Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest is Adam Morrow from Interpress Service, IPSnews.net, on the line from Cairo, Egypt.
Welcome back, Adam, how are you?
Good, thanks, Scott.
Glad to be back.
I'm very happy to have you here and I hate this article that you wrote.
You're bumming me out, man.
Doubts Shadow Egyptian Election.
Which election is that and what doubts?
Well, let's see, we do have parliamentary elections are scheduled to begin, I guess it's this month now, now that we're in November.
Parliamentary elections are supposed to kick off on 28th of November and that looks set to go down.
The elections that are in doubt though, mainly are the presidential elections, which people still don't know when those can be expected.
It's looking like early 2013 at the very earliest.
In light of the fact though that parliamentary elections are just about to kick off, not too many people are sort of talking about presidential elections right now.
Everybody is focused on parliamentary elections, especially also given the fact that you just had elections in Tunis, in which the Islamist Al-Nahda party did very, very well.
So a lot of people are focused on Egyptian parliamentary elections now and what sort of government that's going to yield.
And now as far as the plan for the elections, I guess has the military put forward on paper this is how it's going to work and then how is it going to work?
You know, here in America we're all divided by states and by precincts and districts and all these different things.
I just wonder, is it a big general election or how exactly is the form of it?
Same sort of thing, same sort of thing here in terms of electoral districts.
Egypt is broken into I don't know how many electoral districts, but a lot of them.
And yeah, these elections will basically be for the lower house of parliament, which is the people's assembly.
I think there are roughly 500 seats now after the revolution.
The number has sort of changed, but there are about 500 seats to the lower assembly.
That's the people's assembly.
And then you will have elections for the upper house or the consultative house or the Shura council, which I believe those are going to be held sometime in January, I think late January.
The parliamentary elections that are coming up later this month, though, will be held in three rounds, I think, and will probably take between two or three weeks, something like that.
If you recall in late 2010, before the revolution, Egypt had its last parliamentary elections and those were completely swept by Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party.
It was a bit of a joke because I don't know if you recall in 2005, the time before that, you actually had the Muslim Brotherhood winning one-fifth of the seats in the assembly, which was a huge precedent.
It was unprecedented that the opposition had such a large block in parliament.
And then five years later in 2010, they had another election and the ruling party just didn't allow any defense whatsoever.
I mean, they were well known to have been completely rigged.
And that, I think the Muslim Brotherhood won one seat, down from 88 seats in 2005 down to a single seat.
So the last elections in 2010 were widely, widely seen as having been thoroughly and completely rigged by the ruling party.
So people are very excited this time.
This will be the first post-revolutionary poll in Egypt.
So people are quite interested and quite excited to see what sort of results we're going to see.
Now, what are we seeing in terms of political parties taking shape?
Because, you know, of course, at least here in American politics, you have all these coalitions, right?
Where you have minorities and labor and whatever, all the different groups that make up the Democrats, that kind of thing.
Are they still very fractured or are they coming together into bigger parties there?
They're coming together, albeit slowly.
There are big alliances that have been formed, which have since broken up again.
And parties and individuals are realigning themselves.
I mean, all of this has happened quite quickly just in the last couple of months.
Originally, under Mubarak, you had a handful of opposition parties, which were widely seen as just being sort of this artificial opposition.
You know, the regime allowed them to function with the understanding that they would never get any kind of majority in Parliament.
But their very existence allowed the Mubarak regime to call itself a multi-party system, so that it was participating in a multi-party system, when it was actually just very farcical.
Whereas this time around, in the wake of the revolution, you had the creation of something like 25 or 35 new parties have been created.
So this makes things much, much more interesting and much, much more complex.
It's actually kind of difficult to follow everything that's going on, because there are so many newcomers, so many new faces in the political scene, so many new parties being born.
But it's sort of difficult to sort of follow everything.
The biggest one is the Freedom and Justice Party, which is the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, basically.
And that was established only just a couple of months ago.
Because in Mubarak's time, the Muslim Brotherhood was never allowed to become a party.
It was never given an official party license.
So it just sort of existed as an organization.
And its candidates would run in elections as independent.
But it didn't have an actual party existence.
Whereas now, this new Freedom and Justice Party is the Muslim Brotherhood's party.
And then you also have several other Islamist parties that have come into being.
Three or four of them are Salafists.
Some of them are Sufi parties.
And then you have an explosion of liberal, secularist parties as well, and several youth-oriented revolutionary parties, that have all been created in the wake of the revolution.
So it should be interesting.
Well, now, in your article, Doubt, Shadow, Egyptian Election, you talk about how some of these parties say that they might boycott the thing.
It doesn't look good enough to participate in.
What's the problem?
Well, one of their biggest complaints is the fact that there is no people.
All of these new post-revolution political forces wanted some kind of legislation or some kind of decree that would basically ban the former members of Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party from political life.
They wanted these people completely barred from political life.
That meaning that they wouldn't be able to contest elections.
They wouldn't be able to create parties.
And such a law hasn't really been forthcoming.
So you do have elements of the old regime creeping into...
