03/04/14 – Adam Morrow – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Again, in case you're interested, the Future Freedom Foundation has posted my speech that I gave.
John Glaser and I gave a talk at the Future Freedom Foundation thing in DC on February the 15th.
And they've posted the YouTube there.
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If you're so inclined, scotthorton.org slash speeches.
And it's mostly John.
I come on about two-thirds of the way through it, something like that, due to my plane being very late.
But anyway, so there you go.
That's at scotthorton.org slash speeches.
Okay, so now next up on the show is our old friend Adam Morrow from Interpress Service.
That's IPSnews.net.
He's a reporter living in Cairo, Egypt.
Welcome back to the show.
How the hell are you?
Good.
Good, Scott.
Thanks.
Thanks.
How are you?
I'm doing good.
I'm here with Interpress this evening.
I know it's pretty late over there already, you know, seeing how you're in the future and all that.
But so I was just hoping you could kind of give us an update on post-coup d'etat, reinstalled military dictatorship Egypt, now beginning of March 2014, how things look.
Maybe first of all, I guess, what's the status of the old emergency laws that say that the military can kidnap and torture whoever they want?
Is that still in effect, or is that back in effect, or how's that work?
I don't think I've kind of lost track.
I don't think the emergency law is actually in effect, but that is essentially what the military authorities are doing.
They're continuing their crackdown on, you know, on Muslim Brotherhood elements and basically anybody who's shown any sort of opposition, who's voiced any sort of opposition to the July 3rd coup that unseated Mohamed Morsi, the president here.
That being said, though, you're also seeing at the same time, you are seeing a continuation of the protests.
I mean, I know I've been saying this for the last several months, the two things are going simultaneously.
You know, you've got two parallel things going on.
You've got this nonstop crackdown that's going on, and you've got jail sentences that are being regularly handed out.
Every couple of days, a new raft of jail sentences will be handed out to protesters, you know, people who have basically been charged with either belonging to a banned group, or protesting without license, or, you know, obstructing public, you know, public movement.
So people like this, protesters and things like this, are still being locked up.
But that doesn't seem to be deterring them.
They seem to have continued.
There seems to have been a lull around the third anniversary of January 25th revolution, which was about a month ago now.
There seemed to have been a lull after that.
The protest activity seemed to have declined a little bit, but it recently, within the last week or two, it seems to have picked up again.
And I attribute that largely to a couple of, it really, really looks like the government, the military-installed government here, is desperately sort of stumbling around and doing a lot of, making a lot of announcements and decisions and that sort of thing, that look, that definitely betray a significant degree of, I think, confusion.
I think they don't really know how to get Egypt out of the current limbo that it's in, because it's really, you know, it's, their tourism is at absolutely zero at this point.
The fate of the presidential and parliamentary elections is still up in the air, still a date hasn't really been set for that.
So basically what you had was, if you remember, in the middle of January, there was a constitutional referendum.
We might have spoken about that.
There was a constitutional referendum that passed with, they said it was something like 28 or 35 percent of the electorate voted or something like that, and it got 98 percent in favor of this, in favor of this military-backed constitution.
But what was interesting about that, it was touted here, it was touted by the pro-Army military, pro-Army media here, it was touted as a big victory for the military-installed government, for Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who is the defense minister, who's sort of the de facto ruler here.
And it was basically seen as a, you know, as seen as a public endorsement of the government's policies against the Brotherhood and against opposition.
But what was interesting about it was actually, it was actually, it actually turned out to be very weak, and they didn't see the sort of turnout that was expected.
And you didn't see these sort of millions of people hitting the streets to show their support for the Army-backed government.
In fact, they tried really hard.
I mean, I saw it, you know, right in front of me, because I lived in, I live downtown.
You had these very limited protests that were, in which young people were conspicuously absent.
That was something that a lot of people mentioned, is that the youth, you know, some of the young people were nowhere to be seen on these lines that turned out to vote for the Constitution.
And even the demonstrations that were supposed to come out, these pro-Army demonstrations that they tried to muster, were all extremely limited in nature, were all very small, and, again, were top-heavy with older people, sort of betraying, you know, the incredible apathy that you have amongst a lot of young people now.
So after that initial euphoria that came after, that came directly after the coup, all of this pro-Army stuff, this OCC mania where everybody was going out, that has very much faded at this point.
And you're definitely in a situation now where you've sort of got a stalemate, where the government thought, the government miscalculated, this Army-backed government miscalculated, and never imagined that eight months after the coup, they would still be feeling such opposition.
And it's not only the opposition.
It's not only the opposition to the coup.
It's not only pro-Morsi people.
It's also the government's total inability to improve the economic climate at all, to make, to rein in inflation that's running, spiraling out of control, to raise minimum wages.
