Meanwhile, in more news from Egypt, labor lawyer Khaled Ali has announced his intention to run for president, pitting the left activist against authoritarian Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Khaled Ali was among the labor leaders who helped support nationwide strikes in Egypt in 2011 amid the uprising that toppled former military dictator Hosni Mubarak. This is Ali, speaking in a Democracy Now! interview in 2011.

Khaled Ali: “The workers have successfully launched and sustained the largest wave of labor mobilizations this county has seen, from 2004 until 2011. The workers are the ones who brought down the structures of this regime in the past years. Workers laid the ground for the emergence of this revolution, and I believe that any analysis which says otherwise is superficial.”