Abdel Fattah El-Sisi for President?

With a high approval rating, many Egyptians think that Abdel Fattah El-Sisi is the answer to all the country’s problems. and they saying that  he is the hero God sent to make everything right again -- until he opened his mouth during an interview, which was aired in two parts, on a private Egyptian channel.

The TV interview with sisi last week revealed an out of touch military man with has no answers or understanding of how bad things are in Egypt. It also showed that he is not prepared to be the leader everyone desperately wants him to be.

His answer to a debilitating economy and high unemployment is to create trucks out of thin air and hand them over to young men to use as mobile vegetable shops. When he was asked where the trucks are coming from, Sisi said "don't worry they will be here if I say so" with the attitude of a high school bully.

When Siai was pressed to further explain his solution to the unemployment issue, he mention something about telling the banks to buy the trucks and then the drivers would be responsible for repaying the loans when they started making money.

It was clear that he had been put on the spot, He didn’t have prepared answers. However these questions should have been thought of before he ever agreed to be on the interview. Mind you that these questions are on mind of everyone in Egypt: What are you going to do about the economy? How can you solve the unemployment problems? education? corruptions? all of this are questions that need to be answered by someone who is running for president.

Sisi also promised that he will eliminate the Muslim Brotherhood from the political stage in Egypt. His language insinuated that he is going to remove them by any means necessary.

Now Egypt is faced with an unqualified front runner for president. He is a military man who thinks that he can create things out of thin air, and eliminate his opponents by any means necessary.

Unfortunately Sisi will win and the struggle will continue to find someone better to lead Egypt out of the dark ages.

The Nightmare is Over

Standing in the middle of the crowd outside the El Eitihadya presidential palace for hours, listening to the chanting of people calling for Morsi to leave, filled me with hope and pride.

At a coffee shop, finally sitting down to eat something after a long day at the protest, I look up as El Sisi, head of the armed forces in Egypt, appears on TV. His voice is heard from parked cars and shops close by.

During the speech, the loud and bustling streets got so quiet so fast. This is what everyone in Egypt was waiting for; a speech from Sisi to tell us what is going to happen. Egyptians are deeply invested in the hope that the military will do the right thing, and stand by the peaceful anti-Morsi protesters.

The people listen carefully, and hang on every word. After the crowd understands that the Military has actually forced Morsi out of office, the streets roar, and screams of celebration everywhere break the silence.

What I felt, and what the people felt at that moment, is hard to put into words. Pride, happiness, and a sense of achievement. The peaceful protest really worked. You can get what you want without bloodshed.

Egyptians have been in a nightmare called the Muslim Brotherhood since the end of the initial revolution on January 25, 2011. Morsi's religious party swarmed into power, and they felt very comfortable very fast. Right away they started to change Egypt to what they called "Islamist Egypt."

Now that Morsi is under house arrest, Egyptians have said loud and clear that they don’t want an Islamist state, and do not trust a Muslim Brotherhood government. The Egyptian people not only removed two presidents in two years, but Egypt has become the first country to overthrow an Islamist state; a new notch on the Egyptian belt.

What really bothers me is that most of the headlines around the world read as if Egypt is having a military coup. We called on our Egyptian military to end Morsi's regime, and to help prevent the threat of civil war. We all know that our military isn't perfect, but they answered the call of millions of Egyptians, and we are grateful.

I'm proud of the actions of our military and police in the past few days, and very glad that our Muslim Brotherhood nightmare is over.

Anti-Morsi 'Rebel' campaign is Going Strong

Millions of signatures are being collected on the streets of Egypt to show Morsi how unsatisfied Egyptian people are with the job he is doing, or failing to do.

Morsi allegedly won the presidency with a little over thirteen millions vote out of fifty million registered voters. You might ask why Egyptians voted for him in the first place?  Egyptians were not ready to vote for a president after all that the country had been going through right after the 2011 revolution. But due to the power vacuum that happened with the removal of Hosni Mubarak on Feb 11, 2011, many counter-elite Islamist parties like the Muslim Brotherhood moved in to gain the political power they had been deprived of for over sixty years.