That's been promised for years by successive administrations, that they were going to raise the minimum wage.
They haven't even been able to do that.
So there's widespread, there's definitely, definitely, the anger on the street is definitely growing.
And it has less to do, it now has less to do with the coup, maybe, and more to do with the fact that these new military rulers that had promised so much at first, have completely failed until now to sort of, you know, to sort of show anything, any sort of improvement on the ground.
Yeah.
Well, you know what?
Democracies, dictatorships, left, right, and everybody else.
You print money, you debase your currency, you turn everybody, rich, poor, and middle class against you, because if they can't rely on their dollar to be worth, or whatever their division of their currency is called, to be worth the same thing tomorrow, or two weeks from now, as it's worth today, then you've got a riot on your hands.
It's as simple as that.
It destroys all savings, it destabilizes all markets, it makes everything horrible for everyone.
And so, in a way, that's the silver lining on this, is, you know, we've talked about how, Adam, when the Muslim Brotherhood was elected to power, and came to power, how the entire executive branch of the government basically just sat on their hands and said, yeah, have fun governing without any of us bureaucrats actually carrying out your orders, right down to the police on the beat on the corner.
And now they have the power back, and yet, they have the power lost.
They have the office back, but the power's already gone.
And of course, the people learned three years ago, right around now, three years ago, that actually what they think does matter.
And that even a ruthless, tortured dictator like Hosni Mubarak can be brought to his knees if they really believe in what they believe in and insist on it.
And so, it's pretty hard to take that back, you know, to take that away from the people of Egypt.
It may be tough going for a long, long time, but they know that they do have at least some power here.
Don't you have elections coming up, and how much trouble is this CC in if he wants to be the new elected, you know, pseudo-president, more like general?
Right.
He just came out today, apparently there was a new announcement from the presidency or by him personally that he would announce his candidacy within the next couple of days.
Now, this has been an on-again, off-again thing.
It's very strange.
I think it has to do with intelligence outfits trying to gauge public opinion.
I think that's what all of this will-he-won't-he stuff is about, because it's become quite tiresome, actually.
And I think it's actually hurt his mystique, you know.
If he had sort of come out decisively early on and said he was running for presidency, that'd be one thing.
But we've seen over the course of the last six months, it's been this back-and-forth, these sort of tantalizing hints that he's about to announce his candidacy, and then it's sort of-and then, you know, another military spokesman will sort of deny that that really meant anything, and then he'll say something very provocative to a Kuwaiti newspaper, and then the military spokesman will say, oh, well, no, it was taken out of context.
It's been going back and forth like this for, like, several months now.
So this is very-you know, again, I think it has to do with gauging public opinion.
And also, I mean, I assume that if he does decide to go for it, like, he has to win, because he does have to give up his position as defense minister, and if he were to-I mean, I don't think he would go in unless he was assured of winning, you know, either by popularity or by simply, you know, going back to the Mubarak era and just fixing the polls.
But according to the roadmap that was imposed by the military upon Morsi's ouster, you were basically supposed to have a constitutional referendum, which they did, and which I spoke about earlier-I'm not sure if you caught that or not-that was in mid-January, and the next two phases are supposed to be parliamentary and presidential elections.
Now, again, there was talk that it was going to be in April, and then that was sort of retracted.
Right now, it looks like-and this also goes back to how I was saying earlier, how the government really does seem to be in a state of severe confusion.
You know, I think they're sort of caught between, you know, different factors that are going-you know, different things that are going on around them.
They're being pulled by different forces, you know, internally and domestically and abroad.
So the point is, until now, there really is no date that has been set for the elections.
And these elections are supposed to be pillars of-you know, these are supposed to be the pillars on the-you know, the milestones on this roadmap that prove that Egypt is well into its democratic transition.
And, you know, you'll hear, like, John Kerry and stuff paying lip service to the roadmap and that sort of thing.
But no date has been set, and his candidacy is still uncertain.
And in the absence of Islamist candidates, I mean, it'll be a pretty boring-it's turning out to be a pretty boring race, you know, because it'll basically be different people all of whom, at the end of the day, represent the deep state, which, as you said earlier-it's an important point that people understand, that in Morsi's brief time in office-his one year in office-he was-I sort of see it as sort of skating along the surface of a frozen lake.
You know, that's sort of what he did.
He didn't actually get-you know, he didn't penetrate-he didn't get beyond the-so he didn't scratch the surface of the deep state.
He made some personnel changes.
He tried to.
He tried to.
But, I mean, it's an extremely daunting task.
And those of us who sort of look forward to a speedy change to, you know, to Egyptian state institutions and to Egyptian policy and that sort of thing, after the January 25th revolution in 2011, I mean, that all seems very, very naive now, in retrospect.
You know what I mean?
