Alright y'all welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio I'm Scott Horton and our next guest on the show today is Ahmed Elassi He's an Egyptian American been living in Cairo for the last 10 years and is an activist he and some family members took part in the revolution that overthrew Hosni Mubarak so far and We've been talking with him getting the updates on a regular basis here about that Egyptian revolution Welcome back to the show.
I'm Ed.
How are you?
Hi, Scott Very very happy to have you here Man, I'm looking for some good news.
Tell me how goes the Egyptian revolution?
Well, we just had our first Democratic process go through which was voting that took place over a constitutional referendum and And Basically, the voter turnout was quite high.
It was 18 million out of a possible 24 million Wow Yeah, so pretty high turnout and basically the referendum was over several small changes Done to the Constitution a lot of You know 4 million voted no to the referendum 14 million voted.
Yes That was 77.1 percent that Voted yes, and what were the changes?well, the changes were several articles that had to do with the conditions for the presidency the term of the presidency and Basically an addition to the Constitution that would basically Guarantee a new constitution to be drawn up soon after a new Parliament takes over because basically as you know Scott one of our major demands for You know for a new government was to completely remove the old Parliament Because there was a lot of election rigging by the President Mubarak's NDP party National Democratic Party and They basically You know, they were all illegal Posts that they had so basically it was suspended and they're gonna hold new elections and basically there were two sort of camps, you know the You had a lot of the lefties you know socialists and and and Reformists and such had They wanted to vote.
No the a lot of conservatives and the Muslim Brotherhood as well as other Conservatives who want wanted a yes vote which they succeeded in and Basically, there was a lot of controversy over it was virtually the first time since the revolution that you had major issues between people, you know that there was a unity up until this vote and it sort of divided people into these two camps of a yes camp and a no and Unfortunately, it was It was not we weren't given enough time Yet that didn't really scare people away from turning out in huge numbers They had originally set the the voting like we voted at school You didn't have to have a voter registration card you could vote with your national ID, which is basically like a u.s.
Driver's license and People, you know turned out and boatload they they had They had to actually extend the period several times to accommodate the huge turnout of people kind of a good thing, however, though, like I said, there was a little bit of Misunderstandings from people I mean that the media was very ambiguous in in sort of providing a clear picture of what It is people are voting on so you have a lot of misconceptions some of the people thought that article to which Represented Sharia law would be removed if they voted.
No, so you had a lot of you know, brotherhood people and a lot of Conservative Muslims voting.
Yes to sort of keep that from happening Currently the law is not necessarily fully implemented, you know, Egypt is under You know, it was more of a symbolic gesture that it's in the Constitution, but it's not really Implemented properly because there are a lot of overlapping laws Which leave a lot of loopholes unfortunately And basically the So you're saying you would prefer that the Constitution be written by Sharia law Or to implement Sharia law for real instead of just in a token way Well, the thing is what I'm saying, and what would that really mean?
It wasn't necessarily implemented as the rule of law and it was it was just a sort of a symbolic you know a Sort of token that that it was, you know in the Constitution But you had a lot of French law that is, you know, criminal law you had a lot of old Kings Decrees and and laws from you know, Farouk's era and you have a lot of overlapping laws and basically, I'm I'm not necessarily a Scholar to be able to to judge which is better But what I do know is that when you have all of these various laws You sort of get you you have a lot of loopholes and it's not necessarily the greatest thing to have and It's not like it was Anyways, I mean, I'm just saying that it was like, you know people turned out in in in huge numbers partially because they were sort of scared Thinking that Sharia law would be removed.
However, though That wasn't even the case, you know, it was you know, it was never an issue that Sharia law would be removed But these were you know, some people like, you know from the no camp were criticizing religious leaders for sort of scaring the public into You know turning out and saying voting.
Yes Because that Sharia law would be removed.
However, though that was not one of the Referendum changes and It was just sort of a tactic on the other hand.
You had also people from the no camp which were heavily criticized by also Misrepresenting the no vote as saying that The Constitution would remain the same and their argument was that one possible water failed so did his Constitution along with him and To have the lingering remaining bits and pieces of his Constitution that which is referred to as the 71 Constitution, which was drafted during on what said that era is basically sort of a failure on the part of the armed forces for You know, the criticism was that the armed forces were trying to pull a fast one on them So let's turn out in a lot of numbers and Vote no on this thing because they're they're going to try and keep this Constitution which gives Massive powers to the presidency under the current Constitution You have several bills or articles that give like Unconditional powers to the president.
All right.
Well, hold it right there everybody.
