Her motto is "My agenda is Egypt," and she has a proven activist background.
According to Abdalla F. Hassan of the New York Times, Kamel is known as "the woman who is like a hundred men" for her active role in pro-democracy rallies over the years. She acted as a human shield for youth demonstrators and her presidential campaign focuses on "fighting the dual evils of poverty and corruption."
In 2005, she was a co-founder of We Are Watching You, an election monitoring group set up to observe parliamentary elections. A year later, she took a break from her job as a journalist on state television because she objected to reading stories she believed to be false. She also set up the civil organisation Egyptians Against Corruption.
Fighting corruption and poverty are the main focus of her campaign – she's running as an independent but describes herself as a social democrat. "I may be a woman," she says, "but women's rights are not my only focus. I want the rights of all Egyptians."
She has been a strong advocate for youth, and agitated to reduce the minimum age for serving in the country's legislature from 30 to 22 in an attempt to get younger voices into the Egyptian government.
"It was mainly the youth who made the ultimate sacrifices during the revolution," she said: "We did not say no, stay on the side because you are less that 30."
Kamel has also been an active participant in the movement to end the sectarian violence that has caused several violent outbursts between Muslims and Coptic Christians over the past few months.
Nan Sloane, director of the Centre for Women and Democracy says it is unlikely that Kamel will be successful. "Usually in countries where there is no history of women's participation to a significant level, those who come through to the rarefied senior roles tend to come through family connections." But, she notes, "anything is possible, particularly in a volatile situation. I would never say never."
However, pointed out that many feminists say they won't vote at all until Egypt's constitution allows for more political gender equity.
Feminist and activist Nawal El-Saddawi says she won't be voting at all in the elections. "Women are excluded from most of the posts, committees and activities. First we change the laws of political parties and then, after that, we can have the elections. We want to change the constitution to have a equality for all Egyptians regardless of gender or class or religion."
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