However in the meantime it's clear that the main theme of the interim government is the appointment of people technically competent of running their respective departments. So for example Ahmed Iman has retained his post as Minister for Electricity because he is an engineer who specialises in electricity production and has spent his professional career working for various electricity production companies such as the Aswan high dam power plant. The other main feature of the interim government has been the reversal of Morsi era appointments taking key ministries out of the control of the Muslim Brotherhood and putting them back in the hands of members of the initial interim government. So for example Asharf El-Araby has gone back to Planning, Ayman Abu Hadid has returned to Agriculture and Atef Helmy has returned to Communication and Information Technology.
The big appointments though are the three deputy Prime Ministers;
- Abdel-Fattah El-Sissi - Probably the most controversial of the appointments the head of Egypt's military takes on the role of first Deputy Prime Minister and the role of Defence Minister. The appointment at defence is pretty obvious because the military are the technical experts in defence matters. The appointment to First Deputy Prime Minister reflects the role that the military will play in keeping Egypt running day to day during the transition - especially in the area of security. By making El-Sissi First Deputy this actually increases the accountability of the military to the interim government because it brings him into Cabinet meetings which allows other ministers to question him about and raise any potential problems with the way the military are going about their task.
- Hossam Eissa - Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Higher Education. A professor of law Eissa is clearly well experienced in the issues surrounding higher education. However it is his experience as a legal consultant to organisations is Egypt, Algeria and Japan as well as to international bodies such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) that means he is also well experienced in the legal and political issues involved in building a democratic society. The fact that he was educated in France along with his international work means that he is known on the global stage and is able to bring fresh thinking to help solve Egypt's problems. He was also a founding member of Mohammed El-Baradei's secular Al Dostour party but left following a split. The exact reasons for this split is one of the areas I will have to research further.
- Ziad Bahaa El-Din - Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Planning and International Co-Operation. A founding member of the secular Social Democrat Party (SDP) El-Din was of course suggest for the post of interim Prime Minister but his appointment was blocked by the Salafist Al-Nour party. With Bachelor degrees in both law and economics and a PHD in financial law El-Din obviously very knowledgeable in the areas of economics and law. As a result he has spent much of his career in the civil service working as a legal adviser to the Economics Ministry and as Chairman of the Investment and Free Trade Authority. That last posting means that El-Din is well positioned to conduct negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to introduce reforms needed to rescue Egypt from Greek levels trade deficits and foreign currency shortfalls. Making Al-Nour's decision to block his appointment as Prime Minister harder to explain El-Din was of course actually elected as a member of Parliament in the 2011 election.
The other main feature of the interim government is that while it retains some Morsi era appointments such as Ahmed Iman at Electricity and includes people like Kamal Abu-Eita who was elected to Parliament in 2011 on the Freedom & Justice Party's list it contains no Islamists from either the Muslim Brotherhood or Al-Nour. Far from being an attempt to purge Islamists from Egyptian political life this is simply a case of both the Brotherhood and Al-Nour being offered government positions and them simply refusing to take them.
The reason that the Brotherhood and Al-Nour refused to take up the government posts they were offered is also quite obvious. Rather than participating in the democratic process the Islamists instead intend to disrupt it and day to day life in Egypt as much as possible and try and use the fact they're not in the interim government as a way to recruit new members. To that end the Brotherhood intend to use Friday's anniversary of the 1973 war with Israel to stage a day of protests they are dubbing "The Second Crossing." According to a leaflet circulated by the Brotherhood the protest will start at 15:00 (local time) and will see protesters attempt to block roads and railway lines and march on government buildings, military buildings and Embassies of nations they accuse of supporting what they call a coup. The intention is obviously to provoke a violent confrontation with the military and revolutionaries which the Brotherhood will then claim is evidence of them being oppressed.
The Egyptian military are taking precautions such as deploying extra troops and armoured vehicles to key locations and to Tahrir Square to protect revolutionaries. Although the military have made it clear that they will tolerate all forms of peaceful protest they will have response teams on stand-by to intervene to prevent violence and to clear blocked roads. It will be interesting to see what sort of numbers the Muslim Brotherhood will be able to bring out in protest because by all accounts even local residents in their Nasr city stronghold are getting sick of them and staging peaceful counter-protests calling on them to leave. Rather typically the Brotherhood are claiming that these residents are in fact violent thugs paid by the military to crush the protests. To my mind that just further illustrates how utterly deluded the Muslim Brotherhood are about the level of public support they have amongst the Egyptian people.
With terrorist attacks against police and military personnel now being a daily occurrence in the Sinai the Egyptian military have also announced that on Friday they will begin a very large operation involving the second field army, parachute regiments, the navy and the airforce to shut-down terror groups operating in the area. This has prompted objections from the Hamas government in Gaza who accuse the operation of being politically motivated against them. As far as I'm concerned this is not the case. The problem the Egyptian military have is that there are heavily armed groups attacking them in the Sinai while Islamists across the nation are threatening to start a civil war. There is also evidence that the armed groups in the Sinai are supplying weapons to the Islamists to help them with their civil war. Therefore the Egyptian military needs to go into the Sinai to shut-down these armed groups and cut their supply lines in order to hold the nation together. Any impact this operation has on the people of Gaza is purely coincidental although one that Israel is more than happy to see happen. Therefore it is really up to Hamas to protect themselves by making sure their smuggling routes aren't being used to smuggle weapons and fighters into Egypt to do battle with the Egyptian military because that is a battle Hamas will lose.
Also while I've been writing this Egypt's interim President Mansour has been scheduled to make a televised declaration on the committee that is being set up to rewrite the constitution. I'm not even sure that this address has taken place so am completely unable to comment on it. However it is already clear that the Muslim Brotherhood will reject the proposal out of hand while the revolutionary Tamarod movement have called for protests demanding the the constitution is scrapped and completely re-written. I will obviously deal with this in more detail when I know what has been proposed but I personally feel that there are large sections of the constitution that are well thought through and perfectly valid. However there are equally large sections that need to be re-written or scrapped entirely. The objections I raised at the time are of course all still valid and can be read here; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/egypts-draft-constitution.html
19:55 on 18/7/13.
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