They sit at opposite ends of Egypt’s political spectrum and one of them was jailed by a government in which the other was chief of intelligence. Now they both want to be president.The Muslim Brotherhood’s Khairat al-Shater and Hosni Mubarak’s head spy Omar Suleiman have moved firmly into the public eye as last-minute contenders in the presidential election, redrawing the electoral map just weeks before voting.If available opinion polls can be trusted, they will have to make up ground on Amr Moussa, the former Egyptian foreign minister and Arab League chief who enjoys wide name recognition and has been on the campaign trail for a year.But both Shater and Suleiman are expected to do well in the election due to be held in May and June. One is the representative of an Islamist group that is the country’s best organised party and the other is a former military man with establishment ties who is seen by his supporters as the best bet for an end to more than a year of turmoil.Despite Suleiman’s denials, his candidacy is widely seen as being backed by the ruling army council and sets the stage for a ballot box fight between a leading symbol of Mubarak’s era and the Islamist movement banned under his rule.Both Shater and Suleiman are viewed as mysterious figures whose distance from the public eye has been a hot topic in local media since their candidacies were confirmed. Their voices are hardly known to most Egyptians.“Each of them belongs to the world of secret work,” said Nabil Abdel Fattah, a political commentator. They are “two sides of the same coin”, added Ahmed al-Sawy, a commentator writing in Shorouk newspaper.
