04/10/12 – Adam Morrow – The Scott Horton Show

All right, welcome to the show.
It's anti-war radio should have Adam Morrow on the line from interpress service.
From Cairo, Egypt.
Welcome back to the show, Adam.
How are you doing?
Hey, good.
Thanks, Scott.
Good to be back.
Good.
Uh, very happy to have you back here.
Uh, Egypt constitution faces Islamic coloring.
You write, uh, your last piece at IPS, I think, uh, from April the 4th.
I think that was the last thing.
Yeah.
And, uh, so we've got some developments and from Texas, I don't know very much about what's going on, just basically the headlines worth of depth on it, which is that the Muslim brotherhood has gone ahead and said they're running a presidential candidate.
Like they promised they wouldn't.
Uh, not sure if that's a big deal or not, or why it should be or shouldn't be.
Um, and then also, uh, Omar Suleyman, who we all remember from the New York Times coverage from February, 2011 was, um, Obama and Hillary Clinton's pick to be, uh, Mubarak's successor, the former head of the secret police.
And, uh, he's now announcing he's running for president.
And then of course, I, I guess since I, since we've talked, I'm trying to remember, uh, the, uh, NGOs, the American NGOs, you know, no, we talked about this, uh, how they had already been arrested and who exactly they were working with and how well, and all that.
So, um, I guess if you want to pick up any one of those to start us off, maybe could you, I guess if I get to pick, can we talk about the Muslim brotherhood announcing that they're running a candidate and what's the big deal about that?
Sure.
Sure.
Definitely.
There've been some, some major developments, as you know, ever since last year's revolution, there's, there's, uh, hardly a day goes by without some new, incredible breaking political development here.
Uh, the latest thing is, um, if you've been following it, you'll know that, uh, that the candidacy registration period for presidential would be presidential candidates, uh, just ended in Egypt.
Uh, that lasted, uh, I can't remember how long, maybe two or three weeks, and it just ended, uh, two days ago.
And the last couple of days brought a handful of 11th hour surprises, sort of last minute candidacies that, that, that people didn't expect.
Uh, the most surprising of which was probably would probably be the, uh, the Muslim brotherhood candidate, the Muslim brotherhood basically nominating a, uh, presidential candidate from within its own ranks, which it had, uh, since the days of the revolution itself, since the days of the 18 day uprising last year, they've been consistently saying that they would not, they would not feel the candidate from within their own ranks, although there were several prominent Islamist candidates.
There were no, uh, Muslim brotherhood members are running for the presidency up until about two or three days ago, when the group suddenly announced that it would be field fielding its second in command.
Uh, his name is hired at the shelter, uh, for the, uh, for the highest office, uh, surprising everybody.
Um, needless to say, their critics have jumped on it, uh, have jumped on the move, uh, but pointing to it as an example of, uh, of, uh, you know, of treachery and dishonesty on the part of the brotherhood and basically saying that this confirms their suspicions, but the brotherhood more than anything else was out to monopolize power.
Um, uh, the, uh, the, the brotherhood defended the move by basically saying that circumstances have changed in the last several months.
Um, quite honestly, uh, the, the statement that they gave justifying the move, um, wasn't really convincing.
I, I have yet to hear a really convincing reason for their, for their 11th hour decision to feel the candidate, but it's caused a, it's caused a big stir here.
And people are saying, analysts are saying that it's, it's basically changed the, the electoral map.
And what was their excuse?
They were complaining about the military not handing over power to the parliament fast enough or something like that.
No.
Well, this is one of the things that they've been pushing the ruling military council to dissolve the current government of prime minister Kamal Al-Ghanzouri, which the, which the military council has refused to do.
They're also attributing their, their changed position to, uh, to the fact that, I mean, they basically feel sort of the last several months has, has, has seen them swallow up, have seen, have seen the Muslim brotherhood swallow up a lot of, a lot of very important political institutions of, you know, the first being the people's assembly or the lower house of parliament, um, half of the seats of which they took with another quarter of the seats going to their Islamist, uh, allies or fellow Islamist parties, they, they did similarly well, uh, in Shura council elections, but the Shura council is the upper house of parliament, a consultative house of parliament, which they swept as well, uh, maybe two months ago.
