With the upcoming presidential elections on the doors, everyone is confused about the right candidate to support and/or vote for, when the time comes. AUC\u27s Nora ElHariri reports

ElHariri, Nora

AUC Knowledge Fountain (American Univ. in Cairo)

Presidential Candidates in Egypt; Who is more worthy of the Presidential title? LEAD-IN: With the upcoming presidential elections on the doors, everyone is confused about the right candidate to support and/or vote for, when the time comes. A-U-C’s Nora ElHariri reports.  Nat Sound EL Shaab Yoreed Esqaaat El Nezaam. (:06)   And the regime has been brought down. (:09) On the 25th of January, the history of Egypt was re-written. All plans were delayed, and for 18 days -- an estimate number of 8 million protestors filled up the streets of Egypt, expressing their anger at themselves for having stayed silent for that long, unwilling to stay silent any longer. (:40) The people gathered for a little less than three weeks, and on the afternoon of January 11th, the whole world stood still disbelieving what had just happened.  Nat Sound: Countdown (:51)  Nat Sound: El Shaab Khalas 2asqat el ra2ees. (1:10) (FADE IN).  Nat Sound: El Shaab Khalas 2asqat el ra2ees. (1:10) (FADE OUT).  After 30 continuous years of the rule of former president Mohamed Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian people are finally free to choose the next ruler of their country. However, the act of choosing the next president turned out to be harder than anyone would have expected. (1:24). Music: Saber ya 3am Saber (1:44) (FADE IN). Shortly after what is now referred to as “the old regime” fell, many Egyptian figures began speaking up and announcing their intentions of running for the Egyptian presidency.Troy Carter, Political Editor of the Caravan, a student-run newspaper on the American University in Cairo [AUC] campus, talked about this: (2:02) Carter:“Why are people confused about which president or candidate they’ll support? I think it’s a problem because Egyptians had never had to think about this question before. I mean, Egyptians from our generation were born into Mubarak, they’ve only known Mubarak, any selection has never meant a serious challenge to his position, so that’s a broad sweeping generalization, people just never thought about this before. But, what’s happening now and what’s interesting is that people are starting to build a framework for answering that question. People are starting to address that. People are starting here to understand that their ideas matter, and what they think matters, and what they do matters. They’ve been given something; Egyptians have just received something very precious, the vote. And that gives them a say in policy, and people in Egypt wanna spend that vote, that valuable commodity, they wanna use it very wisely and very carefully. So, each Egyptian is wondering which candidate will do the most – not only for him or her and his family – but also for the greater community, I mean this is a society and Egyptians care about their communities as much as any other people.” (3:30) Music: Saber ya 3am Saber (3:48) (AMPLIFY) Almost around the same time, Mohamed El Baradei, Ayman Nour, Amr Moussa, Hesham El Bashtawisi and Hamdeen Sabaahy announced their intentions to run for the upcoming Egyptian presidency. And shortly after that, Islamists Mohamed Selim El Awa, Abdel Moniem Abu EL Fetooh and Hazem Salah Abu Ismail followed up by also announcing their intentions of running for the same post. (4:11) To the Egyptian people’s disadvantage, there was not one candidate that stood out for them, as different opinions about each of the candidates seem to be scattered around, keeping their confusion constantly intact. (4:28) Troy Carter:“I’m not gonna say whether one *presidential candidate+ is better than the other, but I’ll say that some are definitely stronger candidates, and are more popular within the Egyptian population. I think right now, you have, on the liberal side, you have Dr El Baradei, very popular among educated wealthy liberal class, and Amr Moussa, also there in that kind of same space.” (4:53). However, two names in particular seem to stand out in the midst of the rest of the names. And they are that of Mohamed El baradei and Amr Moussa. (5:01) Sixty-eight-year-old Mohamed el Baradei is the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, I-A-E-A. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 with the I-A-E-A, for their call for preventing: “nuclear energy from being used for military purposes". (5:18) El Baradei has openly opposed former President Mubarak and in February of 2010, he founded the National Association for Change, which is a political association which brings together different sectors of the Egyptian society that unite, in attempt of enhancing the political standing of Egypt and bringing about political reform based on democracy and social justice. (5:42) Soon after founding the National Association for Change, many rumors rose about El Baradei, implying that he is completely westernized and could possibly be an agent for the United States - against Egypt. (5:59) In a university wide poll at the American University in Cairo, Mohamed el Baradei earned more than a 50% of votes from students who said that they intend on voting for him in the upcoming presidential elections. (6:23)  Ahmed Abu El Enein, a senior double majoring in Journalism and English and Comparative Literature talked about this: Music: Saber ya 3am Saber (3:48) (FADE OUT) Music: Rabee3 Fel 3aaseffa (6:30) (FADE IN) Aboul Enein: “The first thing I think about it is that it has to do with name recognition. So, A-U-C students are represented with about 12 candidates, 13 candidates, but they only probably recognized 3 or 4, and out of those 3 or 4, they leant towards Baradei more because like a lot of other options they would have recognized are Islamists of conservatives and Baradei has this image of being westernized which would’ve went well with most A-U-C students.”