'Egypt salvation lies in unity'

PRESS TV - Thousands of protesters, who had remained in Cairo's landmark Liberation Square, stood their ground as riot police opened fire on them and used tear gas.

The protests came despite an announcement by the military rulers to transfer power immediately to civilian rule via a referendum. 

The head of the military council, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, said in a televised speech on Tuesday that presidential elections would be held by July 2012, but he did not specifically mention a date for the transfer of power. 

Press TV talks with Michael Weinstein, a professor at University of Purdue, to discuss the issue. Below is the an approximate transcription of the interview: 

Press TV: I would like to get your opinion on the way political parties in Egypt have reacted to the crackdown on protesters in Liberation Square. There have been criticisms that it took them a long time to respond to it and still they couldn't present a united front, what do you say to that? 

Weinstein: I think that one thing that people seem not to understand is how complex the political landscape of Egypt is. If we wanted to simplify it, we could put it down to four different important parts: there are the protesters many of whom are young and part of the new middle class and they are not organized into traditional political party; there are the various, we might call, secular sometime liberal politicians and political parties which were suppressed or only allowed a small voice under the Mubarak regime. 

Then there are the various Islamic parties mainly the Muslim Brotherhood and the al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya and then finally there is the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the retainers and supporters of the old Mubarak regime. All of these for different big groups are not the same when it comes to their objectives and each one of them plays off of the others. 

So the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces will talk to the liberal politicians and make deals with them, then they will talk to the Muslim Brotherhood and make deals with them and then the liberal politicians and the Muslim Brotherhood will speak with each other and make some form of shifting alliance and then the people who are part of the protest watch from the sidelines; they get very upset and they may start demonstrating. So I think that the parties were not so quick to respond to the protesters because they are not the same group as the protesters. They are the people who stayed alive under the Mubarak regime and made their compromises and were able to live even though they were very ineffective. 

Now they are coming out but they are of an older generation. So we have tremendous divide between the major four elements of Egyptian politics and each one, as I say, is trying to advance its own program against the others and sometime an alliance with them would make the situation very confusing and makes it very uncertain as well. 

Press TV: Is what Egypt needs an election under the supervision of the Armed Military Council which is for all intents and purposes refusing to give up power? 

Weinstein: Yes, actually sorry to answer your question like a terrible political scientist. But let me say whether there should be an election is going to depend on which faction that one would represent. If you were talking about the remainders of the old regime and that is a very large number of people and families who were tied to the bureaucracy and the security services much of the middle class, then you would say you want the election just the way it is. 

If you are speaking to the Muslim Brotherhood, they would say we will go with the election and that is what they are doing now because we think that we are going to get a lot of votes and we think that we are going to get a lot of seats and it is not going to help us to wave the bloody flag and so let's let the process work out and it looks like we will be OK. 

As for the liberal politicians, they will look at it and they will say in one way it is now good for us if the military has power but on the other hand, we do not want the strict Islamic law and the military has promised us --not if we let them-- have power then let us have constitutional protections against too much religious influence in the state and then the protesters are going to look at this and they will say this is all a fraud and this is all a lot of conniving on the part of the establishment and we want change now and we want this military council out and we want the revolution that we wanted, a democratic revolution the way that we see democracy. 

So I am sorry not to give one answer; I have given four answers and that is not what a political scientist will do. It will be different from each group whether you think the elections should be held or not. 

Press TV: Who represents the Egyptian people in these upcoming legislative elections under the supervision of a military council that does not want to give up power? 

Weinstein: I have to say I am so sorry, nobody represent the Egyptian people. Each one of them represents a genuine segment of the Egyptian people. The problem is that Egypt is not yet having an agreement on how they want to live together. 

It is factionalized and if we could have people who are listening, I would appeal to them to understand this. It is not easy for the Egyptians to get things together because the different factions are coming from different places. 

You cannot say there is one Egyptian people. The supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, there are tens of millions of them; there are millions of protesters; there are several millions of the old regime.