tv [untitled] June 4, 2012 11:30am-12:00pm EDT
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which means the people want. they usually say what they want to say, and they say this is what the people want. so in the coming four weeks, why it's important? as a matter of fact, i will start from this week. two days later -- i mean thursday -- today is tuesday. thursday the parliament will decide if they are going to extend another year of emergency law, and this is going to be another bargain between them and skaf. saturday it is expected that somehow, somehow a verdict of something will come regarding to mubarak trial. and we will see what will happen as a reaction. as a matter of fact, two days ago, it was announced that -- some news, any way. two days ago it was announced that the arab league foreign ministers are going to take a place -- a meeting on saturday. it was not possible, but it was transferred to doha instead of cairo because on saturday there
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will be the trial, the verdict of the trial of mubarak. so this is something is this week. of course from now on till the election, many things will happen. still we are figuring out how this 50 million people will vote. as a matter of fact, which is a good number, you can chew on it, 50 million people are there. those who vote are 46% of that. it is like 23 million. the first two candidates or front-runner, they got about 10 million. there was another 12 million or 13 million people which is distributed about the other three or the rest. so we have out of the 50 million -- sorry, 23 million people they vote, how many of the rest will come out to vote? as a matter of fact, one of the issues were raised yesterday, the database issue. maybe there is -- there is something people talking about fraud or not fraud.
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this is another case. because in the parliamentary elections, those who participate in the elections, according to some numbers, and even before that in the case of the referendum in march 2011, the number were -- the number was 46 million. so more -- in the last three, four months, according to some people, judges or some lawyers or some politicians, they are saying almost 4 million to 5 million people were added to the database. who are these people? how were they added? did they do anything for the votes or not? did they have preference? who did it? who is asking? who is not answering? and all these issues. in the case of egypt, which is very interesting, because why i'm asking this question is a matter of fact when karim was elaborating about the political scene, it is very interesting that we are asking all these
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questions. as a matter of fact, in the last ten -- let's say in the last ten years before january 2011, only question was asked somehow raised if gamel, mubarak's son would come or not. as a matter of fact, it was not just in egypt. it was even in this town the main question, whether it's asked in english or in arabic or russian or german. is he coming? and then people ask, if he is coming, how we will -- how we will be able to come out making any problem? as a matter of fact, even most of the issues were raised, it was not complicated or related to anything september xept this one issue. so it's a nation of 80 million people or more than that. 50 million now going to vote. what about the rest of it will
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the 80 million? nobody knows. and there was another issue about the coming days we have to figure out, which is after the election, let's say, most of the question -- i mean of the presidential election, as a matter of fact, greg put some question mark or exclamation mark or whatever mark you want to call it, about what is the president, let's say simple way, job description? i would not say the power. job description. what he wants to do. as a matter of fact, nobody knows. simply, at the beginning of the revolution, people were saying we don't want another pharaoh, but with this situation, any person came with the same power would be another pharaoh and you would not be able to say that mubarak was the last pharaoh because he's happy with it.
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so this is another issue. first, what is the power or let's say what kind of power he has. i cannot says she has just now. i don't know. so in the future, maybe. so we are having this issue. the second issue which is very important, what is going to be the supreme council of armed forces situation, starting from july 1st. it's not that far. july 1st. everybody -- they promise before to leave the power, and this is d -- the world seemed to believe them, including washington. i'm saying washington because part of our discussion will be, as greg mentioned to me, it's part of how washington and cairo, let's say, foresee or see
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the future together. so what is going to be the situation with the skaf? what kind of power? still people are arguing about issues, i mean, that it's going to be civilian? okay. if a former military person is there, a military person, we may argue about that he's not wearing the uniform now, that's another issue. i don't know how we are going to resolve it, but it's still there. so islamist. that's a big issue now because the whole issue of this, we are going to be like what? usually people in egypt asking, you see, is egypt going to be -- as you see, i am asking a lot of questions because it's a question time. i don't believe somebody have an answer to it unless has a
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crystal ball or magic, whatever, wand and all these things. so it's like -- so it's going to be -- the question is now, which is -- which is a question or a challenge, how islamists are going to control the situation if they want to control it? they want to monopolize as hakim was saying about it? probably. it's what they want to do. but how they can do it? that's the big question. there is a call about who is going to do what, who is going to form the government. people say, okay, the parliament form the government, but there are some, according to military people, there are some ministries that don't want to get rid of it. i mean, let's say departments. foreign ministry, defense, finance, and interior minister. so they want to -- the president to appoint them.
