Egypt must have a smooth transition of power - politician
Press TV has conducted an interview with Mohamed Sudan, the Head of Foreign Relations Committee of the Justice and Freedom Party, about the Egyptian military giving politicians a 48-hour ultimatum to bring an end to the political crisis and to meet public demands. What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.
- The first question I’d like to put to you is the statement that has been made by the military. What the political roadmap that they say you think is going to look like? Do you think that this political roadmap means that there is going to be earlier elections and that President Mohamed Morsi is going to be forced out of his seat?
- I think now we are waiting for the statement or the press conference coming from the presidency. Then I think that there are something confused from the army statements, then the President should explain everything in the press conference [that] would be at nine o’clock tonight.
- So what do you think that statement is going to be, I mean what are your expectations? Do you think that the Muslim Brotherhood now is going to come up with something against the military statement? It is going to say for instance that we are not going to accept that political roadmap?
- No, no we never look for something like this. We always have a very good relationship with the army and the military and we just need to understand.
Now the army should support the legitimacy and also they are from the same wave from the Egyptian citizens. They gave a chance for all the political powers and leaders from one week ago and nothing happened. President Morsi called for a national dialogue but no one answered his calling and now again the army gave another 48 hours for all parties, all political parties even the supporters or the opponents, then after that they say that there is going to be like another plan to solve the condition in the Egyptian streets and solve this kind of crisis and problem.
A lot of people [are] in the Egyptian streets now, some of them are supporters and some of them are opponents and oppositions.
- Mr. Sudan, do you think that the military then was not speaking against the government because when the military said we want people’s demands to be met, a lot of people were seeing that as some kind of a threat to the Morsi government. Do you agree?
- I think this is just guesses from everybody. Even us, we still don’t understand these kinds of statements, not clear enough but we are still waiting for the explanation from the presidency.
- Mr. Sudan, we know that Morsi is under a lot of pressure now and has made people angry because they say he is favoring the Muslim Brotherhood again over all other parties, he is leading a bad foreign policy they say on Syria, on Israel, or on Africa, he has plunged the economy they say into crisis by relying just on the IMF loans.
These are just some of the issues and most importantly of course they accuse him of keeping a large number of former regime officials in place in the government.
So what has Morsi done in terms of the goals of the revolution?
- We have to come back again to when Dr. Morsi started his receiving the power. As soon as he started receiving the power a lot of fabricated crisis, a lot of crisis and then problem with the SCAF for 40 days and the people called for a million demonstration, it's about 24 and this one is the 25th . How come, this is really very [panicking] for anyone to rule any country in the world especially that we are coming after a revolution.
We don't have stability, we don't have enough security and safety, we still have a late from the police officers and department. They are still not working enough. Groups like that, they are not happy with democracy and then he faces a lot of problem.
And now he only wants just the opportunity for two months to have the parliamentary elections. Then by that way we [will] still be in the room of democracy. We still, looks like that we are good people. We are a...model as we were in the revolution of the 25th and then let us go to the parliamentary elections and then we'll have, as they said they have 26 million people signed for their forms. That is fine that they got this kind of people and let’s go for the [parliamentary elections].
I don't know why they do not want to go to the parliamentary elections and then they have the majority seats and they have their own ministry cabinet and they can judge, even they can judge the President and let’s go with a smooth transition for the power.