Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) announced on Tuesday that it would seek a fifth mandate for its candidate President Hosni Mubarak, who has been in power for 23 years. Assistant Secretary-General Kamal Shazli said that the NDP would support President Mubarak for a fifth term in office because he is capable of devoting himself to the people of Egypt and Egypt still needs him.

The Egyptian parliament meets in May to elect a candidate for the presidency, whom the people will subsequently be asked to approve at a referendum in September. Mubarak, 76, has already served four terms.

In a rare sign of dissent, some 300 people demonstrated in Cairo last month against the possibility of Mubarak running for a fifth term, denouncing what they called a "hereditary presidency". One term in Egypt lasts six years, but there is no limit on how many times a person can stand. The country has been under a state of emergency since former president Anwar Al-Sadat was assassinated in 1981.

Egypt chooses its President in a two-stage process: first the parliament, dominated by the ruling party, chooses a candidate by a two-thirds majority in May and then he is put to a popular vote. A referendum will be held in September, officials said earlier this month.

The opposition has long called for constitutional reform to limit the presidential powers and to allow the President to be chosen from a list of candidates by universal suffrage. Egyptian-American sociologist and human rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim said last week that he would also stand in the presidential elections. And feminist Egyptian author Nawal Saadawi has announced that she too plans to be a candidate "to get 70 million Egyptian men and women moving, who are currently just spectators without a voice and without power".

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