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okay. but what kind of power has to be president? president will be able to dissolve or parliament or not? still we are talking about constitution. another factor, which is we have to think about it, i mean, as long as you are talking about people from congress or people from state department or people living in this country, is this relation between u.s. and egypt, how it's going to be in the coming years. is it shaping different way? maybe. don't forget, i mean, in the last ten years that's another thing, not just mubarak, the relation between washington and middle eastern countries mostly was based on security partnership, especially when it's related to getting the terrorists, anti-terrorists and all these issues. so it was an issue of terrorists, security measures, and the stability of the region.
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nobody is always -- i know all the time when they are talking about islamists or military, they will raise the issue of who is a good friend or not friend. they will keep the treaty with israel. more or less, all of them said we are not going to talk about it or we can keep it but not argue about it. maybe they argue about the presence of egyptian forces in sinai because it's related to the stability of the region of the sinai place so they need some security measures. in all cases, there is a lot of those who worry about egypt, there are a lot of people, by the way. i mean, it's not just the people, especially when the islamists are there. we have to say that there are a lot of people. women are worried. liberals are worried about everything. and it's not a matter of exaggeration, because it's a matter of reality. why it's reality, because it's not a matter of islamic or nonislamic. it's a matter of the perception
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of power. what is the perception of the power? are you going to rule the country or control my life? this is a very important concept of people are looking for it. and if they are looking back to 18 days in tahrir square, they will remind people that it's not a matter of christian and muslim and woman and man. it's a matter of principles, human dignity, and social justice and all these things. maybe it looks like romantic now, but it was reality. and in this case, we have to believe that this is the whole idea of concept of the coming days. it's a lot of challenges, and i'm sure that when we start to discuss and you ask a question, you will realize that more things are, just i'm trying to explain. thank you. >> thank you very much, thomas. you gives us a lot of food for thought with all of your provocative questions. now i'd like to turn to mohammed and have him speak a bit.
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>> thank you, greg. thank you very much for the center for national policy. wow, you guys made my job really difficult. that's why i'm going to send just a few messages about looking at the near term, what happened about in the elections, how can we interpret what happened. first, what have we learned from the first comparative elections in history? first the forces learned the hard way if you don't unite you lose. second, public opinion is a lousy job. am i a conspiracy theorist to think this is not just a statistical failure? it's a possibility. i'm just sending some messages. however, if we look at the very low profile that shall feek has kept throughout the election period, low ratings on the polls, maybe this works in his
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favor. second thing, the revolution and the revolutionaries, who won and who lost? actually, i think it goes both ways. the revolution won from one perspective. look at some of the votes that all the revolutionary candidates, all the candidates who can be counted as part of the revolution have gone.resiti] compare this to 5.7 million. they have definitely got more. from one perspective they didn't unite. if we add mohamed mursi to them as a revolutionary candidate from one perspective we're speaking about 15 million votes. compare this to 5.5 million that shafiq has won. speaking about almost trip it will number of votes. so from one perspective the revolution won. from another perspective it lost because we only have 51% turnout. this is definitely a loss for the revolution.
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why is this the case? a number of perspectives. from one perspective prolonging the transitional period. this is really a dangerous thing in a system like egypt, which is very centralized. you can't leave the top executive office empty for such a long time. ironically, this is one of the things that mubarak was for. he said, you know, early elections and he's going to flooef six months. lots of people don't trust mubarak. myself, i don't trust him. i don't think he would have left. however, i think it's very important -- it was very important not to prolong the transition period. the other thing is the divisions among the revolution forces which caused them -- lots of people prefer security, lots of people prefer let's g back to our normal lives. the other thing is with lots of protests or gatheringins, peopl didn't understand the purpose of the gatherings. so all these mistakes, ended up with 51% turnout, however,
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still, i think at least 65% of the votes went to the revolution. the interesting situation is at the moment let's look at 2005. and i worked with greg in 2005 at the national institute. 75% of the egyptians in 2005 didn't vote for the muslim brothers. 75% of the egyptians in 2006 or late 2005 didn't vote for mubarak. now we are asking them to choose between shafiq, who is an extension of mubarak, and the mus lick brothers, who are still the muslim brothers. so that's a problem. the majority of egyptians didn't vote in 2005. the loss of votes by muslim brothers between the parliamentary elections and the presidential elections says a lot. the parliament elections, 47% of the vote. what does this tell us about the performance? this tells us actually a very interesting thing about the people that they are choosing
