Ayoon Wa Azan (They Preoccupied Themselves With Trivial Issues)

Many Egyptians objected to the results of the first round of the Egyptian presidential election. For one thing, Mohamed Morsi is of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the group’s MPs underperformed throughout their first few months in both the Parliament and the Shura Council, while General Ahmed Shafik is presumably a Mubarak era holdover, or fulul, and his presidency therefore means the return of Hosni Mubarak’s regime in a different name. But Mohamed Morsi is an engineer who had studied in the U.S. and worked in NASA, while Ahmed Shafik was an air force pilot, the chief of the Egyptian Air Force and the Minister of Aviation before he was Prime Minister. These two candidates are not ‘small change’. Perhaps the Egyptian voters would have preferred Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh to Mohamed Morsi, or Amr Moussa and Hamdeen Sabahi to Ahmed Shafik. This is their right, but it is not their right to denigrate the two winning candidates just because they preferred others to them. Some in the opposition burned down the headquarters of General Ahmed Shafik’s election campaign. Personally, I did not need to see this kind of acts to know that the opposition that had toppled the regime for democracy is more dictatorial than any regime, and is awaiting its chance to rule its own dictatorship and suppress all dissent. If I were an Egyptian voter, Amr Moussa would have been my preferred candidate, given what I know about him directly. But now that he is out of the race, my preferred candidate becomes General Ahmed Shafik for President. His list of priorities for the advancement of Egypt is fitting, and he has the ability to deliver. By contrast, I feel that Mohamed Morsi does not have the practical experience to govern, and would merely follow the supreme leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Here, I feel that Khairat Shater would have been a better choice for the presidency. A week ago, I had agreed with General Ahmed Shafik to meet at a hotel in 6th of October City after he concluded a televised interview. A young woman supporter of his took me in her car to the appointment, and she was extremely enthusiastic for her candidate. She would stop her car at traffic lights to ask other drivers who they were going to vote for, and would urge them to vote for Ahmed Shafik, but would shout at them if they refused. I told her that shouting does no help, and all she had to do was to make eyes and smile a lot, and say that she was going to cry if people did not vote for her candidate. If she did that, she would find that any reticence by men will melt away before a woman’s tears. I was joking with her, but she took it seriously and asked me whether I really believed that crying was a better way to win votes. I told General Ahmed Shafik that the revolution had almost ruined the Egyptian economy, and that rather than fighting the corruption present, the revolution fought Hosni Mubarak’s era’s entire legacy. As a result, the economy stumbled, even though it was making steady strides in the first decade of this century, according to the figures of the World Bank and the IMF, and their periodic reports. He said that security was his top priority, because without security, all efforts to mend the economy would fail, including efforts to jumpstart the factories that were shutdown – which he estimated to number 2000-, and the rehabilitation of state institutions, as well as efforts to reinvigorate the tourism sector and rebuild foreign relations – both Arab and international. When Ahmed Shafik was the Minister of Aviation, he managed to renovate Egypt’s airports, and revive EgyptAir. Therefore, judging him should be based on his track record, and not his tenure as the last Prime Minister under Mubarak, which lasted mere days during the most difficult days in Egypt’s modern history. As regards the accusation that Shafik is a holdover, this is nonsense because it would otherwise mean that Egyptians would have had to be living in a bottle or a prison for the past thirty years, if they don’t want to be accused of being holdovers. Today, the duty of every candidate who left the first round and who does not want the Muslim Brotherhood to win the presidency after the parliament, is to firmly and sincerely support Ahmed Shafik, and urge supporters who voted for him to give their votes to Shafik. Indeed, the man is a safety valve for the whole country, and his presence at the helm of Egypt’s presidency may spare the country a military coup of which the Muslim Brotherhood would be the first victims. The Muslim Brotherhood won in the Parliament and Shura Council elections, and congratulations to them for this. However, their deputies preoccupied themselves with trivial issues, reinforcing the belief among many that they do not understand economic issues, and that they do not have the qualified cadres to run the institutions of the state. This is not to mention the fact that they have alienated many Arab regimes which often express their distrust of the Brotherhood, and the fact that the West, particularly the United States, deals with them from the standpoint of the peace treaty with Israel signed in 1979. I believe that Ahmed Shafik would be a better choice for Egypt and its Arab and international relations, so I hope that he will win.