Ahmed Shams: Egypt presidential vote in June

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Egypt is to start holding its first presidential elections since the country’s popular revolution in the first week of June, officials say."The election will start in the first days of June and will end in the last week of June if there is a run-off," Ahmed Shams El-Din, a member of the Egyptian Higher Presidential Elections Commission (HPEC), was quoted on Sunday by Egyptian daily, Al-Masry Al-Youm, as saying.The country’s former dictator, Hosni Mubarak, was forced to resign on February 11, 2011 after 18 days of nationwide revolution, in the course of which Egyptian security forces killed hundreds of activists.Mubarak and his accomplices are facing trial. Prosecutors have requested death penalty for Mubarak, former Interior Minister Habib al-Adli, and four police commanders, who are charged with complicity in the killings of over 800 pro-democracy protesters during the revolution.The country’s military took over following the downfall of the former regime. It has faced demands from protesters for a swifter transfer of power to a civilian government.Faruq Sultan, the head of the elections commission, said during a press conference that candidates could register for the polls between March 10 and April 8.Sultan added that the commission would postpone the decision of setting a specific date for the elections until it finalizes a mechanism for dealing with absentee votes. He, however, pledged that the vote and a possible run-off would have taken place by the end of June.Egypt completed a marathon parliamentary election process in January, in which two main Islamic parties secured over three quarters of the 498 available seats.Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest Egyptian political party, secured the biggest share of the seats, 47.18 %, while the Islamic Al-Nour Party finished second with 29 percent of the seats. /129