(7:01) Amr Moussa, who came up next in the A-U-C student poll with a total of 13 percent in votes, was the foreign minister under Mubarak, till he occupied the position of the Secretary General in the Arab League. (3:34) Moussa seems to be very popular among many Egyptians as they see that he had a strong stand against the Israelis concerning the Palestinian-Israeli case.  However, many people disagree with him, saying that he is part of Mubarak’s old regime that we fought earlier this year.  Abou ElEnein: “*I don’t like+ Amr Moussa because he was part of the previous regime, even though he tries to deny that. He was Mubarak’s foreign minister and then went on to become the Secretary General of the Arab League which is basically ‘Secretary for 22 dictators’ and whether or not he made speeches or sort of told-off Israel, that’s irrelevant because he agreed to be part of Mubarak’s and there’s nothing you can do or say to deny that he was”. (8:15) Carter said that Moussa and El Baradei more or less fall under the same category, which is the liberal, more democratic side. (8:25) “But Amr Moussa has a little bit more popularity among the middle and lower class because of rhetoric that the Mubarak regime used against Baradei. Remember when the regime came out and published photos of Dr Baradei’s daughter’s wedding and they keep hammering us with the fact that Dr Baradei had lived outside the state for so long when he was the Director of the I-A-E-A and the sort of like the negative campaign they did on him”.  (9:02)  Music: Saber ya 3am saber (9:15) (AMPLIFY) – (FADE OUT) Hesham El Bastaweesy, of 60 years of age, is a reformist judge who went through a lot of trouble as he uncovered forgeries in the results of the parliamentary elections during Mubarak’s rule. And in the year 2006, El Bastaweesy was fired by the former minister of justice who was manipulated into signing the papers of his dismissal.   Music: Saber ya 3am saber (9:15) (AMPLIFY) – (FADE OUT) Fifty-Seven year old, Hamdeen Sabahy, is a nationalist nassirist who has always been politically active ever since his years as a college student in Cairo university. He stayed in the parliament for 10 years following the year 2000, during which he founded the Dignity party and became the Editor in Chief of the party’s newspaper which is under the same name. (10:07) Aboul Enein: “Sabahy is what I’d like to call the ‘cartoon opposition’. Like before Jan 25th, there were opposition groups and parties, like Wafd and Tagamoa, el Karama; which Sabahi’s part of. And they were these parties that had no effect on street. No popularity at all, they were just there to complete the staged democracy to prove to the outside world and to Egyptians that we have opposition, but they were really ineffective and he’s part of that.”(10:48)  Music: Saber ya 3am Saber (10:55) (AMPLIFY) – (FADE IN)  Moreover, three Islamists so far have shown interest in running for the Egyptian presidency; Abdel Moniem Abu El Fotooh, Mohamed Selim El Awa and Hazem Salah Abu Ismail. (11:06) Lawyer, Abu Ismail was a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and now, according to Carter, has become more like the conservative Salafi candidate. (11:16) Carter: “And he’s a lawyer. He’s a smart guy, but, he says things that kind of offend liberals and Christians. So those two groups will probably oppose him, you know, very strongly, and I don’t think that he’ll overcome that. (11:34) On the other hand, Islamist Al Awa was the Secretary General of the International Union of Muslim Scholars. (11:42) “Aboul Enein: “I think, either the vote is gonna be split between the three of them, which means, ye, neither of them is going to do well, or what could happen is, like one could get all the islamist support making the other two, not really effective, but I think if wewere to have an islamist president, I think it would be Abdel Moniem abu el Fetooh.” (12:11) Moreover, there has been talk about voting for people who have not yet announced their intentions in running for the Egyptian presidency, like Ahmed Shafiq. Shafiq is a former air commander and minister for civil aviation. He was also appointed Prime minister of Egypt after Mubarak sacked the government in February. Shortly, though, Shafiq’s government was replaced by another one by Essam Sharaf. (12:34) Music: Nebtedy meneen el 7ekaaya. (12:49) And finally, youngest of all, ex-candidate Ayman Noor of forty seven years of age, was - in a way - forced to take back his candidacy since he lost his case of appeal against dropping all political charges from his record, which resulted in his incompatibility with fulfilling the requirements of running for the post of the Egyptian presidency. (13:10)  Looking back at the history of the rulers of Egypt, one may find it very ironic. King Farouq was brought down by the Egyptian people in 1952, and was thus forced to move out of Egypt. Following him, came Egypt’s first president, Mohamed Naguib, who got over ruled by the military force at the time. After Naguib, came Gamal Abd El Nasser, who’s death was followed by rumors of being poisoned instead of normally dying. And as we all know, Anwar El Sadat, who succeeded Nasser, was shot to death by fundamentalist army officers. But hopefully, in new revolutionary Egypt, that line of unfortunate events will be broken; Bringing Egypt a grand President to be cherished by his people. (14:07) Music: A hopeful transmission (13:57) (FADE IN) Music: (14:24) (FADE OUT) Nora ElHariri, A-U-C News.   Music: Saber ya 3am Saber – Omar Khayrat Rabee3 Fel 3aaseffa – Omar Khayrat Nebtedy meneen el 7ekaaya - Omar Khayrat A hopeful transmission – Coldplay  Nat sound (from YouTube):  El sha3b yoreed 2eskaat el ra2ees Cairo erupts in happiness as Mubarak's exit  Countdown 3D Video Anaglyph with Audio  Interviewees:  Troy Carter  Ahmed Abou Enein    

Presidential candidates in Egypt: who is more worthy of the presidential title?

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