Adam Morrow, journalist with IPS News, discusses the divide on Egypt’s March referendum, split along religious lines; the economic crisis that sparked the revolution, and the many other grievances that sustain it; and the upcoming parliamentary and presidential polls that, if conducted fairly, will finally give Egyptians a representative government.
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Alright, y'all, welcome back to the show.
Now we're lucky enough to have Adam Moore on the show for the last segment.
He's a reporter for Interpress Service, that's IPSnews.net, and we've run quite a few of his articles at Antiwar.com as well, and he's in Cairo right now, I believe.
Welcome back to the show, Adam.
How's it going?
Hey, good.
Very good, Scott.
How are you doing?
Good to talk to you again.
I'm doing great.
I really appreciate you joining us today.
What's the latest on the revolution?
What the heck is going on over there?
Ah, what's the latest on the revolution?
Well, I'm sure you probably went over a couple, two weeks ago, the last sort of major thing to happen was the national referendum that was held, which I'm sure you talked about with your listeners about.
That was about two weeks ago.
Yeah, we talked about Ahmed El-Assi, your friend on the show.
Right, right, right.
And the public basically voted overwhelmingly to endorse the amendment of seven or eight constitutional articles, which are expected to, or which are designed to liberalize the political, free up the electoral process.
So that wasn't just some ham-handed internal coup by the military to placate some nonsense?
That was a real thing, and you supported it, huh?
Well, there was, I mean, what the referendum represented was, I mean, even though it was a watershed in the sense that it was the first real free balloting that took place in Egypt and in modern history, it was also the first sort of, it also represented the first sort of, you know, split in popular, in public opinion.
Because since the revolution, the public has been extremely united and unified, and that's the thing that really took down the regime, was the fact that they were unable to sort of break up the, you know, break up this, drive a wedge between the secularists and the religious people, or the Muslims and the Christians.
So this did sort of represent the very first time that there was a major split in the public, which sort of broke down between religious and secularist lines, with most of the people who voted for the constitutional amendments were actually, actually tended to be more Islamic in nature than those who voted against it.
And so what kind of reforms?
I saw that the secret police was abolished and then recreated, renamed something else.
Oh, right.
Yeah, that was actually something.
I was out of town when that happened, but yeah, apparently the state security, the infamous state security was abolished, was formally abolished a couple weeks ago.
And I believe there's some kind of new institution that's supposed to take its place, but to be honest with you, I'm not exactly sure.
I meant to write up an IPS story about it, but I actually am not exactly sure what the implications are going to be.
People are afraid that that was the institution that was closely associated with the interior ministry before, and which was responsible for a lot of the bad stuff that happened during the revolution and before.
All right, now, I try to pay a lot of attention to the news, certainly I never went to grad school about Egypt or anything like that, but I really know next to nothing about the place, never been there.
I think that goes for most Americans, which might be a reason why we ought to stay out of intervening in countries where we don't really know what's going on, but best I can tell from here, it seems like, depending on your point of view, this revolution was really just kind of a minor thing.
It was sort of a vote and no confidence in the current prime minister or whatever, but it was not really a change of regime.
The military really is the regime there, and all that everybody's waiting for now is basically to put a new civilian head on the same old military dictatorship they had all along.
You know, obviously, being a little bit hyperbolic, I know you're saying that there's some bright prospects, but I wonder, is that what basically the people in Tahrir Square think?
That their revolution is very incomplete, or where do we all stand against the regime at this point?
Right, that's a really good point.
A friend of mine was just saying, who exactly is this military, this is a friend of mine, an Egyptian friend who lives abroad, who came back to Egypt for the Tahrir event, was actually just saying, who exactly is this Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, you know, that's sort of been posed as this protector of the people, and who stepped in to protect the people from the police and all of this sort of stuff, is actually really, I mean, the Egyptian military is actually extremely close to the U.S. military, and there have been a lot of criticisms about a lot of people saying that the revolution is incomplete, because like you just said, there's now this sort of military running the show now, as opposed to an elected head of state, but hopefully that will change with elections.
I know that parliamentary elections are scheduled for September, and presidential elections should come shortly after that, a couple months after that, although it hasn't been exactly decided, it hasn't been determined exactly when yet.
