Egypt officially declares Sisi, Sabahy as presidential runners

Egypt's presidential election commission officially announced Friday ex-military chief Abdel- Fattah al-Sisi and leftist leader Hamdeen Sabahy as the only two candidates for the presidential elections slated for May 26 and 27, official MENA news agency reported. Sisi's popularity mounted since he led the ouster of former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi by the military last July, and he is expected to make an easy win over his leftist opponent. Sabahy, who rose as a strong and popular presidential hopeful in the 2012 elections, has been warned by the election commission for recently holding a press conference about his program before the specified time. Sisi and Sabahy are allowed to officially start their presidential campaigns from May 3 until May 23, which will be followed by a two-day electoral silence and then the polls. Despite Sisi's massive popularity, Sabahy insists he could win the country's highest post if those boycotting the elections out of despair would vote for him. Anti-Sisi voters are divided into two sections -- the youth who see that the authority is practicing random arrests and crackdown on thousands of protesters regardless of their affiliation, and Morsi's loyalists who have been labeled by the interim leadership as "terrorists." However, Sabahy cannot count on those votes because in most cases they would rather boycott the elections as they did in the previous military-sponsored constitutional referendum.