Sunday, April 17, 2011
JOSHUA PUNDIT
As Egypt prepares for the first post-Mubarak elections in September, it becomes more and more obvious that Egypt is going to become the Obama Administration's Iran, just as I predicted a long time ago.
President Obama and his minions encouraged the Muslim Brotherhood and undermined Mubarak politically and now the West is going to be faced with the consequences of that decision.
The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's most organized political power and the founder of Hamas is overwhelming the middle class 'pro-democracy' protesters, and Mohammed Badie, the Muslim Brotherhood's spiritual leader, last week predicted the group's candidates would win 75 per cent of the seats it contested.
And there are even more Islamist groups like Gamaa al-Islamiya, an al-Qaeda linked group that promotes Salafist policies who will likely win enough seats to be part of the government.
In another sign of how things are going, Egypt's Coptic Christians, 10 per cent of the population are starting to flee the country. Al-Masry al-Youm, an Egyptian newspaper, reported last week that the Canadian embassy had been swamped by visa requests from Coptic Christians.
The army, just as it did in Iran, is standing aside in a devil's bargain that the Islamists will allow them to keep their perks and power in exchange for supporting the regime.
Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party, which won 80 per cent of seats in parliament in December's election has been officially disbanded by the Egyptians courts, Mubarak is in the hospital after suffering a heart attack prior to being subjected to questioning over accusations of corruption and his two sons, along with other members of the Mubarak regime are in jail.
There's very little standing in the way of the Islamists taking over.
The leading candidates for Egypt's presidency have all but acknowledged th efact that the next Egypt will be Islamist. The front runner right now, Amr Moussa, the Arab League president, is essentially running on a quasi-Islamist platform that will incorporate sharia, end Egypt's blockade of Gaza, resume relations with Hamas and severely curtail if not end relations with Israel.
At that, Amr Moussa may very well be a stop gap President in the manner of Iran's Mehdi Bazargan, who was pushed out of the way by Khomeini as soon as Khomeini was ready to take over.
Egypt has a population of 80 million people that is can't support, half of its food is now imported, unemployment is rampant, the government admits to 12% inflation and one in four Egyptians is illiterate, including almost 70% of the women.
Mubarak being gone is not going to change this. It might very well be to the Muslim Brotherhood's advantage to have someone else in the president's chair for awhile. These problems guarantee that no matter who rules Egypt, a combination of Islam, harsh repression and the use of a convenient scapegoat like Israel or America may be the only way a new regime will have to keep things in line.
Like every Arab democracy thus far, Egypt's can be counted on to last for one election.
