07/01/13 – Adam Morrow – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, I'm Scott.
Welcome back to the show.scotthorton.org is the website.
And now I'm happy to welcome Adam Morrow back to the show.
He's a reporter for Interpress Service.
That's ipsnews.net, living in Cairo, Egypt, where I think we're working on the Guinness World Record for biggest protest ever, dwarfing two and a half years ago.
Am I right about that?
Well, here, of course, the numbers are still are sort of being disputed.
You know, it's always very difficult to get an exact fix on how many people are actually turning out to these, you know, to these different rival protests.
But from what it looked like yesterday, it definitely looked like unprecedented numbers.
Huge.
I mean, if people go just look at your Yahoo news photos or look in, I don't know, latest Google images somehow or whatever, latest news photos of Cairo.
It's just absolutely incredible.
The people in the streets there.
So I saw this great quote, too, where the reporter says to a protester, but you had an election.
And he says, yes, so they didn't live up to their end of the deal.
Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.
All right.
So we'll give us the long version.
Who's who and what are they so pissed off about?
OK, well, let's see.
You basically have the Morsi, who was elected exactly one year ago, was elected in presidential elections that were widely regarded as having been free and fair.
He won by a very, very narrow, narrow margin.
If you remember that, he narrowly defeated Ahmed Shafiq, who was actually regarded as a Mubarak era official.
He served.
He was a longtime he was a longtime aviation minister under Mubarak.
And he ran against Morsi in last year's presidential elections and lost by a margin of one or two percent.
It was a very, very tight election one year ago, which saw a Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Muhammad Morsi, very narrowly defeat Mubarak era minister Ahmed Shafiq.
Now, that was exactly one year ago.
We've now hit the one year anniversary of the end of Morsi's first year in office.
And you're seeing these massive, massive demonstrations coming out against him now and basically basically demanding snap presidential elections.
They demand they're demanding his ouster within one or two days.
And they're calling for snap presidential elections.
Um, the notably, um, the military just issued a issued a formal announcement, a statement about one hour ago.
I don't know if you if you saw this, basically saying that they would they gave all the political actors for a 48 hour deadline, basically to resolve the crisis, or else they would step in with some kind of new political roadmap, some kind of new electoral roadmap that they were going to say they were going to unveil.
They didn't by the way, they didn't threaten to outright overthrow Morsi, right?
But maybe they sort of imply they'd push him to the side and go ahead and start telling him.
Well, this is the way everybody's interpreting it.
This is the way everybody's interpreting it.
But if they don't, if the crisis isn't solved, and you also have bear in mind, you've got millions on the streets.
And you've got an opposition now that's been massively, massively empowered by the numbers that it just saw by this massive showing of popular support.
So it's now going for broke and is demanding snap presidential elections, the new government.
There was some talk of a high placed judicial figure taking over for a six month interim period.
But now now that the military's gone, everybody's interpreting this latest statement as meaning basically that if, if, you know, if the crisis isn't ended, and as I was going to say, the opposition is now calling for open ended strikes, you know, we're talking about millions of people basically shutting down the country, not going to work until he steps down.
So the military has given both parties a 48 hour deadline to resolve all of this.
Or else they are going to step in, basically, and return Egypt to the to the to the you know, the year and a half period of interim military rule that we saw in the immediate wake of the January 25th revolution, we're basically going to go back to square one, and we'll be under military will rule for a transitional period until fresh presidential elections can be held.
All right, now, so if we go back to how it was, then there was no.
Well, as far as I know, is this right?
That there was no real big cheese?
It was the council, the military council decides rather than a new de facto, actual single dictator cheese.
There was a big cheese.
I don't know if you remember the name.
Mohammed Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi was the head of what was called the Supreme, the Supreme Military Council, Egypt's with Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which went by the name scaff.
He was in charge of that.
And he had a second in command named semi on then.
And both of those guys were retired.
That was one of the first things that Morsi did upon becoming president was he retired both of those guys.
So those two head honchos aren't around anymore.
And you do what you do now have is a defense minister, whose name is CC.
And he was appointed by Morsi.
And he now is in charge of the military here.
So you do have a head honcho.
You know, if you're looking for if you're looking for a character, if you're looking for a personality, you do have.
Well, I guess what I was getting at, what I was trying to get at there was and I guess this was my mistaken impression was that the military council had taken responsibility, but they were trying to play down.
It wasn't like there was a new strongman trying to seize power.
They they really wanted somebody else to come and take the power.
They would rather be in the background rather than I forget the guy's name that you said there.
He didn't want to be the new dictator of of Egypt, at least not in name.
Correct.