I mean, is there going to be a lot of-I mean, well, we can talk more about the persecution of the Muslim Brotherhood supporters, too, but just the regular people, aren't they getting-you say the mystique is gone from General Sisi, who saved so many dissenters from the Muslim Brotherhood, apparently, or whatever, last summer.
But it seems like, you know, you're saying he's lost his mystique.
Pretty soon, they're going to start being mad that they don't hold-I mean, the people in general are going to, of all factions, they're going to start getting mad if they're not going to hold elections, like in the deal, at least parliamentary elections, if, you know, those have to go first, something.
Or else they're going to have a whole new revolution again, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, unless they come to some kind of-there are certain things that suggest that there might be, you know, there might be communication going on behind the scenes.
I can't confirm any of that.
It's incredibly difficult to, you know-I mean, I don't know what's going on behind closed doors, but there are statements of, for example, Nabil Fahmy, who's the foreign minister at the American University in Cairo, I think he said yesterday, in a speech in English, he said that the Muslim Brotherhood were members of Egyptian society who enjoyed all of their, you know, who enjoy all of their rights.
It's a very contradictory sort of thing.
There are things to suggest that maybe there's some kind of, you know, there's-it's the Brotherhood's position that they won't talk to the government, that they will never talk unless, you know, constitutional legitimacy is restored, which means a restoration of, you know, Morsi's reinstatement and a restoration of the early constitution, I guess.
Which is never going to happen.
Not anytime soon, anyway.
Well, whether or not it happens, it certainly can't be seen by their supporters to be negotiating.
So, for that reason, they wouldn't be carrying out any kind of direct negotiations, and at the same time, the military can't be seen by its hardcore supporters of negotiating with the Brotherhood after everything that it's done.
Now, after turning them into a terrorist, you know, labeling them a terrorist organization, going off-going after their affiliate- Well, but, you know, Adam, the problem with that has always been that there's just way too many of them.
If you count all the Muslim Brotherhood, and if you call their group, you know, political party, everyone who would have been a registered Brotherhood voter or whatever, that's a hell of a lot of Brotherhood members and supporters.
They can't just-or I guess they could, but it doesn't really make political sense for the dictatorship to clamp down on them all.
I mean, as bad as they've already done for, you know, more than half a year now is one thing.
But, you know, it seems probable that they would start to back off.
You know, again, like you're saying, if the Brotherhood is willing to negotiate with them behind the scenes, they'd be smart.
They certainly would be smart to negotiate back.
I don't know if they are smart.
Well, one thing's for certain, one thing's for certain, the Brotherhood is definitely much more adept at being in the opposition, at being, you know, at being the victim of persecution.
So it's sort of in its element now, you know?
We saw the Brotherhood struggling to govern, you know, and I mean, the one thing, I mean, there's been a lot of criticism of the Brotherhood over the last year, and I think a lot of it is invalid and was, you know, actually just propaganda on the part of their enemies.
But one thing is certain is that they were definitely not prepared at all to take on the task that, you know, that fell to them when they won the presidency and when they won a big slice of Parliament, they were absolutely 100% unprepared to sort of take on the deep state.
They might have known of its existence, they might have, you know, they might have known of it, but it's obvious that they couldn't even, like you said, like, you know, you've got Morsi there and his own police aren't, you know, aren't willing to hit the streets and secure public, you know, and maintain public security.
Well, by the way, what's the state of the campaign of violence?
There was, you know, there have been some bombings, I know in Sinai you sort of exclude that as sort of a separate case, but there were attacks inside Cairo, that kind of thing.
Looked like the Muslim Brotherhood or really the government was making the worst of it.
But has that died down?
I guess I haven't heard about any big bombings lately or anything.
It's not as consistent as it was, like, last summer when it was daily, when you had attacks daily.
However, there are, every couple of days, every even, you know, you might have a couple days in a row where there are certainly attacks on police.
I know just yesterday you had at least one police officer was killed, and I think, and there were separate attacks.
There were like two or three different attacks, and it, like, ended, it left one police officer dead and a handful injured, and again, those were separate attacks.
You also had something happen in Taba, in Sinai, about two weeks ago, I'm sure you know about that, where a handful of Korean tourists were killed, which was a big deal, which is a really big deal, because that was the first attack on tourists.
And that, I mean, that basically, I mean, there wasn't a tourism industry to start with to kill, you know, but that was sort of like another shot, another round, you know, in the prone corpse of Egyptian tourism.
All right, well, I'm sorry we've got to cut it off here, but thank you very much for joining us again, Adam.
We'll keep calling on you.
Sure, Scott.
Appreciate it.
Everybody, that is Adam Morrow.
He lives in Cairo, Egypt.
He's a journalist for InterpressService at IPSNews.net, and this is the Scott Horton Show, and we'll be right back with Ray McGovern in just a sec.
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