A lot of them are running as independents.
Some of them are running on the tickets of newly created parties.
So that was the main contention of some of these smaller parties who had threatened to boycott elections.
Although there's not too much talk of a boycott now.
All of the big boys are all very keen to participate.
So I don't think you're going to see much of a boycott.
What you will see is you will see remnants of the former regime trying to stage a little bit of a comeback.
And how likely is it, do you think, that they'll be able to?
I mean, obviously they still have friends in high places, but they got the entire population against them at this point, don't they?
Yeah, that's a very interesting question.
I would hesitate to say the entire population.
I think there are probably a lot of Egyptians, probably more than we'd like to admit, that probably benefited from the former regime.
And many of them also have sort of become, a lot of the public has become disillusioned with the revolution.
They feel that Egypt is less secure now than it used to be under Mubarak.
And some people are actually voicing opposition, saying that they would have preferred things to remain the way they were, as awful as they were.
And again, this is a minority view.
But there are certainly a lot of people out there who benefited from the Mubarak regime, and who would probably vote for an NDP holdover.
You know, somebody who once served on the National Democratic Party.
Mubarak was in power for so long, and the military basically owns all the property in the country.
So, of course, they have anything of value, really, anyway.
So, of course, they have all kinds of people who are directly connected to them for their livelihood.
It takes a bit of patriotism and willingness to sacrifice free goodies in favor of justice for everybody else.
Right, right, right.
Yeah, there were a lot of beneficiaries in many different ways.
One of the interesting things that we're seeing is, a lot of these bastions, these former regime bastions, seem to be located in Upper Egypt and in the Nile Delta, which are two very rural areas of Egypt.
You know, one doesn't really associate much with politics, but actually which play a very big role.
And places in which the National Democratic Party had its fangs very deeply embedded.
So, you are seeing sort of a resurgence of these former regime remnants.
All right, hold it right there, Adam.
We've got to go out and take this break, unfortunately.
But when we get back, we'll talk a little bit about Egypt's new foreign policy with Adam Morrow from IPSnews.net.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio, talking with Adam Morrow from Interpress Service.
That's IPSnews.net.
Jim Loeb and his great crew of journalists over there.
And he's on the line from Cairo, Egypt again today.
And I was wondering, while we were talking about the big changes with the upcoming election, well, I guess, what kind of changes could we possibly expect from the election of some of these newly formed parties to the parliament?
Let's start there.
Right, that's a good question.
I mean, you sort of have to break it down between domestic policy differences, changes in domestic policy and foreign policy.
I think certainly one of the things that's at the foremost of everybody's mind in the West is the future of...
You mentioned foreign policy before we took a break.
And that's the future of the Camp David peace agreement, for example.
I mean, I know there's some fear in some quarters that a more Islamist-dominated parliament would abrogate the peace agreement with Israel.
And I don't see that happening.
I mean, all of the parties and all of these newcomers, all of them have sort of said that they would not, if they were to come to power, that they wouldn't abrogate the peace treaty, although they might modify it.
So that's certainly something to bear in mind.
I'm sure the United States is worried that a more Islamist Egypt would threaten United States' interests in the region or possibly could take steps to close the Suez Canal or could bring Egypt into a...could reestablish official relations with Iran or something like this.
But it's really too early to say, though, exactly which way things are going to go.
And that's assuming that the elections go smoothly.
I've heard that the ruling military council here has said that they would freeze elections, basically.
They would freeze polling in the event of large-scale elections-related violence.
So I'm hoping that we're not going to see any sort of flare-ups or sectarian flare-ups or any sort of poll-related violence which would give the ruling council a justification to freeze the polling.
Because, I mean, as you know, we've talked about before, you know, this possibility that maybe these guys actually want to stay in power and that they're looking... a lot of these things are basically delaying tactics in order to prevent Egypt from, or the Egyptian people, from choosing its own rulers.
So I don't know.
It's very hard to say.
Yeah, well, indeed.
And, you know, it seems to me like even if you had the Muslim Brotherhood wanting some, you know, giant sweep or something, they don't want a war with Israel, they don't want to do anything.
They might lift a siege on, you know, on their border, but they're not going to, you know, go back to the way it was in the mid-70s or whatever.
Right.
And, in fact, they're very...
I know they're taking a lot of steps to sort of reassure both of their critics in Egypt as well as their detractors abroad, you know, that they're not looking to sort of take over the country and immediately change policy.
For example, they're not running a presidential candidate.
They've already said that we're not going to run a presidential candidate, just to sort of calm fears.
But, you know, they'll choose from one of the many presidential candidates that runs.
Whatever happened to Mohamed ElBaradei?
It seemed like there were some internationalist types that liked him.
Any Egyptians like him?
Yeah, he had a real popularity problem in terms of rank and file, the rank and file Egyptian public here.
Yeah, he did appeal to the more sort of international set, as you said, but he definitely was not really...didn't really get the welcome that I think a lot of his supporters had hoped for amongst the Egyptian public, who saw him very much as this sort of, you know, foreign interloper, in a sense, in the sense that he'd been living abroad for several years.
