Egyptian activists Hamdi Habib and Mohammad Imam started in April 2014 a campaign they named “You’re the President,” calling on Ahmed Shafiq, the former minister of civil aviation and the last prime minister under President Hosni Mubarak, to run in the 2014 presidential election. But when former Minister of Defense Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced his candidacy, Shafiq refused to run and the movement ended. Now, posters are again filling the streets, calling on Shafiq to run in the parliamentary elections set for this year.
Shafiq ran in the 2012 presidential elections against Mohammed Morsi. When the race ended in the latter’s victory, Shafiq submitted a statement to the state prosecutors questioning the fairness of the elections and the possibility that the results were subject to fraud. Shafiq left Egypt for the United Arab Emirates on July 29, 2012, after Morsi’s victory and following accusations by a number of Muslim Brotherhood figures of squandering public money. To this day, he has yet to return to the country.