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for themselves, and they know how to penalize poor performances, and they have a point of view, and they don't just go after rice and oil and shu far and other things. so this is a very important point that the revolution did win, and the revolution did lose, in these elections. and i think -- again, you can call me a conspiracy theorists. we're just throwing some messages here because as tom said the situation is very unclear. i think the national democratic institute -- the national democratic party, its structures, its personnel, its networks, its family networks, they function very well. maybe the showing in the parliamentary elections was intentional. they kept an intentionally low profile. but they're still there. and this is another possibly contesting party. we usually speak about three par is that are contesting legitimacy or contesting the street or contesting revolution forces or the protesters,
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speaking about the muslim brothers. we're speaking about skaf. don't forget ndp, this is also functioning. and it shifts alliances. is it closer to skaf? that's a possibility. these are just short messages, and we can continue to think about them. so were we going from there? if we're speaking about the president, who's going to make it, who's not going to make it, what kind of alliances are going on, let's agree that the structures that are going to go into govern the ability of the coming president to act, the structures which are going to govern, you know, his road and possibles, maybe made during mubarak including the personnel and the top commands. however, it's established since 1952. the problems are that these structures are decentralized, the security establishments, very decentralized. we are speaking about the
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president who may be begging for his daily briefing, like every day. the head of intelligence was held. skaf was appointed by president mubarak. we're speaking act lots of tradition within these establishments. we're speaking about the president, who has to deal with skaf somehow, and there has to be some sort of use, otherwise it's going to be a deadlock in addition to the possible deadlock with the parliament, of course. a coming president, whoever he is, must face two kinds of challenges. and i would like to distinguish between two kinds of challenges, existing challenges and new challenges or newly created challenges to welcome the new president. so the existing challenges include the high unemployment, include the economic situation, they include definitely sinai. sinai is becoming way more. we know there are lots of weapons in there. again, without the security establishment, without the intelligence establishment, the
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job of the president can be very difficult. the other main problem is even if skaf is there, some are saying skaf is intentionally making the situation tougher for the coming president, making the situation tough for the people so that they drive them to that it revolution. if this is what skaf is doing, it's unarming because it's a situation that can get out of hand. skaf can control cairo. that's not a big deal if they release their studs. this is the case in sinai. this is t i think these are cards that skaf is there. for example, in addition to the constitution, this will definitely be a problem. in addition to going against mubarak, in addition to extending the emergency law, gas prices, gas prices are going to rise. we know that. security is definitely a
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problem. some people are happy that egypt stopped piping gas to israel. whether they're happy or not, i mean, these decisions are trade decisions. they are legal decisions. there might be court cases. there might be millions of dollars that egypt has to pay. the coming president is -- you know, these issues are waiting for the coming president, and i think they were -- again, call me a conspiracy theorist. they may have been created just for him. and then the expected price hikes generally. so the gas prices and general price hikes. this course is on the runoff. how can we speak about -- we're speaking about shafiq, we're speaking about mursi. they're going for the runoff. what kind of discourse can you read in daily newspapers and facebook and these kinds of things? i distinguished three kinds of discourses and given the the fluidity and complexity of the situation, they'll cross each
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other. so the first discourse is it will continue tesation of the revolution presented by mursi, who is part of p thebrotherhood establishment, represented by shafiq. so this discourse put the revolution forces on one side and shafiq on the other. the muslim brothers if they want this discourse to prevail they have to strike deals, they have to give guarantees to the people. and to the different forces. unfortunately i see lots of forces aiming at boycotting the elections, nullifying votes. this is going to be dangerous for the muslim brotherhood if this discourse is going to prevail. in other words, shafiq is definitely going to get a good deal of the votes which went to morsi. shafiq is going to get part that went to sabahe. if he can get the votes that
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we went, this is going to be problematic. we see lots of people on these two camps saying we're going to boycott the elections. this is serious if the islamists want this to prevail they have to give guarantees. some are unrealistic but the parties are calling for, some forces call for dissolving the muslim brotherhood. guarantees include first, agreeing on the names of the people who are going to be members of the constitutional committee, this is one thing, the other thing is a promise to establish, which is actually mostly just promise today to establish a new government which is not going to be headed by a member of the muslim brotherhood. vice presidents representing forces and liberal and moderate islamic forces, last time other guarantees which include like a written publication or a written promise or a written decree or you know, whatever you call it, by the muslim brothers saying here is what we promise. a government which is a
