Aboul-Fotouh: 3 July was a military coup and we will not support Al-Sisi

Abdel Moneim Aboul-Fotouh, president of the Strong Egypt Party and a former presidential candidate, has described what happened in Egypt on 3 July as a “military coup”, stressing that: “the army intervention to oust Morsi was a clear and explicit coup and cannot be defined in political science differently. I had hoped that Morsi would leave due to popular pressure, not by the intervention of the armed forces.”

In remarks published on Wednesday, Aboul-Fotouh explained that: “the disadvantages that were expected from Morsi’s rule were far less than the disasters that have occurred over the coup’s eight months,” as “Morsi’s rule was much better than the current situation that has been caused by the 3 July coup.”

He continued: “We have had thousands of casualties, and more than 20 thousand detainees who were sentenced to prisons, and we, Strong Egypt, have 41 members of our party who have been imprisoned on charges of demonstrating against the protest law. So, how can we support the current regime?”

He denounced the army, saying that it has been busy with other matters rather than its primary roles, especially protecting the country’s borders, and that it has become involved in political life and other roles that are not necessarily part of its given responsibilities. He addressed Field Marshal Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi directly by saying that “whoever is keen on his army must refuse to drag it into the quagmire of politics.”

Aboul-Fotouh also announced that he has decided not to run for the upcoming presidential elections and that he will not support Field Marshal Al-Sisi, who he described as “someone who doesn’t have a political experience to be evaluated,” stressing that we “can not support any military candidate in the elections, be it Al-Sisi or General Sami Annan.”

He added that he holds the current interim president, Chancellor Adly Mansour, responsible for the escalation of arrests and the suppression of political activists, saying that “Mansour, who is supposed to be a judge, has been the first one to ‘run over’ the constitution, and he is responsible for these arrests through his insistence on retaining the protest law and expanding the period of custody without trial,” and all at his discretion.