Egyptian presidential candidate Sisi: Muslim Brotherhood 'finished'

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Let's hope if the Muslim Brotherhood ever tries to come back to power in Egypt, they have a very, very difficult time of it. The Egyptian people deserve better than a group like the Brotherhood.


Egyptian presidential candidate Sisi: Muslim Brotherhood 'finished'


'It's not me who finished the Muslim Brotherhood - the Egyptian people have,' Egypt's Abdel Fattah Sisi saysSuccessive Egyptian leaders have sought to contain the Muslim Brotherhood, but never entirely succeededEgypt's top presidential contender says opponents of a harsh anti-protest law want 'to sabotage Egypt'The Muslim Brotherhood can look for no handouts from Abdel Fattah Sisi, the man expected to be Egypt’s next president. Nor, apparently, can secular opponents of the government.
In the first televised question-and-answer session of his campaign, which aired Monday night with another segment to follow on Tuesday evening, the former army field marshal took questions from generally friendly and non-confrontational interviewers from two Egyptian broadcasters.

Egyptian presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabbahi greets supporters at his campaign headquarters in Mahala, north of Cairo. (Mohamed el-Shahed / AFP/Getty Images)Sisi, the former defense minister who has been Egypt’s de facto leader for the last 10 months, said it would not be possible for the Brotherhood, once Egypt’s largest political movement, to reenter political life. The group has been formally branded a terrorist organization, and thousands of its followers are in jail. More than 1,000 of them have been killed in clashes with security forces.

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Egyptian presidential candidate Sisi: Muslim Brotherhood 'finished'*-*Los Angeles Times

 

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Which will win out - interests or values?...

Egypt's anointing of Sisi will lay bare west's battle between interest and values
Monday 26 May 2014 ~ Pragmatic engagement, not principles, likely to be the order of the day in dealings with Cairo for foreseeable future

Western governments will have to come up with some tortuous language when Abdel Fatah al-Sisi becomes Egypt's president. No one doubts that the former field marshal will win this week's election by a handsome margin, thanks to a combination of genuine support, boycotts by Islamists who have been banned and persecuted, and the absence of credible rivals. Victory is no less assured than it is for Bashar al-Assad, facing his date with Syria's destiny next month – though that exercise has been widely condemned as a parody of democracy. Washington, London and Brussels are already finalising carefully-crafted statements about the will of the Egyptian people and pressing forward with the promised "democratic transition". There will be euphemistic calls for "inclusiveness" and widening the country's "political space". There may even be some critical words about justice and human rights. But there will be congratulations for Egypt's new strongman.

Behind these circumlocutions and evasions lie the unmistakable reality that this republican coronation puts an end to the hopes that were generated by the biggest upheaval of the Arab spring. Sisi is able to claim the mantle of Gamal Abdel-Nasser and other soldiers-turned-presidents because he and his fellow generals removed the democratically-elected Mohamed Morsi last summer in a move that was undoubtedly popular but was still a coup by any definition. The US never used that C-word, because under congressional rules it would have meant an automatic cut-off of aid. Britain fretted about the dangers of military "intervention" and hoped for better times. For a few weeks there was a slight chill in relations with Cairo. EU aid and UK arms export licences were suspended. US military aid was frozen, though some sales resumed when Russia stepped in to fill the gap in the market.

Abdel Fatah al-Sisi at a Cairo polling station to cast his vote in the Egyptian presidential election.

Ambassadors who had embraced the Muslim Brotherhood uncritically during Morsi's unhappy year in office – to the fury of Egyptians who loathed him – accepted that things had changed overnight. Business as usual did include condemnation of repression under the military – 1,000 people killed and many thousands imprisoned could hardly be ignored. The outlawing of the Brotherhood, mass trials and death sentences and a media crackdown have drawn fire too. Still, the announcement of a UK investigation into the Brotherhood and Tony Blair's warm endorsement of Sisi sent very different messages about Egypt's lurch back to pre-2011 authoritarianism. In private, western government ministers and officials admit that Sisi's "road-map" cannot include the aspirations that accompanied the fall of Hosni Mubarak. But in the battle between interests and values, interests win hands down: these include fighting jihadis in Sinai, keeping the peace with Israel, and economics. The UK is Egypt's biggest source of foreign direct investment. Huge Egyptian debts to British companies are unlikely to be paid if London is at loggerheads with Cairo for the foreseeable future. The US defence industry needs pragmatic engagement, not principles. Counter-terrorism may turn out be Sisi's trump card – just as it was for Mubarak.

More Egypt's anointing of Sisi will lay bare west's battle between interest and values | World news | theguardian.com

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Muslim Sisterhood emerges in Egypt...

Massacre of Muslim Brotherhood enables Sister to emerge from shadows
Monday 26 May 2014 - Female activists hope newfound freedom to speak out is here to stay, with many demanding bigger long-term role in wider group

On the campaign trail, Egypt's next president, Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi, has aimed much of his attention at women. They are "the calm, soft and rational voice in the house", he said in one interview. "I'm asking you now to preserve our bigger house: Egypt." On Monday, women at several polling stations in north Cairo appeared to respond to his call, vastly outnumbering male voters. But one women's group stayed home – the female wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, which boycotted the election. If the last 11 months have been brutal for the Brotherhood, they have also been transformative for the women who have long operated in its shadow: the Muslim Sisterhood.

Egyptians wait in line in Cairo to vote in Monday's presidential election. Female voters vastly outnumbered male voters at several polling stations.

Not long ago, this was a group that rarely protested on its own and was usually led by men. Now some of its members gather almost daily inside university campuses in protests co-ordinated and attended exclusively by women – and sometimes they have gathered in the streets. When 14 members of the Sisterhood were initially sentenced to 11 years in prison [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/07/egypt-frees-21-female-protesters] for protesting last winter, it was not just the severity of the jail terms that raised eyebrows: it was that they were in the streets at all. "The girls can speak their thoughts now, and they can have their own demonstrations," says one young member, Fatima. "And that never happened before."

This has led some to demand a bigger long-term role within the wider Muslim Brotherhood group. "It can't be like before, when we were blindly loyal," says Fatima. "We are getting detained, we're getting attacked in the streets – so we must have some say." Founded in the 1930s, less than a decade after the Brotherhood, the Sisterhood previously focused on social work. Members of the Brotherhood have often expressed extremely regressive ideas about women's role in society. Sisterhood members have never been allowed to join the Brotherhood's leadership board, and cannot vote on internal decisions. Now its youngest members increasingly say they should be given both rights. "We were used to playing a secondary role," says Sarah Kamal, a designer in her 20s, and a Muslim Sister. "Both men and women were used to women playing a secondary role. But that's changing for sure."

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