Overseas vote thrusts the underdog into limelight

Dakarnas: Egyptian presidential hopeful Hamdeen Sabahi rolls into the village of Dakarnas with a retinue of enthusiastic young supporters who are convinced their underdog candidate can surprise the nation.

"The president is here, the president is here!" they chant as the silver-haired Sabahi grins and waves, at times standing from his car seat to pop through the sun roof, the better to greet locals staring from balconies above.

The 57-year-old Sabahi had been regarded as something of an also-ran in Egypt's first post-revolution presidential vote. But his showing among Egyptian expatriate voters and in recent polls has helped raise his campaign's profile.

An outspoken proponent of the leftist, pan-Arabist policies of former Egyptian president Jamal Abdul Nasser, Sabahi is campaigning on a populist platform stressing his humble beginnings. "He's the son of peasants, he understands our problems," said 39-year-old Ebrahim Zanun, who was waiting outside the Dakarnas mosque where Sabahi stopped to perform afternoon prayers.

"We feel that he is the one who will give us work, rights and a dignified life."

Sabahi emerged from the mosque borne on the shoulders of his supporters, who carried him to a podium for a brief stump speech.

"Great Dakarnas, I am one of you, and I will bring you your rights," he told a crowd of several hundred, many of them students from the nearby Mansoura University.

Convoy

The speech over, the convoy moved on, weaving through small villages where local sentiment often seemed dominated by curiosity rather than obvious support.

Crowds of children and teenage boys chased after the candidate's black Skoda as it cruised slowly through impoverished alleys.

At the side of the road, a middle-aged woman carrying a child ululated as the campaign passed through, but she admitted she wasn't sure she was going to vote at all.

But once Sabahi arrived at the site of a campaign rally in Manzala, in the north of Egypt's Daqiliya governorate, the crowds were no longer simply interested bystanders.

Standing by the road waiting to welcome him was 24-year-old law student Sally Al Ezabi.

"I really feel he is one of us," she said. "I love everything about him, his personality and his platform. He talks about education, the economy, about freedom for women, the arts, freedom of thought."

Switched allegiance

Al Ezabi, like many Sabahi supporters on the campaign trail on Saturday, said she had originally thrown her support behind Mohammad Al Baradei, switching allegiance after he announced he wouldn't run.

But others said they backed Sabahi from the start, calling him a reformer who fought corruption and was unafraid to participate in demonstrations even before Egypt's 2011 revolution.

New or old, Sabahi's supporters insist he has widespread support in the impoverished rural areas across northern Egypt, where his leftist credentials and emphasis on pride and dignity resonate with many.

But his support is by no means unanimous, and as Sabahi's convoy moved out of Dakarnas, one local made his allegiance clear, holding up his two palms scrawled with the name of Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammad Morsi.