Hamdeen Sabahy publicly announced his candidacy for the Egyptian presidency to his supporters, providing a civilian opposition campaign against the popular army chief Field Marshal Abdel Fattah El Sisi. During his announcement, he claimed that his campaign for the presidency is a continuation of “the battle of the revolution.”
Sabahy is a prominent leftist politician, who came in third in the 2012 presidential election after Ahmed Shafiq, and former president Muhammad Morsi. Following the 2012 election, Sabahy formed the Popular Current movement, in an effort to unify the secular resistance to Islamist political parties like the Muslim Brotherhood. Sabahy describes himself politically as a devoted Nasserist who would promote a nationalistic foreign policy in opposition to Hosni Mubarak’s legacy, along with a renewed adherence to the doctrine of pan-Arabism.