Uh, after that, they basically, um, they're, they're, they're also monopolizing, if that's the right word, um, a constituent assembly that was drawn up a couple of weeks ago, which has been tasked with writing a new national constitution.
So the importance of this constituent assembly really can't be overestimated.
All right, hold it right there, Adam.
I'm sorry.
We're going to take this break.
We'll be right back with Adam or IPS news.net.
All right, y'all welcome back.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Adam Morrow on the phone from Cairo.
And now, uh, boy, we're talking about the complicated mess of, uh, Egyptian democracy, uh, as it's shaping up so far.
And, uh, of course, you know, a big part of all of this, I mentioned Omar Suleiman there.
Um, you know, big part always, uh, at the forefront, probably at the mind of many Egyptians too, is what role is the state department, the CIA playing in all of this?
Seems like their NGOs got shut down and kicked out of the country, but, uh, are they crawling all over the place?
Are they backing just the Facebook generation liberals?
Or are they working with the Muslim brotherhood like the old days or what's going on?
Do you know?
Oh boy.
These are all questions I myself would love to have answers to.
I mean, I, I, of course I, you know, I don't have evidence of anything, but one, one can only surmise what's going on behind the scenes.
Um, Well, there's usually a kind of tendency of people to know good and well, who's which outside forces are backing, which factions in their own country kind of thing, right?
Don't they sort of have a feeling for who America's, I mean, obviously Suleyman is the guy that Hillary Clinton told the New York times.
We want Suleyman a year ago.
Sure.
Sure.
Suleyman was always, Suleyman was always America's man.
I mean, just as, just as, I mean, just by virtue of the fact that he was, you know, general intelligence czar under Mubarak, uh, tells you that, uh, the, it's all you need to know to understand, uh, whose side he was playing on.
Uh, I also think it's, it's, it's worth mentioning, uh, during the, at the height of the revolution last year, some very interesting stuff came out from WikiLeaks specifically about Omar Suleyman that got largely, uh, that was largely overlooked just because of, uh, you know, just because of all the other things that happened to have been going on at the time.
Um, but there, there were reports, I believe it was WikiLeaks basically at, um, saying that Suleyman at one point during the revolution had actually considered the idea of allowing Israeli troops to come into the finite peninsula in order to maintain security there or maintain stability there.
Um, while, uh, you know, while the, while the revolution was going on.
Well, that'll endear him to the locals.
Right, right.
Uh, yeah, well, what's interesting is, um, oh, I mean, a lot of people are actually saying that, that the guy does have his electoral, his electoral prospects aren't, you know, aren't terrible, uh, and that he does enjoy support.
I heard that he enjoyed the degree of tribal support from some of the, some of the Bedouin tribes in, uh, in upper Egypt, um, which, um, I, I hadn't, I didn't know about earlier, but I mean, he is being floated as a viable candidate, you know, um, one would think just because of the, uh, just because of the revolution last year that he would be a, he would be a non-starter just because he had been Mubarak's man for so long, but people are saying that he does have, um, he does have a chance and this, his chances might be bolstered by the appearance of this new Muslim Brotherhood candidate, because people are talking about the dangers of splitting the Islamist vote, basically, where, you know, you have two or three Islamist frontrunners, um, who are basically going to, uh, who are going to basically share the Islamist vote, whereas if Omar Suleiman emerges as the sort of main, you know, as the primary, uh, you know, foil to, uh, to an Islamist candidate, he could end up doing better than, uh, we, we might expect.
Hmm.
Yeah, I guess, you know, a year ago, the Muslim Brotherhood basically was trying to stay in the background and buy their time, but maybe they kind of, it, it was, it, it spent a lot of, it inserted a lot of energy, um, trying to convince its critics at home and abroad that it did not plan to basically take over the country.
