Prominent leftist politician and labour activist Abul-Ezz El-Hariri died Wednesday at 70 years old after a struggle with disease, his son said on his official Facebook page.

El-Hariri, a leading member in the Socialist Popular Alliance Party (SPAP), was receiving treatment in a hospital in the mediterranean city of Alexandria.

Serving as a former member of parliament, socialist and labour activist, Abul-Ezz has a long record of fighting for social justice over the course of the last 45 years.

He was born in 1944 in the Daqahlia governorate in the Nile delta, graduated from a technical industrial high school in 1962 and began work at the state-owned National Textile Company in Alexandria.

During the 1970s he returned to education and earned degrees in history and law. He then served in the army and owned a stationary shop in the Moharam Bek district of Alexandria. He was married with three children.

After former president Hosni Mubarak was toppled, El-Hariri was one of 57 founding members of the SPAP, the first leftist party to be legally recognised after Egypt's revolution in March 2011.

El-Hariri was also one of the candidates in the 2012 Presidential elections which brought ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi to power.

His funeral will be on Thursday in Al-Qaed Ibrahim mosque in Alexandria, with two wakes taking place in Alexandria and Mahalla on Friday and Saturday respectively.