The chairman of the Ghad Party, Moussa Mostafa Moussa, presented his candidacy documents for Egypt's presidential elections to the National Elections Authority on Monday, an hour before the deadline for candidate nominations.

Moussa had earlier told Al-Ahram Arabic news website that he has completed the requirements to register as a candidate in the March elections, including 47,000 citizens' endorsements as well as 26 endorsements from members of parliament.

Presidential hopefuls must submit at least 25,000 endorsements from citizens across 15 governorates, or 20 endorsements from members of parliament, to qualify as candidates.

Moussa also told Al-Ahram he took the medical exam required for hopeful candidates on Sunday.

The NEA will publish the list of individuals who submitted candidacy requests in the state-owned Al-Ahram and Al-Akhbar newspapers on Wednesday, while the final list of those who qualify as candidates is scheduled to be announced on 24 February.

Moussa, 66, is an engineer.

The Ghad Party does not hold any seats in the Egyptian parliament.

As of Monday morning, President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi was the only hopeful candidate to submit all required papers and endorsements to the NEA.

In the past few weeks, several well-known public figures who had been mulling a run ended their bids for various reasons.

There have been no reports of any last minute applications for candidacy other than Moussa's.

Ghad Party was initially founded in 2004 by the well-known lawyer Ayman Nour, who ran unsuccessfully in the 2006 presidential elections against former president Hosni Mubarak.

Following the 2011 uprising against Mubarak, Ghad splintered into two smaller parties after internal struggles between various wings over leadership.

In May 2011, Moussa, who had left Ghad in 2005, returned as chairman of the party after the ousting of Nour from the leadership.

Moussa stressed to Al-Ahram Arabic that he is running for president to help "lay the foundations of democracy, honest competition."

"The role of political parties is to compete to govern," he said.

Ghad had been collecting endorsements to support the candidacy of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi up until 20 January, according to its official Facebook page.

Moussa stressed: "I am not a candidate in extra-time. The party has been considering the question of fielding a candidate over the past 10 days, and has started collecting endorsements in a quiet manner."

"The party has vision and proposals which it will present to the Egyptian people in the contest of a competition based on integrity," Moussa added.

The Union of Farmers and Arabian tribes support his candidacy, the Ghad Party head said.

He added that he will campaign to explain his vision, which focuses on the need for the state to support the youth.