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and. if you want to. follow in welcome to crossfire computer we new tensions in violence but in doubt many of the hopes that the heart of the egyptian revolution is nobody its military establishment angling to remain in power will next week's parliamentary elections be held and if they are will be seen as fair and legitimate.

cross-talk egypt's prospects i'm joined by al maliki in cairo she is state chief editor of the daily news egypt in high thought we have david because he is a professor of middle east studies at the university of haifa and in london we cross the carl charo he's a middle east blogger all right this is cross-eyed i mean we all know my guest can jump in anytime they want but first march it is egypt's revolution progressing well events are changing fast and it's hard to say right now but in egypt has remained unrelenting for more than a week now the country's health ministry says at least forty people have been killed and almost two thousand were injured in clashes between security forces and protesters calling for the end to the military's heavy handed the riot some of the fiercest since the ouster of president hosni mubarak last february has plunged the country into the kind of turmoil that mark that early days of the arab spring unquote vision to get thousands in those in charge in egypt would be well advised

to take people's political demands and justify concerns seriously and to act fast to create the right environment for the upcoming elections. but several political parties have already suspended their electoral campaigns well protesters say the parliamentary elections scheduled for them are very twenty eight will be meaningless unless the supreme council hands over power immediately until they feel marsh. well know how many times the man currently in charge of egypt and trust the public saying the staff did not want power and that we will stick to the timeline of parliamentary elections followed by presidential elections in june twenty twelve and then the military will return to its barracks but only if the people want to and only through referendum. but the statement is little to placate the protesters who have come to terms how we and the military leadership as the continuation of what our regime their claims that the military has a record of abuse is on par with that of mubarak's have been backed by

organizations like amnesty international. but not everyone has joined the protesters the muslim brotherhood who are poised to clean the upcoming elections are taking a wait and see approach and part out of fear of the road could be moved and many in egypt believe that postponing elections could only entrenched military rule which in turn will further inflame the current instability well one thing's clear is that the status quo is untenable well let's see about that i mean if i go to you first let's start with the conspiracy theories a lot of people saying that the current violence of this week and that's going on as we speak right now is something that the military actually wanted to have happen in the first place because they dream we don't want to have these elections because they're actually afraid of the outcome i think this is the biggest mystery it seems like this would be a motive for them to postpone the elections but they were at the same time they're insisting on having the elections i mean this morning there was a press conference with members of. this cast and. the head of the

electoral commission and they were just voicing the plans. they've had in place for the november elections and it seems it will not oppose the elections so at this point it's not really clear why this situation has been made to reach this head. to me i think this is just gross mismanagement which is characteristic of this cast since they first took over ok so you're saying oh maybe the military should get out of the business of politics but it doesn't seem that way because it seems to me that no matter what election outcome if there is the election the military is a net loser because everyone talks about losing political power but actually they will be the bigger. loser in terms of the economy because as is well known the gyptian military is so heavily vested in the economy that any kind of democratic election that reflects the will of the people will say hey it's that belongs to the state not to the military it could be taken away from them yeah but what's

threatening them at the moment is not only so-called democratic elections that might or might not happen in five days what is really a threat to the military rule over easy now is that he awakening of their evolutionary sentiments among the people of egypt and that's what at stake what is at stake at the moment and many people especially in the west are scratching their heads or thinking but you have elections in five days why would you go back to this three it's well they haven't been paying any attention to what's been happening in the past eight months and what the military has been doing in terms of violations and excesses all aimed at maintaining its control and elections have they brought in let's say a victory for the muslim brotherhood would have actually strengthened the position of the military and that's why i think what's happening at the moment in the here and elsewhere in egypt this we forget is very very important in stopping that and saying very clearly it's time for the military to get out of the business of politics completely if i go to david i think it's very interesting here is that the

