Supporters of Khairat El-Shater, the Muslim Brotherhood's official presidential candidate, launched a Facebook page to promote his campaign with moments of its announcement by the Islamist group's Shura Council on Saturday.

The campaign used the slogan “Khairat El-Shater president for Egypt 2012…the renaissance engineer.”

El-Shater was once an assistant professor of engineering at Mansoura University and is widely known as 'the engineer'.

The page had 32,000 members within hours of its launch.

The decision to name El-Shater as the Brotherhood's official candidate came as a surprise to many observers becasue it had previously declared it would not nominate a member of the group for president.

El-Shater, the group's second-in-command, will resign from the group leading committee in order to stand in presidential elections scheduled for May.