Over 3M Egyptians signed ‘To Build It’ petition: Campaign founders

CAIRO – 29 October 2017: Founders of the ‘To Build It’ campaign announced Sunday that they collected 3,770,300 signatures from citizens calling on President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi to run for a second presidential term; while there are 87,000 null forms as well.

The announced signatures are only initial numbers, not the final count, according to the campaign’s spokesperson, Karim Salem. The founders announced that 200 MPs joined the campaign.

The campaign is attempting to collect as many signatures as possible to persuade the president to run for the upcoming elections in 2018, Salem added. The campaign has also launched a website for Egyptians abroad, after demands from the Egyptian Diasporas to take part in the petition.

“The numbers reflect the popularity of President Sisi,” said Mohamed Al-Garhy, one of the founders, during the conference.

Demanding that Sisi run for a second term, “Alashan Tbneeha” (To Build It), is a public campaign launched by Ahmed Al-Kahteeb. Kahteeb said in his speech that everything started with a Facebook page he created. Shortly, several people tried to contact the page founders asking about the idea and expressing their wish and will to volunteer with them.

The campaign focuses on highlighting the achievements of President Sisi through the first term of his presidency. Sisi took the office in 2014 after a period of chaos followed the removal of the Muslim Brotherhood-led government.