military me actually be carrying a page from mubarak's way of rule and being backed by the united states for so many decades is it saying to the people look it's so unstable whatever the election outcome is is that we're the guardians of security we're the guardians of peace all of this stuff going out of going on and i tell you scariest is just chaos but you need us which of course gyptian is don't believe that anymore very few arabs in the middle east believe their governments are actually protecting them actually in most cases they still oppress them so the military is trying to have it both ways matey . well i'm not quite sure about the speculation going over the military code is a conspiracy to spodes elections i have driving it i have written about it and have derived it from the so many elections before in egypt that for thirty or forty years the real three regime time and again we have had the

coast of the most a brotherhood look to participate in the elections with our provocation that they have a dialogue about iraq quite sure of this equation right now because the situation in egypt is so severe is so frightening and so unstable a is so cozying really a danger to the situation through the whole situation of the middle east so i'm not quite sure this is the situation but but let me tell you that about what we've seen this is a site we've seen from that how do you square this is really frightening because this is that this does not leave to progression to democracy to open society but simply to energy. in politics go down to the streets it doesn't mean politics but. a much a careless and when there is chaos in the street and politics are it doesn't work

it means that the government has a has not could not to rule the political reins and this is absolutely disastrous ok many if i go back to you in cairo it seems to me that you know people are using the the muslim brotherhood one way or another saying o.-l. we should have the elections because we really don't want them to have so many seats in parliament and at the same time saying that you know the country isn't ready for democracy that we have to postpone their so you know again it's kind of lecturing the people because the people are going to vote in a certain way and there are certain powers that be within egypt in iraq saying that would be the wrong vote the wrong decision. well i think we need to go back to why this crisis has emerged i don't think it had anything to do with elections this is it i think people are i think in general we're looking at there at the wrong picture where we're tying it to the elections because the elections are so i mean

they're going to happen and a couple of days but the issue is not about elections i think the explosion that started on saturday was a manifestation of the frustrations that have been building up and culminating over the past ten months there have been twelve thousand people subjected to military trials there have been reports of terrible abuses by the military police and by the police their trials of the former icons of the of the former regime have been dragging on and a way that has proved i think beyond a doubt to many people that they are not being taken seriously a lot of the police officers who were implicated in the killing of protesters during the uprising in january have been even released they're not even held in prison pending investigations or pending court cases and they've been released and they are intimidating the families of the of the martyrs so there's a whole combination of issues that culminated. on saturday when it exploded on

saturday when the police used excessive force with a handful i mean maybe not more than one hundred protesters who were families of marchers who decided to to continue is they tend to draw attention to the fact that they have not been given any compensation and have been there have not been given any consolation for their you know or did get given any medical treatment by the state since the uprising this is the real problem and the fact that elections seem to be taking place there that this happened right before the elections has just complicated the issue and the fact that it's been mishandled so badly instead that there is that there is a problem going on and what is happening now is a manifestation of all this frustration ok carol do you really. i believe the military when they say they want to get out of politics and they really want to promote the democratic process because the military just has such a comfortable position in egyptian society and they have for decades that was one of mubarak's ways to divide and rule they gave the military so many privileges of

the military just to just can't fathom not ruling egypt. absolutely not i don't buy that for one second and the military class that's remember the rulers of egypt of the moment gone just their present officers that came into power after mubarak left they are the same class the military class that has been ruling the arab republics for four or five decades and they have been oppressing and stifling the development of our societies so this is their very last stand and they need to go or they need to go for the more proceed to prevail in republics as i say and i fully agree with ronnie i had and i this is to add them a very important point that there are many people onto this three it's when they're trying to prevent the possibility of scaf as it's called the superior council for the armed forces kind of establishing its a sad itself as a supra constitutional authority ahead of the coming changes in egypt and thereby

kind of having an overall control of the political system so regardless of the outcome of the parliamentary and presidential elections it would still a lot of power but but lastly i just want to go back to what david was saying which i think are let me let you through the show we have to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on egypt's state party. in. the. world with. more and more mouths to feed but where will the food come from kid science provide the answers to the future of under the microscope. we've got the

future covered. sixty. wealthy british style. sometimes. market finiteness come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy which might structure for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our cheap.

