CAIRO, April 16 (UPI) -- An Egyptian commission is considering the appeals of five candidates, including front-runners, who were banned from running for president, officials said.
The Presidential Election Commission will publicly announce its decision Wednesday, al-Masry al-Youm reported.
The five candidates, among 10 barred from running, are former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, Gen. Mamdouh Qutb, Ashraf Zaki, Hassan Baruma, Ibrahim al-Gharib and Ahmed Hossan Eddin Khairat Mostafa, al-Masry al-Youm said late Sunday.
Suleiman, Muslim Brotherhood adviser Khairat al-Shater and lawyer-turned-preacher Abu Ismail were considered front-runners in the election scheduled May 23-24,The Wall Street Journal said.
The committee said it banned Suleiman because he had fallen 31 short of the 30,000 notarized statements of endorsements required to run and Abu Ismail was disqualified because his mother became an American before she died, The New York Times said.
Others among the 10 were also expected to appeal, The Journal reported.
There were 23 candidates overall.
The Muslim Brotherhood said it would continue to compete in the campaign even without al-Shater, the York Times said.
The disqualifications boosted the chances of candidates Amr Moussa, former Arab League secretary-general and foreign minister, Abdel Moneim Aboul Foutouh, a moderate Islamist scholar, and Mohamed Morsy, the backup candidate for the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party.
The election will be the first since Hosni Mubarak was ousted as president in 2011. A runoff round is scheduled June 16-17 and the country's new president will officially be named June 21, officials said.