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coalition government, we include vice presidents, we're including constitution committee and here are the names of the people in the constitution committee. some steps have been taken in this regard. i don't know how functioning they are. and then one other important sort of request or demand by other forces to join morsi is to clearly demarcate the relationship between the muslim brothers and freedom and justice party on the other. the relationship has been almost funny. so for example, freedom and justice want to run a candidate it's made in the guidance officials of the muslim brothers. we're speaking about the candidate of a political party. these are some of the demands. the other narrative of this discourse is that this is a contest between civil society, so this is the muslim brothers and the deep state, the deep state is the state established since 1952 including basically a very strong role for the military, the security establishment and the
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intelligence establishment. another discourse, look at kind of narrow coalitions. they look at the runoff as a contesttation between mubarak establishment, by shafiq, and islamic strengths led by the muslim brothers. this discourse is not in the favor of either of the parties. shafiq doesn't want to be per seevd as mubarak's establishment, or part of the security state, morsi wants to grow his alines not only to include islamist parties but he also is in very bad need for the voices that went that others, 50% of the egyptians are centrists. 50% didn't vote. and many of those who voted are voting to the center and they penalize both ndp and the muslim
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brotherhood. this is another discourse which narrow the coalition. a third perceives this as islamist secular divide. again, both parties are now working on the fear factor. this has been the case for the first round of elections, this has been really the second round of the elections playing on the fear factor so. sha speak building a strong coalition. i'm not campaigning for any one candidate but i think shafiq's alines is stronger t glue which holds them together is stronger. why, because the alliance is elite business men, it's definitely strong part of the community and even the young christians who voted in the first round are likely to shift to shafiq in the second round unless a strong deal and strong steps and bold steps are taken by the muslim brothers to make sure the political arena is not
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polarized by islam iislamists. normal egyptians who want to return to normal life. this is a strong coalition sha speak bringing together. again the discourse of a secular state versus islamist state plays in favor of shafiq. again, he's playing on the fears of a system or a country dominated by the muslim brothers or islamist trends so interfering in personal lives and in art and culture and society, this is definitely a threat. so, it's the threat of an islamist shat which sha speak displaying plus a security factor. morsi on the other hand is playing on fears that shafiq might be reinvention of mubarak's regime. if you want to play on this factor and this is the third discourse, if you want to play on this, that you're not just islamist but you represent the revolution, civil society versus
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the deep state since 1952, what you need know to do is bold steps to build bridges and strong guarantees by the muslim brothers that we're not mon opalizing the system. since mubarak's ouster the muslim brothers didn't show that. however, losing the voices is very dangerous. losing centrist egyptians is dangerous. more abstention from voting is dangerous. we have 51% turnout. what kind after legitimacy if the turn out is 35%. so who will win. that's again, i'm not speculating, i'm not campaigning for any one. i think shafiq has a coalition with stronger glue. people are you know, like the elite business people, members of the ndp, the old regime is still there. this is stronger coalition.
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i don't want to go, i'm short on time, but like two quick points. the president and skaf, shafiq is possibly closer to skaf. this mighting a problem for morsi. shafiq will suffer from the parliament and some interviews made in cairo and here, in washington, d.c. i know that the muslim brothers are intentionally blocking some steps badly needed in the egyptian economy. refuse to give $3.2 billion loan which was badly needed to balance the budget. many are saying that the muslim brothers actually insisted that they are going to block this deal because they don't want the government to benefit from it. so maybe having morsi can help. one final thing. can we look at a deal between morsi or the muslim brothers and skaf where the muslim brother cans accept shafiq as president in return to, for example, appoint a prime minister, a few min ters, more powers.
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is this possible? again, we can hope. however, i think given the history we've been seeing by the muslim brothers i think this is a possible deal. however, i think in what we've been seeing since today's morning is the muslim brothers are interested in establishing some bridges with other forces in society. with this, stop, and thank you very much for listening. >> thank you very much, mohammad. you raised a lot of interesting questions that will affect egypt in the weeks and months ahead. now i'd like to open it up for questions from the audience. and please raise your hand and identify yourself and we'll try to get to as many questions as possible. yes. >> hi. carolyn with voice of america tv. you all mentioned how low the turnout was around 50%. even you, mohammad, said it may go as low as 35% affecting the credibility of a new president. why do you think not that many
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came out in the first place and what are your expectations for the runoff given who the candidates are? >> first of all, i mean, it's good that we reached that number. i mean, that's a big issue because for 60 years, maybe people not voting, as a matter of fact, people in their 70s or 80s, they were voting for the first time, or 50s, voting for the first time in their life. and i was surprised that even i saw a lot of people were considered involved politicians or whatever, they didn't vote for years because already it was counted without casting your vote. i mean that's another thing. it's like you say as we say it, don't worry, don't go, we'll take care of your vote. you know. this is the concept. so to see people who are voting is a big think. you are mentioning to give you number, mubarak when h
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