you can. still. get the if you want to. welcome back to crossfire computer little termite you were discussing egypt's political quagmire if you. can.

ok david and i think go to you in haifa i mean we've been talking about the disturbances in the violence in the last few days and going as we look towards the elections here but you know ever since mubarak has has left the scene it's really the issue of social injustice that is not being addressed whatsoever you know we see a lot of state workers and nice pay increase the army has everything the military hasn't had anything it controls in society change whatsoever and you just have the same social issues of the dictatorship of mubarak still exist under this military hunter that runs the country and that's what's really angry people well first of all this is not a difficult victor through an. authoritarian regime egypt is a pretty state from dry country third nine hundred fifty two and this is a brutal regime and the mirror is there is this is a regime will not give up their will not give up and the power perhaps he's really

for don't know i haven't yet decided what is our character all these but. there were no give up and the masses this is most important two things the first the masses marching on the streets and the second is a power of the while in the in egyptian politics but mainly if you can say arab politics now it's a mess is marching on this treaty they really drove toward democracy you are mistaken when this is career they if they don't mean liberalism or freedom and western way when. they mean is to less is oppression of the ruler to be more completion that but not if they don't understand what democracy ease as they don't understand what a girl is an easy western way now if i if i understand what's going on in the streets of cairo where i'm at and it's going to whiz the streets or in other arab

states the if they don't if they don't go marching positively two outs are so will power. it institutions or political jaysus to achieve political goals i'm afraid what they do would really want is not a civil society but to lead a society the rain already knows that it's ok do you go out there with your promise a lot of point isn't you brought up a lot of points the younger generation you that i was going to do create a generation you brought up a lot of right for me and i'd like to go to you so what we just heard and we just heard what we just heard from david is that gyptian saying basically arabs are just not ready for democracy they can't fathom the idea of one person one vote right that's what i got from that i can i completely i completely disagree with that point of view i think egyptians understand exactly what they want i think they want democracy they want rule of law they want. quality they want social justice

and they want to feel that their human rights are being respected this is why people went out into the streets on january twenty first and i do not believe in all that egyptians want a religious rule or islamic rule this is not what the what egyptians of all political currents are talking about except for a fringe group of maybe silas's who are giving that discourse without really knowing what it means in general this is absolutely not true i think people in egypt know what they want exactly and had are still continue continuing to fight for it ok i do carl in looking at western media mainstream media covering these events here i can't help but feel that they say see when they're not ready yet they're not ready for they're just as many going to call to let me go to tahrir also going to go to cairo and london first or i still get this and it's impression that you know that you know look at all these disturbances maybe they should coffee elections because you know we won't have a i reluctantly news division although i may have going to morrow say carl did you

hear my question karl. yes yes i heard your question and i think there's a lot of anxiety in this that's reflected by what david is saying as well and i must congratulate him because he's doing his very best to kind of impersonate the character to an article zionist and he's carrying it off very very and very successfully i mean why his saying is utterly despicable about his perception of people which he threw it off as a comment like that as muslims they are not muslims there are muslims and christians in that area and they're fighting for a better future the fact that he and others in israel and maybe in the west would portray it as some kind of decline and going back to the middle ages only to frets this sense of anxiety about what they're calling them but this is a very constructive sense of an arche if we don't like this diet form of politics in these we're writing off hundreds of years of kind of the history of western democracy look at the french revolution look at the crowd movements look at all

this movement that about direct democracy and going to the streets to get it to get your rights we can't have a situation of parliamentary election and pretending to bring about democracy in this way when there's a coercive controlled by by the military so please spare us the stereotypes and let's look at very oddity of the situation on the ground which is about the real aspirations for change and i'm not going to accept any sort of dismissive denial of the great david you would like to reply to that i agree i gave it a reply and there is there is a time delay so david would you like to reply to that. i'd like very much to react to this this is not the being the israeli look the have. seen us for all published in egypt thirty eight percent of the egyptian would vote for a muslim brotherhood freedom and justice party twelve percent are for the no less radical a new party. a pew research poll published in june two thousand and ten indicates

