarak was not behind the campaign and that the group worked independently with no ties to any political parties whatsoever. “We will launch a campaign to collect 5 million signatures…to convince Gamal Mubarak to run for president in 2011...It will be a public mandate,” El-Kurdi told the show host Mona El-Shazly. According to El-Kurdi, the coalition only includes ordinary citizens, not the elite. General coordinator for Egyptian Kefaya Movement for Change Abdel-Halim Qandil previously described the campaign “as nothing but a fiasco.” “This campaign was likely initiated by a number of hypocrites and mercenaries who seek to please Gamal or the ruling party to achieve specific goals like running in the coming PA elections,” Qandil told Daily News Egypt, ruling out the possibility that the campaign could accomplish anything significant. At time of press, a Facebook page for the campaign launched a few days ago on the social networking site, had attracted one member.