The government of the military does have a long standing reluctance to get involved in politics and getting into state administration and bureaucracy and that sort of stuff.
I mean, they run the state.
They just don't like being called that.
Right.
Well, it's not it's not it's not equipped to it's not equipped to run domestic politics to run the domestic political arena.
It's simply not equipped to administer the country.
You know, it's a it's probably a substantial state of disrepair after 30 years of Mubarak sort of letting it go to seed.
And as well, it's that's not its primary mandate.
Traditionally, you know, traditionally, its primary mandate has been to protect the country from foreign invaders that secure the borders and that sort of thing.
And it's low to really get sucked in this whole political quagmire, especially especially after the year and a half period of of military rule that we saw after the revolution, when you had protesters out on the streets all the time blasting the military council for these human rights violations and and for heavy handed their heavy handed treatment of demonstrators and this sort of thing.
They were constantly accused of being murderers.
And, you know, you had protesters out on the street all the time calling for their prosecution.
So now the military is especially reluctant because, you know, they said, you know, we did this before and you guys called us murderers and you demonstrated against us and you called for a prosecution.
So they're very, very reluctant to get themselves back in that same situation again.
However, I mean, they've obviously made that they've obviously come to the conclusion that if the situation doesn't improve by itself or between the two primary camps, then they're going to have no choice but to step in.
And again, like I said, they've given they've given the presidency sort of 48 hours to solve the problem, which looks very highly unlikely.
Right.
Yeah, it certainly does.
Well, so now here's the thing when it comes to what everybody's so angry about.
It's basically the economy and a lot of just basic police issues, basic security kind of stuff.
Everybody's so fed up with.
But what the hell is the president supposed to be able to do about that?
That's not up to him anyway.
Was he magic?
Listen, I agree completely.
I think it's incredibly realistic and very disingenuous to expect a guy, especially who would especially someone who's coming from the you know, the the persecuted Islamist opposition to take office and solve all of the country's ills, you know, basically undo 30 years of corruption and mismanagement within one year.
I think it's, you know, extremely unrealistic expectations.
And, you know, a lot of people, a lot of pro-Morsi people are saying, you know, he never he was never given a chance.
He just he he should get his four terms to try to have a chance to to clean house and that, you know, this idea that that he could solve all the country's security concerns and and all and overturn the, you know, deal with all of these economic pressing, pressing economic issues overnight.
It's just it's just extremely disingenuous.
The idea that, you know, that someone will be able to do that within a single year.
So well, and now the local police, are they all answerable to the president or they have local jurisdictions that are supposed to be a great question?
Yeah, this is one of the main problems is that the police have basically refused to take orders from from from the presidency over the course of the last year, because if you remember, I mean, under Mubarak, I mean, the police were were detaining most of the Muslim Brotherhood guys.
You know, police were cracking down and raiding their homes and locking them up and torturing them in many cases.
So now all of a sudden, overnight after the revolution, you find all of the all of a sudden, the police are now supposed to take orders from the same guys that they were beating up, you know, just not too long ago.
And for that reason, you had this dynamic where most of the bulk of the police simply refused to deploy.
And that's why you haven't had police really on this.
You haven't had police presence in the streets in Egypt since the January 25th revolution.
He takes all the heat for it.
Sorry, he takes all the heat for them not showing up to work.
Exactly.
And then everybody turns around basically and says, oh, Morsi is incapable of providing security on the streets.
Yeah, it's very like I said, it's very disingenuous in many in many regards.
OK, now here's the thing, though, is I mean, when we're looking at these protests, we try to categorize people in their politics as best we can.
Right.
You have more or less the liberals and the unionists and stuff.
And then you have the hardcore Salafists who think that the Muslim Brotherhood are a bunch of sellouts.
Right.
And then you have the people who are the Brotherhood supporters.
And I don't know what other factions you want to describe and or include, but it seems to me looking at at least looking at Al Jazeera, it looks like a consensus, even among the people who supported Morsi in the first place, that he he maybe he ain't magic, but he could have been doing a hell of a lot better than he has been.
And that you're right or not.
Well, listen, the way I see it is he's made some incredibly bad moves, some some incredibly incredibly stupid moves.
I don't know if that's his fault or if it's the Brotherhood's fault.
And and again, I just reiterate that President Morsi is the you know, is a come from the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood.
They've made some incredible missteps that very little has been seen in terms of the daily lives of Egyptians have not improved.
I mean, there's very little you know, there's very, very little on the ground that would you know, that would suggest that life has gotten any better.
In fact, some things have gotten worse.
There have been these these constant power electricity cuts.
There have been these chronic fuel shortages, benzene shortages that everybody's complaining about.
