'No puppet': last challenger in Egypt’s election says he's more than a veneer of democracy

On the streets of downtown Cairo, there is little evidence that anyone is running against Abdel Fatah al-Sisi in Egypt’s presidential election.

Even outside the headquarters of the Ghad party, whose leader, Mousa Mostafa Mousa, is the sole competitor against the incumbent president in next week’s vote, there are no posters of Mousa.

Inside, however, there are floor-to-ceiling posters of the architect and longtime politician. Mousa tells the Guardian he is cautiously optimistic about his chances of beating Sisi, despite entering the race after every credible candidate was removed.

“We entered with the aim of winning. How we win, it I don’t know; with what kind of votes, I don’t know,” he says. “I think I have a chance. Doesn’t mean I’m sure.”

Mousa entered what remains a one-horse race at the very last minute, after five other candidates were jailed or otherwise prevented from running. Despite this, Mousa says he felt morally compelled to prevent the election from simply being a “referendum” on Sisi’s rule, and fends off criticism that he is simply there to give a veneer of democracy to elections Sisi is all but certain to win.

“I’m no puppet. I’m a leader, in all things including my business,” he says. “Whoever wants a puppet could get one from the 104 political parties. He cannot make a puppet out of me, and everyone in this country knows that ... Puppet is an imaginary word,” he said.

The evidence, however, suggests otherwise. Sisi won the 2014 election with 97% of the vote after coming to power following a popularly-backed military coup a year earlier.

This year, candidates seeking to present a challenge to Sisi were unable to get on the ballot. The former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq was deported from the UAE and subsequently dropped out of the race, the former military chief-of-staff Sami Anan was arrested for allegedly entering the race illegally and Col Ahmed Konsowa was jailed for making a campaign video in military uniform. Both the leftist lawyer Khaled Ali and Anwar Sadat, the nephew of Egypt’s former president, pulled out of the race citing intimidation.

Mousa was an ardent public supporter of the Egyptian president until the day he announced he would run. A screenshot of his Facebook page, circulated in the Egyptian press when he declared his candidacy, shows a pro-Sisi banner.

“This is bullshit, it had nothing to do with me,” he says when asked about it. “This was a falsification. Did you see this banner in a computer or in reality? It’s a trick of Photoshop.”

The impression that Mousa does not intend to challenge Sisi’s rule on the campaign trail is buoyed by his bland policy platform, which carefully avoids anything that could be interpreted as a criticism of the president’s previous term. It includes price controls for low-income citizens, reopening formerly shuttered factories, and a programme to fight congestion on the streets of Cairo.

The 65-year-old also has a long history of government cooperation. A 2008 US government cable published by WikiLeaks describes a “violent clash” between Mousa’s Ghad party and the splinter Ghad al Thawra faction that ended with the torching of the party headquarters. Commenting on the incident, the author remarked on the strange absence of the police and that it was “unlikely that the pro-government Mousa would have marched on party headquarters without informing the Egyptian government of his intentions and obtaining at least tacit approval”.

Since announcing his candidacy, Mousa has repeatedly refused to name the 20 members of parliament who reportedly endorsed him, allowing him to enter the race. He initially reported that he received roughly 47,000 endorsements – more than the 25,000 required to enter the race – which, he tells the Guardian, came from unofficial petitions among members of his centrist, pro-government party, which has 42,000 members. His party endorsed Sisi’s presidential bid just 10 days before he announced his candidacy.

“Don’t get confused,” he says. “My party was endorsing Sisi before we decided to participate in the elections. We decided only to enter the campaign when we found everyone was thrown out.”

Mousa says he is providing a real choice for Egyptian voters when they go to the polls on 26-28 March, although he adds that should Sisi win, he will gift his programme to the president. His reluctance to criticise Sisi is being misinterpreted, he says.

“I’m not a naive a man who would enter into competition with the president and also support him, this is game playing,” says Mousa. “I would never tell people I’m supporting my competition – that would be a newcomer, not me.”

His message has at least resonated with Ghad party supporters such as Mona Safey, who sat in the waiting room of the party headquarters expressing her joy at both candidates being on the ballot.

Safey says that had Sisi been on the ballot alone, she would have happily voted for him – but she saw potential in both. “I can tell you that one of them is an army man, and the other is an economics man ... one is about power and the other one is about money,” she says.

“We are blessed, I think Egypt is blessed now – we have something good, and something else good, what more do we want?”