CAIRO: Reformist Mohamed ElBaradei said Thursday that Egypt should hold presidential polls before a parliamentary vote and praised the army for responding to the people's demand that the prime minister step down. ElBaradei, who has not explicitly announced he will run for the presidency but is tipped as a likely candidate, said the army's appointment of Essam Sharaf to head the new cabinet had been recommended by youth activists as well as himself. “There is a good dialogue between people and army, which responded positively to the people's demand,” ElBaradei told Reuters, responding to Thursday's resignation of Ahmed Shafiq and replacement by Sharaf, a former transport minister. The army said in a statement that Sharaf would pick a new government after pro-democracy activists demanded a purge of Hosni Mubarak's old guard from the cabinet. There has been criticism of the army's plan to transfer power to civilian rule by holding a parliamentary vote within six months to be followed by a presidential election. Some say this is too quick for parties to organize and gives an advantage to remnants of Mubarak's National Democratic Party and the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. ElBaradei said the next stage of dialogue with the army would focus on holding a presidential vote ahead of a parliamentary election. “The next step of the dialogue with the army is the election. We need a new constitution. We definitely need presidential elections first before we go into parliamentary elections for a variety of political and technical reasons,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview. “Egypt's opposition need time to organize for a free and fair election. This cannot happen in six months,” he added, echoing a view held by some diplomats, observers and other groups that took part in the uprising against Mubarak. ElBaradei, who met with the military council for the first time this week along with the Arab League's Secretary-General Amr Moussa, who is also expected to run for president, said he had recommended Sharaf as a potential prime minister after consulting with youth groups. “Sharaf was one person on a list of recommendations I presented to the army council. There is a consensus over him as a person of integrity,” ElBaradei said. Shafiq, an air force commander, has been tipped by one military source as a potential contender for the presidency in a forthcoming election. This would ensure the armed forces would have one of their own members in Egypt's top post. “His early resignation from office potentially opens the way for him to run in presidential elections,” an official said. Shafiq was appointed by Mubarak in his final days in office before he was ousted on Feb. 11 after an 18-day popular uprising which shook the Middle East. Protests have since demanded that he step down. Asked if he would run for presidency this year, ElBaradei said: “This is a question I do not have to answer today. I need to complete what I set to do which is to shift Egypt from a dictatorship to a liberated Egypt. We will see as we go along.”
