Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi meets with the press on the sidelines of the ongoing week-long World Youth Forum in Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh Nov. 8, 2017. (Xinhua/Meng Tao)
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, Nov. 8 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi said on Wednesday that he has not decided if he will run for a second term yet.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the World Youth Forum being held at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, Sisi said he respects the Egyptian constitution that limits the president's number of terms in office to two.
Sisi, a former army chief who ousted his Islamist predecessor Mohammed Morsi in 2013 and was elected president a year later, stressed that he is against amending the constitution to allow the president to run for a third term.
The 2018 presidential elections will be held in March or April as scheduled, he added.p Sisi's remarks came as some parliament members called for amending the constitution to change the eight-year limit of presidential terms in his favor.
Though the Egyptian president has not officially announced an intention to run for reelection, he is widely expected to do so and to earn a landslide victory due to the absence of real challengers in the presidential bid.
The constitution of Egypt requires that election proceedings shall not begin earlier than 120 days from the end of the current presidential term, which falls on June 7, 2018, and the results shall not be announced later than 30 days before that date.
Meanwhile, Sisi said he will submit the achievements done throughout the last four years, adding he will let the Egyptian people judge his government's performance, and then he will decide whether he can run for a second term.
Some lawmakers and independent figures have launched nationwide petition campaigns to urge Sisi to run again for president, saying they garnered so far some 3 million signatures to support his second presidential run.