that ninety five of the egyptian public would welcome the study olympics eighty four percent support the death penalty for those will be slam eighty two percent in favor of stoning people who could meet adultery fifty four percent justify suicide bombings fifty nine percent say he's the most a fundamentalist and only twenty seven percent with the modernizers these are the the polls investigation done by american iranian paper site gave us a good core thank you for that of being israeli i'm sorry i have to say to my viewers we do have an time delay here but the rain going to hire we go to cairo now let's see what we can go to in cairo now please ok right here you did look like you agreed with what david had to say go right ahead. yes i don't agree with any of what he's saying and i think you should spare is also the polls that don't clarify the poll results don't clarify what questions were asked when you when you make these strange percentages this is absolutely not true and even if thirty eight

percent of the people choose the muslim brotherhood does that does not necessarily mean that the muslim brotherhood represents. regression of some sort or a represent some kind of iran style climate cruel or a demand for that they are part of the fabric of the society and they will have to be incorporated like everybody else in the society although you know i've been covering at islamic movements over the past five years and my newspaper and everybody at this time is not islam as a whole believe that every single sector of the society needs to be involved in the political process so we are not and in any. way going to exclude anyone from this. mosaic there the situation now is as follows we are in this and now to have elections and mind you most of the people in here are not against having the elections now is a fact that there have been angered and have been driven to go back to the here

because of the excesses of the ministry of interior and because the people have been killed. a few trilingual for no reason at all does not mean that we are against having elections and going through the process of the democratic process that will rid us of the army council ok and this is the situation we're in now carl feingold you again looking at it's taken we could change the angle here is the outside looking in it the egyptian situation in the election that the impending election i just can't help but feel that the the west particularly the united states would like to see the military stay in control of egypt in one form or another or over a very slow time period phased out because that's an ally that's a strategic ally it's not the status of egypt it's the egyptian military that's their ally right now and all of these fanning about. you know the brother of the the muslim brotherhood is going to take over and the fanaticism and all that but still you still that still see that in the mainstream here i just can't help that the west would like to see much slower change in egypt and other countries look at

bahrain for example. absolutely i mean this is one of the most important side effects if you like of the arab spring is it exposed in decline the west and in particularly the american power to influence events in the middle east has become and it's allowing all these other agents to kind of push forward and try to dictate their own agenda i mean they've just withdrawn from iraq that that was a big retreat and in egypt they're kind of unlike other countries where you hear them being more vocal so you hear the american administration calling for change much more aggressively they've had a second chance and they've had a chance to rehearse what they could have said in the case of bacteria and they still fluff the because they have absolutely no kind of consistency they have nor real policy and they have not in the election what they what they're hoping at the moment is somehow that the military will gain control and ensure

a more kind of transition in favor of their own interests and others for that isn't but what absolutely a kind of deserve is they like actually the power to influence events and they are not any coherent and consistent idea about how to advocate change or or even kind of maintain a consistent position about the democracy movement which in my opinion is making them lose a lot of credibility and also is weakening their position along the outside of as i say is for anyone who's interested in democracy and secular forms of practice in politics is that kind of weakening of external influence opens up great opportunities in our country is and i think it's an opportunity that progressive politics and parties have to kind of rise up to look at i'd like to finish up in cairo because that's where the election is going to be in egypt is going to be held a few days it will be election after the fact is legitimate in fear when you think

. i hope that they are managed that i hope with staff does one thing right is that they managed to secure these elections my biggest fear is that people will be too afraid to go out in the streets and vote and the next couple of days. if that is the staff does this right and manages to secure the polling stations and not just to just to see this happen you know and it is transparent way as possible then i think they should be. there and and then they should be i'm hoping that they will be fair and transparent and they do some people are very vigilant they're all watching them and i'm damaged here i hope the best for the egyptian election many thanks to my guest today in london haifa and in cairo and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. to you next time and remember cross talk. and.

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