(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Reports shows that in the last year over 1000 people have lost their lives and more than 16000 were jailed, demanding for greater freedom of speech and putting an end to military trials of civilians The planned presidential election for June, for many of Egyptians seems to be the continuation of the military rule. We have conducted an interview with Wafik Moustafa, Chairman of the Conservative Arab Network to further discuss the issue. What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview. Q: If I could start with you Dr. Wafik, you have not long returned from Egypt. Are we being ultra critical in actually saying that there is a potential that the ruling military council is now the enemy of its own people? Moustafa: I do not think the military council [SCAF] is enemy of its own people. It is totally untrue and founded. Indeed it is the only institution which is left intact in Egypt, now is the military. Q: What about the parliament? Moustafa: No, the parliament is not an institution. The parliament has only been elected very recently. Q: And you feel they have no impact on the current scenario? Moustafa: I do not think they have had impact. They did not have a political program and that is reason core of the matter. There have been elections, but elections do not mean democracy. It is a lot of confusions on the ground in Egypt. Security vacuum is very scary. People have been killed, people have been blocking the train movement between Cairo and Alexandria, the economy stands still. I think it is a chaos. The least I can describe it is a very confused situation, we should not take it lightly. Q: Would you say, Dr. Wafik Moustafa that the role of the US in funding the military has a very strong impact on the actions they take, i.e. ultra conservative, pretty similar to how they used to behave under Mubarak? Moustafa: Well, I would say the role of the United States in Egypt as a whole is a very complex role. It is supporting the military, supporting the Non-Governmental Organizations [NGO’s], it is very complex. It is a very- I would say- United States will continue to support Egypt, because of Egypt itself as a country. Egypt is 85 millions. You cannot have a country of refugees tomorrow. Egypt’s economy is melting down by the day. The hard currency reserved in Egypt has dropped by almost 80 percent. So, by June-July, Egypt will be coming into probably failed state. So, I think you see the people start to be really understanding what has happened and the civil disobedience call last Saturday, failed because people realized that people trying to move them in Tahrir square and around the Ministry of Interior, really are not interested and do not care about the country as a whole. Q: Do you agree with that analysis there? I mean it seems like the council is literally handcuffed to American interests? Moustafa: Not, exactly that way, but certainly there is, of course interest to keep the American relationship intact and strong. Because Egypt needs American money, Egypt needs American support and West’s support. The biggest problem that uprising came without leadership was a Facebook uprising. But there was no roadmap of reform in Egypt. Having free elections do not mean you had a democracy. That is why we are stuck; the Muslim brotherhood and all parties did not have a political program vis-à-vis internal structure, what is going to happen, tourism, etc? We have snippets of talks from each one. One says that is Haram [forbidden in Islamic law], that is not possible. Q: And yet the Muslim brotherhood is the longest surviving, most organized, most financially stable organization. How come in all of these years of being a semi-legal opposition, they could not work out at least a roadmap for when they took power? Moustafa: That is the crunch of the matter, which I would say because they have not gotten to really political maturity enough was my expect of course because they do have the large number of people in the parliament in Egypt, but they have not got a road map. They did not show anything. They did not say what they are going to do; they have no idea about the economy. They have no idea what to do with Israel, with Camp David agreement. They have no idea to do what has happened in the Arab Spring, in the Arab world. They are pulled everywhere because it has had finances from different parts of the world.
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