“She shouldn’t have been allowed to run!”by digby
So, Vladimir Putin declared that his main rival for re-election will not be allowed to run due to a trumped up crime from years ago. Now, his fellow autocrat Abdel Fatah al-Sisi of Egypt has done the same thing:
Egyptian authorities have arrested a retired general after denying him permission to run in presidential elections in March.
Sami Anan was the last challenger seen as a potential threat to President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, himself a former military chief, whose re-election is considered almost certain.
The arrest of Anan, a former member of Egypt’s supreme military council for armed forces (Scaf), appears to be a calculated move to push him out of the race. Earlier a declaration by the military accused him of election violations and said he would be “summoned for interrogation in front of specialised personnel”.
Mahmoud Refaat, a spokesman for Anan’s campaign abroad, said: “I hold the regime of Abdel Fatah al-Sisi entirely responsible for his wellbeing. Yesterday 30 members of campaign were also arrested as well as some of their family members. It’s not known where any of them are being held.”
Anan is the second former high-ranking official to be prevented from running against Sisi, who declared he would run for a second term late last week.
Here’s how our president views such authoritarian shennanigans:
TRUMP: So I talk about the corrupt media. I talk about the millions of people — tell you one other thing. She shouldn’t be allowed to run. It’s crooked — she’s — she’s guilty of a very, very serious crime. She should not be allowed to run.
And just in that respect, I say it’s rigged, because she should never…
WALLACE: But…
TRUMP: Chris, she should never have been allowed to run for the presidency based on what she did with e-mails and so many other things.
That was in a presidential debate in October 2016. He said that in front of the entire country. He said it dozens on times on the campaign trail. And he won. Nobody even commented on it. People cheered him lustily.
She isn’t going to run against him in 2020. And he’s still trying to have her thrown in jail just as a big piece of meat to throw to his slavering base to distract them from his own problems.
But who knows what a budding, lunatic tyrant and a newly purged Justice Department might want to do in advance of the next election?
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