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Fact Sheets: Egyptian Presidential Elections - Ahmed Shafik

(Updated June 2012)

Ahmed Shafik, a former fighter pilot in the Egyptian Air Force, served as Commander of the Air Force from 1996 to 2002.  From 2002 to 2011, Shafik served as Minister of Civil Aviation to President Hosni Mubarak.

On January 29, 2011, shortly after the start of the Tahrir Square Revolution, Mubarak appointed Shafik as Prime Minister, though he remained in the post for only a month, resigning in March 2011 amid protests that he was a Mubarak figurehead unable to lead the country post-revolution.

In November 2011, Shafik announced his candidacy for the presidential elections. Initially disqualified by the Corruption of Political Life Law which banned Mubarak-era prime ministers from nomination, Shafik appealed the law and was reinstated on April 25 by the Supreme Presidential Electoral Commission (SPEC).

Shafik emerged as one of the top two vote getters in the election and was included in the run-off in June 2012, where he eventually lost to Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi.

Below is a sampling of his views on certain important issues:
Changing the Government | Mubarak Sentencing | Relations with Israel

On Changing the Government in Egypt

- "The application of Sharia (Islamic law) is but a solid constitutional must. Sharia is the main source of legislation; the president will not have the option of not applying it."
(Aswat Masriya)

- "I consider myself a representative of a civil state with a collective Egyptian identity that groups all components of Egyptian culture and represents a society where everybody can work without one class monopolizing another, without exclusion."
(Aswat Masriya)

- "The political parties are still very week. Thus it is impossible to rely upon a parliamentary system. There has to be at least two periods under the presidential system through which awareness could be raised and then a referendum could be held to know whether people want to change the system. If there is a mixed system, it should be presidential-parliamentary system."
(Aswat Masriya)

- "Our concern now ... is security, to bring security back to the Egyptian citizen."
(Washington Times, February 2011)

- "We will turn all of the citizens' demands into a reality sooner than they expect."
(El Mehwar, February 2011)

On Sentencing of former President Hosni Mubarak

- "Egypt's legal system meted out justice and proved that no one in Egypt is above the law. Every president who is elected must learn a historical lesson from this ruling."
(Israel HaYom, June 2012)

On Relations with Israel

- "Some call for calling off the Camp David Accord and this is insane … It’s impossible to do that because we signed an accord the whole world witnessed."
(Aswat Masriya)