Cairo: Egypt will hold its presidential elections on May 26 and 27, a report quoted the country’s electoral commission as saying on Sunday.
The elections will be the country’s first polls since the military ousted Islamist president Mohammad Mursi, with the results expected on June 5.
In the event that no presidential hopeful receives more than 50 per cent of the votes in the first round of polling, there will be a run-off on June 16 and 17 to be held between the top two candidates, the report said, quoting the Supreme Presidential Election Commission.
Candidates have been given three weeks starting from Monday to file their nomination papers, a process which will be judicially supervised.
The commission, comprised of top judges, also said that Egyptians abroad will begin voting on May 15 for four days.
The commission’s final result is immune to legal challenge but this has been denounced by the opposition.
Widely popular former defence minister Abdul Fattah Al Sissi last week quit his post to run for the presidency. His only rival so far is leftist politician Hamdeen Sabahi, who came third in the 2012 election which brought Mursi to power.
Al Sissi is widely viewed as the lead contender in the coming polls. He has gained cult-like status in Egypt since July last year when he led Mursi’s overthrow following widespread street protests against the Islamist leader’s troubled one-year rule.
Reviled by Mursi’s Brotherhood, Al Sissi is seen by his supporters as able to re-establish security and reinvigorate economy, both which have deteriorated since a 2011 uprising forced long-standing president Hosni Mubarak out of office. However, Al Sissi’s detractors question his commitment to democracy and human rights.
Meanwhile, one student was killed on Sunday in clashes between security forces and pro-Mursi students at Al Azhar University in Cairo, a state television report said without elaborating.
Riot police stormed the campus of the university, a stronghold of Islamist students, after pro-Mursi students smashed the car of the institution’s head, university authorities said.
Al Azhar University has been the venue for violent protests, blamed by its administration on Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood since the Islamist leader’s overthrow.
Mursi’s backers vowed an escalation in protests after Al Sissi announced his presidential ambitions on Wednesday.