So so in that sense, for sure, there is definitely there are definitely grievances.
The opposition has every right to, you know, to to have grievances.
But but but that being said, you know, it's almost you know, it would be impossible to be able to be able to to solve these, you know, these long standing problems that Egypt has been suffering for so long.
It's impossible to undo this stuff overnight, especially when you also have elements of the deep state, because there there are you know, there are still pro-Mubarak elements deep, you know, deep within these state institutions that are purposely trying to trip up the government.
And I think there was a lot of that going on.
You know, I think people were there was they were they were purposely supplies of stuff, you know, subsidized bread and elect and the electorate, the whole electricity.
I think they were definitely intentionally intentionally tripping that up from from inside just to just in order to to increase public dissatisfaction with the with the government.
And it worked to devastating effect.
And not only that, but you also have the private private media here, which is mostly owned by very, very wealthy businessmen, all of whom were very closely linked with the Mubarak regime.
You have that that media, that privately that privately owned media that you have in Egypt is rabidly anti Islamist.
So for a year, if not more, this this this privately owned media has been spewing out, you know, nothing but nothing but smear campaigns against the president.
So I think that had a lot to do.
I think that also had an incredible effect in terms of mobilizing people.
That's the main reason why a lot of probably 90 percent of the people who came out yesterday to demonstrate have probably, you know, have probably been influenced by this nonstop assault by the media on the on on Morsi.
Yeah.
Well, now, so when the 48 hours is up, is this the end of regular elections and back to military dictatorship or presumably it's unclear?
It's kind of unclear as of yet.
You know what exactly?
I mean, because he didn't he didn't the the military didn't state that they would step, you know, you know, it didn't say definitively that they were going to step in, but that's certainly how it's been interpreted.
So it's really uncertain.
And also, I'd like to point out also that you have the the opposition is also divided between you said you were trying to classify the people that were coming that came out on Sunday from my estimation.
And definitely people would definitely challenge me on this and argue argue with me on this.
But the you know, the liberal left revolutionary element is probably something like 10 or 20 percent of that mass.
And I would I would go so far as to say that 80 or 90 percent of the protesters that we saw yesterday were actually were actually pro former regime and would actually like to see somebody like Ahmed Shafiq come back basically and basically reinstall the former Mubarak regime back in Egypt again.
I see.
So then.
Yeah.
The end of regular elections back to military dictatorship.
Well, no, we'll help you out with this.
Because was it wasn't Mubarak's faction the military or what other faction did he represent?
Because it wasn't the Islamists and it wasn't the liberals.
Oh, yeah.
No, certainly not the National Democratic Party, which worked in which worked in tandem with the military.
Yeah, I mean, I always call them General Mubarak because I always figured why go along with his pretension or Hillary or or Condoleezza Rice's pretension that he's a president when he's a dictator.
He's a military dictator.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Well, what would really be tragic is if they did call snap presidential elections and if Ahmed Shafiq has been waiting basically in the Emirates this whole time.
He's been abroad.
He's been abroad more or less since the revolution.
And my my fear is that basically if they do hold snap presidential elections, he's going to be brought back of this, you know, highly touted in the media of this savior of this, this, you know, this hidden savior that's been waiting abroad, waiting for the right time to come back and save Egypt and to bring it back to normal normalcy after two, two and a half years of all of this crazy revolution stuff, because you have to bear in mind the very idea of revolution now has suffered a huge blow over the last couple of over the last two years, because a lot of Egyptians, you know, you have a lot of Egyptians saying, like, look, we were we were we were we supported the ouster of Mubarak.
But it's it but we we almost prefer the the at least at least he provided stability.
I mean, you know what I mean?
Our economic situation hasn't improved and now we have instability as well.
So isn't it better to just go back to a period where at least things were stable?
Things might have been difficult economically and all of that, but at least you had a modicum of political stability in which people could work and maybe make a little bit of money.
So so now you have this dynamic where if she were to return to Egypt and run it run in presidential elections, I suspect he would he would win them.
And remember, he only lost by forty nine percent in last year's election.
So my fear is that Egypt might might become one of the first countries to basically overthrow a dictator in a popular revolution and then vote the same regime back into power again through the ballot box.
That's that's my biggest fear.
Yeah, boy, when there'd be something now.
So tell me about the American role in all of this.
And I know that the CIA is a secret and everything.
But of course, as we've talked about for a couple and a half years now, the CIA has long standing ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, at least back in history.
And of course, they backed Hosni Mubarak and they wanted to keep him.
But then, of course, they backed the liberals some in the days leading up or maybe the years leading up to the revolution because they knew he was going to die at some point.