Most of people who voted for Morsi believed in choosing someone other than what they had under Mubarak for years. The preliminary election was full of candidates without organized parties or name recognition, making it difficult for anyone with a new voice to rise up. The field was quickly narrowed down to two options, as people voted either for the Muslim Brotherhood candidate based on their shared religion, or on a name they recognized from their past. In the final election, Morsi faced Ahamed Shafiq, a military men turned businessman who had worked in many high-level positions under Mubarak, and was also a close ally of Mubarak.

So you can see, when Egyptians went out to vote, they had to choose between a member of the old elite, Shafiq, or a Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Morsi. Not exactly the democracy Egyptians had hoped for after a revolution.

Almost a year after Morsi became the new Egyptian president, people have not been happy with his performance or decisions. But Egypt has not been the same. Egyptian people are talking openly about politics in public, and voicing their opinions. Egyptians are no longer afraid of being jailed or persecuted for their opinions.

So they started collecting signatures under a movement called "Rebel" to directly show how deeply disappointed they are in Morsi's job as a post revolution leader. The effort has no formal legal standing, but it is an attempt to demonstrate the scale of the opposition by collecting more signatures opposing Morsi than the number of votes Morsi had when he won the election.

Despite the fact the this rebel campaign is only symbolic, people are very excited to be a part of this campaign. The Rebel document calls for the rejection of Morsi for the following reasons:

We reject you … Because Security has not been recovered so far We reject you… Because the deprived one has still no place to fit We reject you … Because we are still begging loans from the outside We reject you … Because no justice has been brought to the martyrs We reject you. .. Because no dignity was left neither for me nor for my country We reject you… Because the economy has collapsed, and depends only on begging We reject you… Because Egypt is still following the footsteps of the USA "Since the arrival of Mohamed Morsi to power, the average citizen still has the feeling that nothing has been achieved so far from the revolution goals which were life in dignity, freedom, social justice and national independence. Morsi was a total failure in achieving every single goal, no security has been reestablished and no social security realized, thus and gave clear proof that he is not fit for the governance of such a country as Egypt."

Amazingly enough the number of signatures so far already exceeds six million. In the first ten days of the campaign, over two million signature were collected. The Rebel campaign is going strong, with a target date of June 30, when they are hoping to reach fifteen million signatures.

I have a feeling they will reach a much higher number.

Conversations with the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan)

I have been in Cairo since February, 2013, and now it is May; I have met with many people of all kinds of social status, education, background, and political party affiliation. But I have been most interested in talking to is someone who is a Muslim Brotherhood active member, to hear their perspective. It has been difficult finding a Muslim Brotherhood member in Cairo who was willing to talk on the record.

Yesterday I got my wish. Not only did I talk to one person, I talked to several Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters, and they were very willing to talk to me about their opinions of Morsi.

But the conversations mostly went in the same direction, and ended up with no variety of results at all. They all loved Morsi, and said any criticism of him was the fault of the media, or foreign influences. But other than their support for his faith, they couldn't point to specifics to show good things he has actually done.

As an example, I will go through part of one conversation I had with a Muslim Brotherhood member. Since all of the conversations went almost exactly the same way, I’m just going to call this person MB.

Me: How do you like Morsi's presidency so far?

Muslim Brotherhood Member (MB): I like it a lot. He is an amazing man. He will set Egypt in the right direction politically, economically, and internationally.

Me: Well that sounds great, however I have been living in Egypt for few months, and I've never heard anything but criticism against Morsi and his administration. How do you feel about that?

MB: The media are the ones to blame. They are attacking him all the time, and they don’t focus on his achievements. You have a democratically elected president for the first time, and the media people are insulting him, making fun of him, and fighting him every step of the way.

Me: Wait, I never mentioned the media. I’m telling you everybody I sit with says they don’t feel or see that Morsi has been doing anything good to help Egypt recover.

MB: It is because people watch the TV to much, and believe what the TV is telling them. The media are making fun of Morsi non-stop, and they highlight his mistakes more than his achievements.

Me: But what about inflation, the lack of the security, and the lack of the job opportunities for young and poor people?

