Hamdeen Sabbahi will file a lawsuit calling for the suspension of Egypt`s presidential election because of alleged voting irregularities and a pending case over the right of former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq to stand, Sabbahi`s lawyer said Saturday.
Sabbahi is a leftist presidential candidate who did not make it into the run-offs by a very small margin.
"We will present an appeal on behalf of candidate Hamdeen Sabbahi ... to the Presidential Elections Commission, citing a series of irregularities ... that have affected the outcome of the first round," lawyer Essam El-Islamboly told Reuters.
Islamboly said the appeal, to be lodged on Sunday or Monday at the latest, will ask the commission to suspend the election until the public prosecutor checks a claim by a police officer that the Interior Ministry had illegally assigned 900,000 votes to Shafiq.
Parliament had passed a political exclusion law disqualifying Hosni Mubarak`s prime ministers from running for high office, but the elections commission declined to enforce the rule, instead sending it to the Supreme Constitutional Court.
Essam al-Erian, deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood`s Freedom and Justice Party, told reporters Friday that Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsy won the first round of the election with twenty-five percent of the vote, followed by Shafiq with twenty-four percent. The first round was held Wednesday and Thursday.
Sabbahi came third with twenty-two percent of the vote, according to figures collated by Brotherhood observers at polling stations across the country.
[This article originally appeared in Egypt Independent.]