Revolutionaries can handle Egypt

Press TV has interviewed Saeb Shaath, author and expert on the Middle East from Belfast to learn about his views regarding the performance of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) in Egypt. What follows is a rough transcript of the interview that was also supported by another guest.

Press TV: The power structure has not changed in Egypt. The military rulers are trying to protect the economic and political interest behind people’s democratic demands, now, how true do you think that allegation is?

Shaath: Its very true, since the collapse of the Mubarak regime, we have seen the junta align itself with the Muslim Brotherhood, thinking they are the only organized force who can fill the vacuum of Mubarak National party collapsing, and they thought that with some sort of undercover dealing they can control the country and sabotage the revolution.

The Muslim Brotherhood played the counterrevolution forces. They played behind the scene and they put Salafi groups in the front against the revolutionary groups in Egypt. The problem in here as seen in Tahrir Square [is that] the counterrevolutionaries come to the people and they say to them, “they go disrupt the economy there are no production lines and that will threaten your livelihood.” That’s how they scare a lot of the people and they get a lot of people behind them to support them; like during the referendum, they got 77 percent, nearly, for the constitutional changes which the junta proposed; and the junta from that time thought they control the Egyptian streets and the only power is them and the Muslim brotherhood, with the blessing of the Obama administration.

The truth now with the revolutionary groups, one of the demands they are putting is — amazingly — the minimum wage and the maximum wage, with that they can tackle all of the propaganda about destroying the Egyptian economy.

Press TV: I would like you to give a respond to the suggestion that the military rulers are not after a counterrevolution, and how do you think when the battle is now, or rather the revolution is now against the military rulers and how they are handling the process, whether that will be a lot more difficult for these protestors to achieve now than just toppling Mubarak as they did that quite… not very difficult in a matter of eighteen days. But how are they going to face this issue?

Shaath: First of all, Tantawi is a fields martial. He is not someone who does not know how to deal… A field marshal knows how to deal with any sort of security or military or disturbance in the country. So he is not a school boy he is a field marshal.

He is a Hosni Mubarak man, and he is controlling the country, and he and the top brass — to confirm your guest from the United States — have very good links with the Americans establishment, the Pentagon.

To put it in the international prospective, America is facing a dilemma and is unable to control what is happening. If they cannot abort the revolution in Egypt, losing Egypt means a collapse of one of its [US] major interests in the Middle East. This will threaten an economy under threat of collapse in the United States of America.

The same thing goes in Syria. So, they are playing — the international players in here — with the Muslim Brotherhood. They can give them what they want to control Egypt under the auspices of any face but Islamic agenda, Muslim Brotherhood agenda, in Syria, in Egypt. At the same time they can continue, the United State of America, with its agenda, war on Islam, war on terror, the Arab world turning to an Islamic fabric which counters the interest of the Unites States. This can keep the war on terror going.

Here I want to give a quick glimpse [into] history, Egypt can teach the whole world about revolutions. Egypt’s first revolution was with “Akhenaton” when he believed in god and destroyed the Pharaoh’s beliefs. Lots of revolutions happened since.

Then the Egyptians had a revolution against French occupation of Napoleon Bonaparte, and defeated them. The Egyptians have a revolution against the English, Fraser campaign until 1919, this is a very important date in here when Saad Zaghloul led a national movement against the English occupation. In the 1928 the English facilitated the presence of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to split the national agenda in Egypt, from fighting the English to fighting among each other. We should learn from that history what the English have done. Still, till 1952 when the Egyptian military did a coup and became a revolution they put their agenda against the imperialist forces.

We’ve seen a counterrevolution again against that, with Sadat and with Mubarak, to bring the Pharaoh back to control and align itself with the imperialist forces. That is what they are trying to salvage now. The people of Egypt have a huge history they can learn from.

The Muslim Brotherhood and their other parties, they are mistaken to think they can defeat the young revolutionaries at Tahrir Square.

Press TV: Looking at the situation right now, the fact that the military has been putting power for this transition period. Some people are saying that there should be a constitution before the elections, others are saying vice versa, others are talking about a different kind of a revolution where people can first vote in a referendum about the type of government they want, after which that government can form a parliament and then they can have a new constitution. What are the ways forward for Egypt and what are the better alternatives that Egypt can be looking at for now?

Shaath: It’s exactly the demands which the revolutionary youth are demanding right now. The army to go to its barracks and surrender power to an Egyptian civil government and that Egyptian civil government can draw the constitution with the help of a specialist.

Egypt has huge expertise on different fields of civil society. They don’t need the army to oversee them the army should be at the border opening the gates from Rafah to Palestine. That is where the army should be, not oppressing people and protecting counterrevolutionaries, like Mubarak sitting in Sharm el-Sheikh in a seven-star hospital or hotel, god knows, and receiving orders from United States of America to protect their interest in the Egyptian industry which the army has a slice of the cake in it there.

That is very important in here and the people in the streets in Tahrir Square, there are politicians, and there are freedom fighters there. Egyptian freedom fighters spend most of their life in the torture chambers of Mubarak. They know how to deal with the country.

The most important point I want to emphasis now is to fix the minimum wage and the maximum wage in Egypt. In that way they can prevent the counterrevolutionary from fluctuating prices and denying the people the goods from the streets and any kind of inflation.

That is the point the revolutionary people, the youth, are demanding and that is a very smart move. They know in that way they can deny the counterrevolution. It is a very effective weapon.