And they'd already figured that his son was a no good Nick and that wasn't going to work out.
And so they were trying to figure out something.
So and then we've talked before about all of the different pressures on the Egyptian government to just basically leave everything well enough alone when it comes to foreign policy, because they've got enough domestic problems at this point and that kind of thing.
But I always wonder, you know, which scale the CIA is putting their thumb on.
And obviously, that could be three or four competing interests at the same time that they're weighing in on the side of two.
Sure.
Well, I don't I don't dismiss the possibility that they've actually got their hands on in on both sides.
This is an interesting point that you bring up the American issue, because it's it's it's an issue that's becoming extra sensitive in the course of the last couple of days and weeks.
And Syria actually is a part of this whole thing.
You now have basically rising anti-Americanism in both camps, which is a real bummer for me because I live here.
But you actually have a mounting mounting anti-Americanism being seen among the opposition camp, basically, who accused Morsi of taking on pro-U.S. positions in the last couple of months, especially the one regarding Syria.
If you remember, I think it was about two weeks ago, the president announced that he was severed, that Egypt had cut ties with Damascus, basically, which was a pretty big deal.
That was it was a pretty big deal.
And a lot of people noticed that were very quick to point out the opposition was very quick to point out that that decision by Morsi came something like three days after the U.S. had basically said that it was going to start start arming the rebels in Syria.
So a lot of people accused Morsi of basically following just following an American policy line.
And also, they've also because the Brotherhood has also said it would continue to respect Camp David.
I don't I don't know if you remember this, but when they were elected, they said they would continue to respect Camp David.
And they they made another they made several other you know, they took on several other positions that that were seen to be in line with U.S. interests, which is it's a very important point here about Egypt throwing in with the revolution in Syria, because, of course, if you were to listen to the Rush Limbaugh clones of America or whatever, they would say this is just another example of our Muslim president siding with the with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Muslim Brotherhood plot in Syria, something like that.
Actually, Limbaugh probably would be pro Al Qaeda in Syria.
You have to go a little further to the right.
Michelle Bachman in them.
Right.
They would say this is, you know, a little further to the right there would say that this is a matter of of Obama carrying out a Muslim Brotherhood agenda.
But really, it does seem like it's the Muslim Brotherhood carrying out an American agenda here in the real world, just like back in the old days.
No, I mean, in fact, obviously, I can see why the Muslim Brotherhood would want revolution in Egypt and what they have to gain from it.
And I know the Qataris are helping support the Syrian branch.
I said Egypt when I met Syria.
I know that the Qataris are helping support the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and all that.
But boy, as far as public relations goes, when everybody knows that America is on the side of the rebellion over there, that was a real brain dead move by him to do right for domestic politics.
You mean for Morsi to do it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I agree.
I was really it was it was the first thing he did that I really, really, really made me question what these guys were thinking.
Well, he may have no choice.
I mean, he very well may have just a gun to his head that we don't understand.
Well, OK, this is one possibility that there's stuff going on in the background and he had a gun to his head somehow and that he was he was told he was given an instruction.
You know, he was given a directive and told, you know, it was made a deal that he couldn't refuse or something like this in the background.
This is this is one possibility.
However, there's also another important dynamic on the domestic on the domestic level here is that because because the presidency, because Morsi has basically fallen out so badly with the liberal and leftists and the liberal left, he has had to him and the Muslim Brotherhood have basically had to fall back on the Salafist right wing, which constitutes the other roughly quarter.
You know, if you if you if you look at the results of 2012, 2011 parliamentary elections, you'll find Muslim Brotherhood about 50 percent, liberals and leftists about 25 percent and the Salafists about 25 percent.
So basically because of because the because basically relations with the left have collapsed so, so irreparably over the last couple of months, he's basically had to fall back on and try to get support from the Salafist right.
And the Salafists are super, super anti Assad.
And that might have been along with having been a directive from the United States.
It was definitely seen as a stop to his to the Salafist right wing who are all I mean, these are guys that basically want to go to Syria and join the jihad.
Right.
OK, so I'm sorry, Adam, I just realized that I kept you way over time.
You needed to go early today and I've kept you.
Yeah, no worries.
I do have to move, Scott.
I do have to move.
But I hope to hear from you again soon.
I'm sure there's going to be plenty more, plenty more crazy stuff that we're going to see here over the course of the next couple of days and weeks.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I got your number.
Thanks again.
I sure appreciate it.
OK, take care.
Talk to you soon.
All right.
Everybody.
That is a great Adam Morrow.
He's a reporter for Inter Press Service.
That's IPS news dot net reporting from Cairo.
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