Cairo: Famed TV anchor Bouthina Kamel is having a second shot at Egypt’s top post, two years after a failed presidential bid. Kamel, 52, known for her anti-corruption crusade, says her fresh running in next month’s presidential elections is aimed at changing the negative perception of women in the Arab world’s most populous country.

“My goal is to bring attention to women’s potentials and their right to be included in the decision-making in Egypt,” Kamel told Gulf News. “I would like to emphasize women’s creativity. Women were the ones who invented agriculture.”

In 2012, Kamel dropped a presidential bid after failing to secure the required endorsements from eligible voters. But this time, she sounds optimistic about garnering the obligatory signatures, citing ‘strong’ support from pro-women groups to her presidential candidacy.

“I did not intend to repeat the experience, but I’ve changed my mind after coming under pressure from several pro-women groups to nominate myself again.”

Kamel said that she had been contacted by big-name personalities in Egypt assuring her of their support. Young people and feminists are moving across Egypt to gather voter signatures for her nomination.

“After two great revolutions, women must be powerful and leaders for the sake of Egypt’s future and democracy,” said Kamel, referring to the 2011 ouster of long-standing president Hosni Mubarak and the military’s removal of his predecessor Mohammad Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood last July. Kamel is a vocal critic of both regimes.

She rose to renown in the early 2000s with her midnight radio programme ‘Nightly Confessions’, which ran for six years. Later she became a newsreader on Egyptian state television, which she quit in the final years of Mubarak’s rule, saying she could not see relevance of the news to ‘realities on the ground’.

After Mubarak’s removal, she returned to state television where she was probed for criticizing the then military rulers while reading the news. She was again investigated when Mursi was in office for sarcastically starting the news saying, “Now comes the Pro-Brotherhood bulletin”.

Kamel contends that her current run for the presidency is “serious” although she admits that her chances are “not so big”. “If each male presidential candidate felt he has a strong female competitor, he would be careful to include women’s requirements in his programme. It is necessary to change the wrong belief that women are a minority. ”

Kamel’s electoral manifesto, titled ‘For the Lady of the Whole’, is mainly women-centred. “Egyptian women deserve after two revolutions, in which they took part in large numbers, to get due attention after long years of marginalization”.

She does not count out male voters. “Men will benefit when society becomes better for women, who are their wives, mothers and daughters. When women live in better conditions, the whole society will make progress.”

Engaged in political activism since she was a student at Cairo University, Kamel has also spearheaded efforts to expose official corruption and advocate human rights. She was a prominent participant in the mass protests against Mubarak and the Brotherhood.

In addition to Kamel, three others, led by the former army chief Abdul Fattah Al Sissi, have said they will contest the May 26-27 presidential polls. Kamel is so far the only female presidential contender.

Al Sissi, the architect of Mursi’s toppling, is expected to win. An electoral commission will announce the final list of eligible candidates on May 2.