It's Ahmed Elassie He's on the phone from Cairo Egypt today giving us an update on the Egyptian Revolution there We're gonna talk a little bit about his upcoming excursion to Gaza after this All right, y'all welcome back to the show in Santa war radio Talking with Ahmed Elassie Egyptian American living in Cairo and We're talking about the revolution and I got to tell you Ahmed I'm sorry to kind of change the subject on you sort of but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that you guys overthrew a tyrant without creating your own state to do it with You did that without a state seems like you could do anything without a state now You've got all these problems and faction fights and splits already developing over who's going to control the new one Why do you need a monopoly on power at all?
Can't you just be free?
Seems like y'all were doing real good at it Yeah, I mean it's There there's still a lot of crooks out there who are left over from the regime and they're trying to sow seeds of unrest and Division between you know all of the good people of Egypt and And They're still burning by the way, I do really quick I'm going to go through the things that they were trying to do is they're trying to Burn a lot of state security Paperwork and evidence and As I told you last time I was on the show I was saying that state security apparatus has been frozen by the armed forces and Quite recently they they set it up.
They set a rule or a law Cancelling it completely And basically replacing it with another Apparatus that will have a lot less power And since then we've been like even during the day that we were holding this national referendum vote the constitutional referendum vote There were several burnings Today the Ministry of Interior was on fire Specifically state security evidence rooms were set ablaze You have also In other governance or you know probably provinces of Egypt that were basically Seeing the same pattern Which is burning of old regime Evidence paperwork and Egypt is a very bureaucratic or it was definitely a very bureaucratic System so they kept you know evidence and and paperwork on every little tiny thing so they're having a great deal of Difficulty trying to you know, keep the public busy in fighting while they go ahead and do more Paper burning Well, I mean the fact that they're destroying evidence though does seem to indicate the thoroughness with which this internal Security force the tortures the domestic torture force has been abolished.
Is that really the case?
I read one kind of cynical article that said oh, yeah They completely abolished the internal secret police and then replaced it with a brand new agency to do the very same thing Well, I mean, yeah, they they sort of changed its name I think it's now called the patriotic or the You know something like, you know alongside, you know, Homeland Security Close and it's just like a change of name.
However, though they did claim that they will seek court orders for phone Tapping and for surveillance and that the court system will be more that's that's going by the way back to this whole constitutional referendum is that a lot of these powers like Mubarak used to be the the supreme ruler of like the court system of The police of the army of like every single apparatus there was zero checks and balances so a lot of people are seeking to Change that and basically with this vote of yes, the army has agreed to freeze all of the articles of the Constitution they give Absolute power to the seat of the presidency and basically the next term of office for a president or Parliament will be very temporary until like, you know a maximum a year for both Until they actually Draft a new constitution and there'll be a second referendum Vote for the mass public to or you know the vote on Yeah, your name and hopefully that you know will be set on the right track then And yeah, you're right.
I mean definitely we do have We did this Immensely great thing by just uniting and overthrowing this dictator however, though now we're realizing that it really was not a Dictatorship, but rather an oligarchy and a lot of these oligarchs are still lingering about and we need to Get rid of them.
A lot of businessmen are currently on trial and they're trying to weasel their way out they're saying, you know, we'll pay billion or billions of dollars back into the Egyptian economy and set us free and Basically, that's sort of a debate.
A lot of people are saying no these people have blood on their hands and they need to be held accountable for that and Basically, it'll be You know so that the next person that thinks that they could get away with that sort of stuff would Think twice about it, you know Well, good luck on that now.
I'm sorry.
We're so out of time And believe me, I think it's so important accountability for the past torturers and stuff It's something that we sure don't have here in the USA but can you tell us real fast about the present and future of The Gaza Strip and Egypt's role in keeping up one wall there to keep those people penned in and your upcoming trip You got about a minute and a half Sure, we have on the 24th of March, which is on Thursday the after tomorrow we plan on going with a select group of delegates which include people lawyers doctors journalists engineers Plans taking 10 tons of cement and other building materials, which is steel raw materials such as textiles all Egyptian produced by the Egyptian workers and Basically, we plan on having You know an attempt to break the siege from Egypt end and we're basically saying that you know there's no international law that or agreement that binds Egypt to this Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip and we've addressed the foreign ministry the new foreign minister and hopefully we'll be getting a reply from him tomorrow and Basically they there was just an attack today on on Gaza that killed four Young kids and I think a woman and wounded 20 other civilians Egypt's FM is to host some of the without the government delegation Soon to come there was also an EU delegation to two days ago.
I think they were here Thursday through Sunday and they visited with all of the factions, you know including like cops lots of the small organizations like 6th of April and the 25th of January youth movements and also with the Arab League President Amr Moussa and basically every single person was saying this blockade needs to end and It seems pretty positive.
All right now tell us very quickly Where can people read about and perhaps participate in your upcoming trip?well The website it's just part of my personal blog right now, which is a H M E D ELA fsy Blogspot.com.
Okay.
I'm at a loss.
He got blogspot.com.
Thanks very much for your time.
I'm Ed.
Appreciate Thank you