MB: There are many people who want Morsi to fail. Israel, the USA, and such.

Of course that didn’t answer my question.

The interviews all went on that way, covering a wide range of topics. The answers I got were all defensive about the reasons for Morsi's failures, but vague about any actual accomplishments.

Morsi seems most interested in installing his Muslim Brotherhood members in any high position, like the prime minister and many other ministerial positions in the country, with total disregard to their qualifications

The majority of the people I've spoken with don’t feel that the country is going in the right direction to move beyond the hard times they live in right now. These are real issues, and they don’t feel that Morsi has the answers for any of these issues.

People don’t have to watch TV, or listen to foreign sources, to know that they don’t have jobs or money to spend to get their next meal.

Cleansing the Judiciary System, Ikhwan Style

The islamist party, Ikhwan, has been calling for a week of protest since april 19, to cleanse the judiciary system.

You might ask, "Why? Why are the ruling majority protesting to cleanse the judiciary system?"

This is a hard question to answer. It depends on who you ask. Egyptian society is polarized, with political parties, rumours, and discontent with Morsi’s ruling party--and with Morsi himself.

The majority of Egyptians are not even aware of any judiciary system problems. They only notice a problems when they have to go to court for one reason or another. Then they might see evidence of the corrupt system we have in Egypt.

So is there a simple answer to the question why Ikhwan is protesting against the judiciary system? The popular opinion is that Ikhwan wants to replace all the current judges with Ikhwan judges, to put control over all aspects of the regime into their hands.

You might point out that all newly elected presidents try to bring in people from their own party, who share the same views, to make the job of the president easier. That seems like a fair assumption. But what you might not know is that many of the judges have received complaints and cases against Morsi, along with requests to to bring him to justice on many accounts of espionage.

Here's a little background: Morsi was a political prisoner during the popular Egyptian uprising that started on January 25, 2011, and he is very proud of that record. Not only was he in prison on charges of espionage, Morsi was freed on January 28, 2011 by unknown people. That is not the weird part; many prisoners were freed during the revolution to create chaos and unrest, and to intimidate people from leaving their homes.

But Morsi didn’t terrorize anyone when he was freed. The first thing Morsi did, when he was standing right outside of the prison gate, was to call Al Jazeera channel's live broadcast to let them know on air that he was free, and that he was stuck in the middle of the highway between Cairo and Alexandria.

Morsi also mentioned the names of all the people who were freed with him that day, according to Al Jazeera's English translation of the broadcast:

“Mohamed Morsi and Essam el-Erian and Saad Katatni and Mohy Hamed and Mahmoud Abu Zeid Mustafa Ghoneimy and Saad Al Husseiny these 7 members of the Guidance Bureau, and with us Mr. Enzily official Giza in the Muslim Brotherhood, and Ahmed Abdel Rahman official Fayoum in the Muslim Brotherhood, and Majid Zomor, a northern Cairo, Hassan Abu Shaish official Brotherhood in Kafr El-Sheikh, on Ezz, one of Assiut, one of the officials of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Well the story gets even more bizarre. Starting on January 27, 2011 the whole country had no connectivity. There were no landlines, no cell phone lines, and not even internet for two days.

So with this information, we have more question than answers:

• Why did Morsi call Al Jazeera first thing when he got out of prison?
• Where did Morsi get a working cell phone to call Al Jazeera?
• How did Morsi make an international phone call to Qatar if there were no phone lines or internet?
• How did Morsi know the Al Jazeera phone number to call?

So the case against Morsi is waiting for investigation, and so far it has been delayed. That may be because it is easy to question an individual, but questioning a president is a different story.

In the meantime, the protests by Ikhwan against the judiciary system were the start of the violent clashes in Egypt since April 19. And according to reports on April 20 in Al Ahram Online, over a hundred people were injured in clashes nationwide. Seventeen of the injured were policemen, some of whom were treated for birdshot wounds. Almost forty people have been arrested in connection with Friday’s clashes, accused of everything from damaging property to “terrorizing citizens.”

The people of Egypt need to pay attention to what's happening, before Ikhwan replaces everyone in the entire regime with representatives from one organization.