Uh, it repeated, it, it, uh, repeated that many, many times.
And maybe they waited too long.
It sounds like some other people said, okay, fine, we'll fill that vacuum.
If you guys are going to pretend to wait, you know?
Right, right, right.
But I mean, one of the main, one of the main, uh, components of that, of those reassurances was saying, you know, look, we're not going to feel the presidential candidate, you know?
Yeah.
We took parliament and we took the, uh, we took the upper house, uh, uh, but we're, and we, we, uh, even have a contending role now in the constituent assembly, which is tasked with writing a new constitution, but we're not going to, we're not going to run for it, for, uh, for the executive office.
And at the very last minute they ended up doing the exact opposite.
And, uh, and, and, and fielding a cat ended up fielding a candidate.
Well, you know, um, it seems like really whoever runs the civilian government, it's still only like 60, 40 or something compared to the power of the military over the country.
Right.
How do you mean exactly?
Like the military is still, uh, more than half the state by far.
Right.
Or not in terms of what exactly?
I mean, they do represent the executive authority.
Mubarak did delegate executive authority to the ruling Supreme council of the armed forces.
And they, they are still the de facto, the country's de facto ruler, if that's what you mean.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, like, for example, if it came to a real disagreement between the military and whoever got elected to the parliament and, or the presidency, um, there's really not much question that they would just remove them.
If there was a conflict, like who would win or what?
They definitely would have the final say.
And this is the reason why, uh, drafting a new constitution is so important because the new constitution will presumably, you know, spell out the relationships and the, and the, you know, the respective powers of the, of the three different branches of government.
Um, and until that's made clear, uh, the, the military, the ruling military council will, will have the final say.
All right.
Now, um, I did mention at the beginning, uh, about, uh, Egyptian foreign policy, such as it is.
And, um, I guess we don't have too much time, but could you update us a little bit on the state of the Rafa border crossing with the Gaza strip?
Sure.
There's really not too much to report in terms of foreign policy these days, uh, because so much focus, so much attention is going towards the, you know, the, just going towards the domestic scene.
So there hasn't really been much movement in terms of, uh, in terms of foreign policy, the, the, there's been no radical opening of the Rafa border crossing.
I mean, if I, I agree with you, I mean, people should never, you know, should never forget Rafa, the Rafa border crossing.
I mean, which is so incredibly that, you know, the, the, the current state of the, uh, of the border between, uh, between Egypt and Gaza strip, uh, because the livelihood and wellbeing of 1.5 million people in the Gaza strip actually depend on it.
But from what I can understand, there's been no radical change.
I mean, they're letting passenger passenger traffic go in and out, but it's, it, it still doesn't function like a normal, um, you know, uh, a normal, uh, uh, transit point between two sovereign countries should, uh, should be, you know, there's no, there's no one mass trade between the two countries.
I think that the gods would still have to have to have to, uh, depend mostly on, uh, on the, the, the underground tunnels in order to get most of their most basic needs, including building, building materials and food and, uh, and, uh, and fuel.
So, uh, I think the idea, uh, in Gaza, at least on the part of Hamas is, uh, which, which has governed Gaza since 2006, 2007.
I think they're basically just waiting to see what happens in Egypt.
Um, I know that they've kept, they've managed to keep on very good terms with the ruling military council here.
They haven't, you know, they haven't come out, they haven't come out with any statements slamming, slamming the, uh, the military council here.
I think they're just sort of keeping their head down and sort of keeping their fingers crossed that an Islamist led government is going to sooner or later assume control of, uh, Egyptian affairs.
At which point the, uh, the, the border will be in, go opened entirely.
But until that happens, I think they're just sort of, you know, biding their time.
Yep.
All right, good.
Well, um, I've got to cover that for a minute anyway.
Uh, thanks very much for your writing and your time on the show as always.
Happy to be here, Scott.
Everybody, that's Adam Morrow from interpress service, IPS news.net.
And, uh, like I was saying, his latest piece is Egypt constitution faces Islamic coloring.