April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

of the regime. And he is someone who, before his appointment, before his
appointment, had some respect among the Egyptian people. He’s clearly
very intelligent. He has tried to stay out of the limelight. He—there is not
known directly that he has been involved in corruption, unlike many other
of the previous ministers and so on. So, before his appointment, he had
some legitimacy. And in fact, with the rise of Gamal Mubarak over the last
number of years, many Egyptians were putting his name forward—
AMY GOODMAN: The son of Mubarak.
SAMER SHEHATA: With the rise of Gamal Mubarak, the president’s son,
into higher posts in the government, and the idea that he was going to be
implanted or installed as a president through farcical elections in the
future, earlier, people were putting Omar Suleiman’s name up as someone
who would be much more acceptable. Of course, all of that has changed
now, and Mr. Suleiman has lost any kind of legitimacy or credibility he
had, because this is nothing other than a tactic that the Mubarak—Mubarak
himself is using to try to hold onto power.
With regard to his involvement in the rendition program and so on, this is
also—not that fact in particular, but his behavior and his actions and his
views are also apparent in the WikiLeaks documents. He is someone who is
clearly not committed to any conception of democracy. He says in the
WikiLeaks documents that the Muslim Brotherhood, of course, is a very
dangerous Islamist group that needs to be excluded completely from
politics. It’s also clear that he believes that Egypt should maintain the
blockade of Gaza, creating this 1.5 million open-air prison, as it were. He
is very well known in the United States, because he has been coming here
regularly. He has handled, been the point person for the very important
issues of Palestinian-Palestinian relations, Egypt’s relationship with Israel.
He is also the gentleman, the point person for Egypt’s relationship with
Sudan and Omar al-Bashir and so on. Those types of foreign policy concerns
in Egypt are not handled by the Foreign Ministry, but are handled by the
security services.
So he would be someone who would be unacceptable, I think, if we’re
genuinely concerned about the development of democracy. He’s
unacceptable if you talk to and listen to what the millions of people on
Egypt’s streets are saying. He’s someone who might be, unfortunately,
acceptable to capitals abroad. But of course, as Sharif mentioned, that’s
not the primary concern here. The primary concern here is what millions
of Egyptians want and deserve, and that is a government that represents
their interests, a government that is elected by free and fair elections.
AMY GOODMAN: And as the New York Times’ Ethan Bronner writes, that
"the Israelis would be reassured" if he were chosen. He is chosen now as
the vice president of Egypt by Mubarak, a position that hasn’t been filled
in many, many years. Samer Shehata, if you could stand by, assistant
professor of Arab politics at Georgetown University, we’re going to take a
break and also look at the amount of money the U.S. has given Egypt. It
has tremendous power over what Mubarak does right now, given the tens
of billions of dollars, mainly in military aid, it’s given the Mubarak regime.
Stay with us.
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