Mubarak, 76, has been in office since 1981.

CAIRO, February 26, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak asked the parliament Saturday, February 26, to amend the constitution to allow multi-candidate direct presidential elections, a key demand by the opposition.

In a televised speech, Mubarak said he had proposed to the legislature changing the constitution “to give the opportunity to political parties to enter the presidential elections and provide guarantees that allow more than one candidate to be put forward to the presidency for people to choose among them freely”, said Reuters.

The move would allow the first multi-candidate presidential elections in the heavyweight Arab country since the 1952 revolution.

Under the current system, parliament, dominated by Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), elects a sole candidate for the presidency by a two-thirds majority. The candidate is then put to a referendum.

Restricting presidential candidates to political parties would prevent groups like the banned but officially tolerated Muslim Brotherhood, one of the biggest opposition groups in Egypt which is represented in parliament, from fielding a candidate, said Reuters.

New Era

Mubarak, who assumed office after the assassination of late president Anwar Sadat in 1981, said he took the initiative “to open a new era of reform”.

Both the lower and upper houses of parliament will hold extraordinary sessions to study Mubarak's demand, an Egyptian official told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The 76-year-old president wants the constitution to be amended before May in time for the next presidential election.

Mubarak, currently serving his fourth six-year term, is widely expected to run for a fifth term although he has not announced his intentions.

“This fundamental change is the product of political stability,” he said.

At home and abroad, Mubarak has long justified his reluctance to spearhead political reform by citing fear of instability.

“Cosmetic”

“We need a package of reforms not a mere symbolic step to allay the frayed nerves,” Qandil said.

Some opposition activists welcomed the step while others described it as a mere “cosmetic change” for limiting potential presidential rivals to political parties.

Other opposition leaders were less pessimistic, hailing the move as “historic”.

“This is a historic step. For the first time since the days of the pharaohs, the Egyptian people will choose their ruler,” Mohamed Ulwan, assistant head of the opposition Al-Wafd party, told Reuters.

He stressed, however, that any citizen should be allowed to run.

Abdel Halim Qandil, the editor-in-chief of the opposition Al-Arabi newspaper and a leader in the nascent Egyptian Movement for Change, remained unsatisfied.

“We need a package of reforms not a mere symbolic step to allay the frayed nerves,” he told the Doha-based Aljazeera news channel.

“We want the release of some 20,000 political detainees, the lift of the notorious emergency laws and real amendments to some crucial articles in the constitution, which give the president broad authorities,” added the activist.

Campaigning under the slogan Kifaya (enough), Qandil’s movement has organized a series of unprecedented public protests to denounce the chance of Mubarak serving a fifth term in office.

The first one in December attracted about 50 people; the fourth, on Monday, February 21, drummed up more than 500 people outside Cairo University.

The rallies have vented widespread exasperation with Mubarak’s regime and mocked the concept of hereditary power, acting on rumors that the president's younger son, Gamal, is being groomed for power.

The angry marches grouped Marxists, Nasserites, liberals and Islamists.

US Pressures

Mubarak’s announcement comes amid US pressure on Egypt to accelerate democratic reform.

“The US campaign for reform in the Middle East, although widely derided within the region as meddling in their internal affairs, has made it easier for people to talk about their leaders' flaws,” an Egyptian analyst, who requested anonymity, told Reuters.

Earlier this month, US President George W. Bush issued a rare rebuke to Cairo, one of Washington's most important allies in the Middle East, urging the Mubarak government to quicken democratic reforms.

“The great and proud nation of Egypt, which showed the way toward peace in the Middle East, can now show the way toward democracy in the Middle East,” he said in his State of the Union address.

Tensions between the two capitals have recently flared, with Washington repeatedly criticizing the detention of Egyptian opposition leader Ayman Nour, who is held on charges of falsifying documents to register his party.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who had expressed “very strong concerns” over the issue, cancelled plans to visit Egypt next week.

A senior State Department official told Reuters that Washington just wanted to give the Egyptians additional time to work on issues of democratic reform.

“In the end, we wanted to give the Egyptians some space to get organized on all these things”.