I think he had a... he's a dual national.
So his thing never really took off.
He's still active in the political scene.
His name comes up regularly.
I know he makes statements about the political process and about the coming elections.
I don't really know what his position is.
He's sort of dropped off the radar in the last couple of months as other more, I think, as other more viable individuals and parties have come to the fore.
I always liked his tell the truth about Iran's nuclear program type policy, but I don't really know anything else about him.
Yeah, yeah, no, this is the thing.
I know the role that he played while he was director of the International Atomic Energy Agency was less than Sterling in terms of Iraqi, so-called Iraqi WMD.
Well, yeah, that's certainly true, although he did debunk the nuclear weapons program in February of 2003 before the invasion, debunked the Niger-Iranian forgery, said it took him and his men 30 minutes using Google or something.
Okay, it was always my feeling...
I mean, I can't remember how strongly...
I don't remember that episode, but it was always my feeling that if he was serious, he would have resigned his position.
Yeah, well, yeah, fair enough, fair enough.
My only thing, I liked him because it was, you know, just because Bush and them tried so hard to get rid of him over and over again and he continued to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran to any military or other special purpose, which is everything, which is the only point, and that just frustrated the hell out of the Americans in the Bush years who wanted to go to war with Iran, and he kept taking away their causus belly in a way that made them really angry, but so that doesn't mean the enemy of my enemy is my friend necessarily.
Certainly it doesn't mean he's the friend of the people of Egypt necessarily.
Right, right.
I wonder whatever happened to Hans Blix.
I don't know if you remember him.
I'm sure you remember him.
He was very much in the center of the storm around Iran, very much the same issue, and he's another figure that I just haven't heard another word of in the last five years.
Yeah, well, and, you know, he wasn't even as good as ElBaradei as far as debunking things.
He gave way too much credence to what was obviously a snipe on over there in Iraq before the war.
Ah, okay, okay.
I don't remember ElBaradei being as dead set against debunking the American planes.
Well, I guess he had less to debunk.
ElBaradei, all he had to debunk was the nuclear weapons program, which he just said, you know, I don't see any evidence of it anywhere, whereas Hans Blix had to answer a lot more questions, and anywhere that there was a hole where he couldn't provide a 100% answer, then that meant there must be a warehouse full of sarin gas there or whatever, according to the Americans, so we don't know how that went.
Right, right.
Anything less than 100% is guilty.
Well, speaking of these sort of fabricated justifications to attack other countries, I remember the last time we spoke, what was it, about two weeks ago, I haven't really had time to look into it.
I haven't followed the story only because it seems so ridiculous, with the American accusations of the Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.
I mean, I looked into it a little bit, and it turns out the guy is a used car salesman.
So, the alleged assassin is a used car salesman, so I sort of stopped following that story.
Right, yeah, well, you know, we had Ray McGovern, Ray Close, Phil Giraldi, Robert Baer, Flint Leverett, and I'm forgetting one more, but there were six former CIA guys who came out in the first week saying, I don't buy this at all.
Right, right.
Oh, and Scheuer, Scheuer was the sixth.
Was any evidence ever produced?
Well, no, just the indictment, and the indictment, if you go through it, you know, Gareth Porter, your colleague at Interpret Service, of course, is the best on earth at everything, and what he did was he went through there, and he said, yeah, well, it's pretty clear here that none of this became a terrorism plot or a kidnapping the Saudi ambassador plot until after the undercover informant was involved.
And before that, we don't know exactly what it was.
But it looks more like maybe they were making a drug deal, they were doing something, and then once the government got a hold of it, they decided they would make it a terrorism story, like they always do, you know.
Right, right.
So, yeah.
But, yeah, you know, it was only in America that the reports came across that this was believable at all.
I mean, all of the European papers, at least all the British papers that I read, had claims in the headline, you know, rather than says with importance and credibility.
So it was only Americans that fell for that one, I think.
And you know how it works, though.
You know, all the lies make the headlines, and the fact that six former CIA guys came out in the first week laughing and saying that they don't believe it for a second, that never makes the headline except here on Antiwar Radio.
Right, and when it later comes out that the people involved were completely innocent or that the claims were fabricated or that have no basis in truth, that information will end up on page 17 of the newspaper.
Right.
And they really did have some stories like that where like, geez, pretty much every Iran expert that we called doesn't believe it.
There were a few stories like that, but they certainly don't get the prominence on the top of the hour radio news, on CNN on the half hour, that kind of thing.
And that's where it really counts.
Right, right.
The only people that could buy into claims like this are people who have already been conditioned by watching, you know, hundreds of hours of Jack Bauer on 24.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Just completely from the raw, just fantasy land.
Yeah, the AM talk radio audience, in other words.
I can't tell you how much I appreciate your time on the show as always, Adam, and I hope we can catch up in about three weeks when these elections are going on and see how it goes.
Anytime.
Thanks very much, appreciate it.
Excellent.
All right, everybody, that's the great Adam Morrow, That's it for the show today.
See you tomorrow.
Thanks for tuning in.
