CAIRO - A large poster with a photo of potential presidential candidate Amr Moussa on it dominates the façade of a small building in a street in the Giza neighbourhood of el-Haram. On the opposite side of the street, another large poster with a photo of another potential Islamist presidential candidate, Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, dominates the façade of another building. The phrase ‘Abu Ismail, the candidate of the people' is brazenly writ large beneath the photo of this well-dressed, bearded candidate, catching the attention of passersby and street sellers who pause to look at the poster in the midst of the hustle and bustle of their daily lives. Campaigning for Egypt's first post-Hosni Mubarak presidential elections is forging full steam ahead. Until the April 30 deadline, the candidates and their supporters will be doing their best to reach a public whose votes will count for the first time in this country's history. From street posters to rallies, seminars, cyberspace propaganda and secret negotiations with the nation's political powers, the candidates are doing everything possible to secure the 30,000 signatures of ordinary people or the backing of 30 lawmakers required for registration. And to get these signatures or this backing, some of the candidates have gone to places as far as the parched Sinai Peninsula or darkest Aswan in the deep south of Egypt. As they do their best to woo the voters, the presidential candidates, about 11 so far, are laying the foundations for a new chapter in the presidential politics of this country, where the presidency never depended in the past on the votes and opinions of ordinary people. Campaigning for the presidency in post-revolution Egypt entails real work, as Mohamed el-Akhdar, a political campaigning expert, put it in an interview with the Egyptian Mail. As they address the public nationwide, the candidates are keen to demonstrate their desire to help the poor and the afflicted. Moussa, the ex-chief of the Arab League and a former foreign minister for ten years under Mubarak, has been visiting the cemeteries and sharing meals with their residents. Perhaps this is the first time for Moussa, a career diplomat, to mix with the poor and listen to their complaints. Ahmed Shafiq, a civil aviation minister under Mubarak and his last prime minister, has been doing the same, thereby demonstrating the empowerment of the voters in a country where the president was always president for life, regardless of whether the voters liked this or not. Other presidential candidates have been talking about agricultural reform, farmers' rights and fertilisers, things that rarely troubled the mind of the former president during his three decades in office. Mohamed el-Baradie, the former chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, expressed interest in running for president, but then withdrew in protest at the election laws and the absence of a full job description for the next president. He too visited the slums and saw for himself Mubarak's legacy of poverty and marginalisation. When he entered a hovel in one of the capital's sprawling slums, el-Baradie was shocked to discover that the elderly woman who had lived there for many years didn't even have a toilet. This sudden interest in Egypt's poor and marginalised, who account for more than 40 per cent of a population of more than 83 million, fills many with hope that the next president will not be yet another pharaoh like Mubarak, leading a life of unimaginable luxury in his ivory tower. "I do not think the next president can risk his political future by neglecting the poor and the needy," said Yasser Mohamed, a taxi driver from Cairo. "Suppose the next president ignores the marginalised, these people, who make up the majority of the population, will not vote for him the next time," he added in an interview. The presidential candidates all seem to be well aware of this. "The next president will be a servant of the people, not their master," said Abdel-Moneim Abul Fotouh, an Islamist presidential candidate, in a street rally last year.
