CAIRO, March 16 (Aswat Masriya) Egyptian labor rights lawyer and former presidential contender Khaled Ali said in a press conference on Sunday that he will not run for presidency. 

"I will not take part in this charade," Ali said, urging the army to stay away from politics and power. 

Army chief and defense minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is expected to win by a majority if he ran for presidency, but he has yet to announce whether he intends to. 

Egypt will hold a presidential election in the first half of this year. 

"Revolutionaries, free, we will continue our journey!" Activists chanted at Sunday's conference. 

Ali came twelfth in 2012's presidential election with 134,056 votes. The Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Mursi won that year, but was ousted by the army exactly a year later in response to mass demonstrations against his rule. 

The rights activist and lawyer said on Sunday that he is against both a police and religious state, insisting that he will continue to call for social justice.