Egyptians attribute dire situation to Morsi - political commentator
Press TV has conducted an interview with Mustafa Abbas, political commentator, about the current situation in Egypt. What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.
- Mustafa Abbas, aside from the fact that Morsi has been ousted, some calling it a coup, some were refraining from doing that. What are Egyptians celebrating as we speak since they are out again in the tens of thousands in Liberation or Tahrir square?
- Egyptians have been drummed into their ears the fact or the possibility that the economic situation, the dire economic situation they are in and the terrible economic, political and social situation Egypt is in, this is drummed into their ears as being attributed to Dr. Morsi.
Actually most of them are in a festive mood. They really, most of them I would venture do not know exactly what they are on the streets for. They are happy because everybody else is happy and they think that they have gotten rid of the Muslim Brothers which was going to deprive them of their old way of life and of their freedom and even impose on them a form of Islamic state that they were encouraged to hate.
So they do not realize the dimension that the army is back in the saddle and the army will be eased already and will be in the control of the country for some time and that will translate into the coming back of the remnants of the old regime, they will come back...
- Mustafa Abbas, your reaction now to what Passant Fahmy [the other guest of the program] has said.
- Yes, somehow my interlocutor put words into my mouth. I did not underestimate the wisdom of the Egyptian people who made the 25th of January revolution, who taught the world how to demonstrate peacefully and they did it again on the 30th of June.
I am against annulling the constitution which is again the product of collective thinking of the Egyptian people and it was voted on and it won the majority of the Egyptian votes and you cannot treat the first elected president of Egypt in the history of Egypt the way we have done so far.
I agree that Mr. Morsi has to go because he is not making the people happy, the level of satisfaction with his performance is very low as was clear from the turnout that we have been watching in the last four or five days.
What I am saying is that the president had to stay in power for an interim period of two, three, four, six months and then he has to be forced into declaring an early election because the people do not want him but for the army which is an institution of the state, only an institution of the state, it is not a superior institution for the army to intervene and dictate the way it has, I think this is bad for Egypt.
It will set the president for the future. Any president that is not to the liking of the army or probably any other institution or a group of people, people will take to the streets and remember that we have in this country ninety or eighty five million people, if you count the people from outside it is ninety million people, so you can very easily mobilize millions of people to come to the streets and ask for the ouster of the president.
All you have to do is to have some money and spend that on satellite or even regular channels and hype the people into dissatisfaction with the performance of the president.
Again, Mr. Morsi played in the hands of the counterrevolution ...