(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Amr Moussa led the candidates with 18 percent of the votes while Abdel Monem Aboul Fotouh was close behind with 16 percent. We have conducted an interview with Ali El-Kabbany, writer and journalist, to hear his opinion on this issue. The following is a rough transcription of the interview. Q: We are looking at pretty much what the polls seem to indicate Moussa on the lead, Fotouh coming in second and Shafiq third except for this poll that has come out. What do you think? These polls putting different candidates and shuffling them around, is it something that is going to make a difference in the upcoming vote? El-Kabbany: Actually in Egypt we do not have an experience [of] independent organization which can take an opinion poll in a scientific and studied way, so all the opinion polls which you are seeing now are organized by television channels or newspaper organizations to promote their own agenda because their audiences are not representing the whole society in Egypt. So one should take with a pinch of salt any of those opinion polls because as I said there is no scientific and experienced organization which manage these polls. But if we have an indication of the public opinion in Egypt, we would see from the parliamentary election that the majority of the Egyptian people are voting for the Islamists or those who are representing the political Islam. Because also [as] a matter of fact the other candidates no one knows their political color or ideology or their future program. Okay, we hear from them but it is all slogans without any full and complete program. Q: Like what? Give us an example. El-Kabbany: What Amr Moussa is saying, what even Dr. Aboul Fotouh is saying and Ahmed Shafiq, no one have got the actual information to build a program to save Egypt from the situation they are in now-- economically, socially and politically. Q: And why is that? No platform really? El-Kabbany: Why is that? Because we lived in a dictatorship for more than six decades and you cannot; revolution is not a switch you can move from dictatorship to democracy. First in a democratic environment we should have freedom of information, freedom of knowledge, exchanging views, actual facts which nobody knows until now and as I said before even in a democratic society like Britain for example the Conservative Party are saying now after two years in power they just discovered the gravity of the severity of economic situation in Great Britain. So any of those candidates in Egypt they never had experienced before in running the country and they did not have access to the information because of the dictatorship regime even those who were members of the regime like Moussa or Shafiq, they never know the actual picture and the actual information. Q: Ali el-Kabbany, what our guest there said a real democratic technique and a clean background is what the Egyptians are going to vote for. Do you agree with that? El-Kabbany: The Egyptian people should know and have to know that no candidate among all those candidates of the president election does have a magic stick to solve the economic problem in Egypt and actually politicians their job is not solve economic problems because they never did even those experienced politicians in the Western democratic societies. The role of the politicians is to create stability, security and a good democratic atmosphere for the Egyptian people to rectify their economy and to build their economy. So it is the people of the country which build the economy not the politicians. Q: You do not believe any candidate is bringing that about of the 13 that are running? El-Kabbany: None of them have got the magic stick and none of them can do that unless we have got a democratic system which can as I said create security, stability and freedom of expression and freedom of activity and give equal opportunity to all Egyptian people and not to the corrupt…
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