But if those elections go down like the last referendum did, in a free and unimpeded way, if they're allowed to be held democratically, the will of the people will then be represented.
What's really the motivation behind this revolution in Egypt?
I mean, obviously the revolution in Tunisia sort of set the example, like, wow, you can do that, let's go out and do that.
But some say it's just price inflation, and people, especially the very poor, can't even afford their food budget that they were barely getting by on.
Others would point to torture or American support for Mubarak's cruelty across the board, including, say, the Gaza blockade, cooperating with that, et cetera.
But when you're out there in Tahrir Square, what is it that is the overriding agreed-upon goal of these people?
That's also another really good question.
I think it was a combination of all the things you just said.
Years and years of extremely unpopular policies, both domestically and foreign.
Like you said, the Gaza blockade is incredibly unpopular.
It makes the Egyptian people feel that they're somehow complicit in the strangulation of the Gaza Strip, as well as loads and loads of other foreign and regional policies, as well as, like what you said, horrific domestic situations in which human rights were run over, roughshod, the situation with torture.
I don't know if you remember, there was the Khaled Saeed case, where a young man from Alexandria was beaten to death by police.
That must have happened about six to nine months before the revolution.
That made a very big deal, where two policemen were implicated in beating to death this young man.
That had a very wide effect, very big effect on a lot of people.
But I think the thing that sort of triggered it was the economic stuff.
I think the situation was just getting so bad in terms of inflation, in terms of people's salaries no longer being able to cover, just simply, I mean, simply no longer able to get by with your average salaries.
People couldn't put food on the tables for their families anymore.
And I think that was, I think that was the final, the sort of straw that broke the camel's back, you know.
But like I said, it was a combination of all of those things.
Yeah.
Well, that's the irony for me, of course, is the inflation of the money supply, the US dollar, in which so many of these international goods like wheat are denominated in.
And, you know, they do all this in order to expand the reach of the empire across the Middle East and at the same time are just sowing the seeds of their own undoing, as it breeds rebellion from Morocco to Pakistan.
Exactly.
The economic situation in Egypt was hardly unique to Egypt, as you know.
I mean, it's the result of globalization.
And I mean, the same can be said in so many other countries.
But what's interesting is a place like Bahrain is particularly known.
I mean, there's a place that isn't, it's not really considered a poor country.
I mean, Tunis was, Libya was, Egypt was.
But a country like Bahrain, so it's not, I mean, it's not, I mean, there are factors at play here besides just economics.
But I do think that was certainly in Egypt's case, that was the overriding factor.
I mean, people, I've heard complaints coming out of the United States about how bad the economy is.
Maybe if I could just ask you a question, I mean, is what's the, what is the story in the States these days?
I mean, is the economy a huge issue now?
Is inflation as bad as what I've been hearing?
Well, we export a lot of our inflation.
I mean, you see it in the price of everything that they no longer count in the consumer price index or whatever.
On TV, they say the inflation rate is low, but anybody who has to fill their tank or buy food or medicine or, you know, of course, it's the most state-connected industries that have the most inflation for obvious reasons.
They're the ones getting the money first as it's created.
And, but of course, yeah, I mean, it, it seems to me and, and a better Austrian school economist than me certainly have pointed to the fact that, you know, Egypt, I think imports two thirds of their food from overseas and, you know, most of their grain from the United States and they have to buy that food in American dollars that are depreciating.
And so if you live on $2 a day and you get cut to really $2 is only worth one now, you're in a real bad place.
Can't put food on your family as George Bush and you just said.
So anyway, let's reprise this maybe tomorrow or Monday.
Sure.
Sounds good.
All right.
Great.
I really appreciate your time on the show.
I'm sorry.
We're all out of it.
I screwed up the country code there, but these things happen to the live radio.
No problem.
Look forward to doing it again, Scott.
Okay.
Take care everybody.
That's Adam Morrow.
He is a reporter for interpress service.
That's IPS news.net and a is on the phone from Cairo and hopefully I'll have a read better and we'll have better questions when we reprise this thing here in the coming days.
Anti-war radio.
See you tomorrow.
