May 4, revolution. in a very. great way, Mubarak. old constitution

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1 Remarks at the 2012 Weinberg Founders Conference Naguib Sawiris The Washington Institute for Near East Policy May 4, 2012 Weinberg Founders Conference Thank you very much. I am honored to be here today. I was just telling my neighbor at the next table that Egypt today, while we are here at this minute, is at its lowest curve since the revolution. I would like to take a few minutes to reiterate some of the facts, because I don t think that all the facts are very clear here in the States, you know. Just to tell you exactly what happened in the revolution: first, this revolution that happened, it was mainly many liberal, secular, young, educated, computer scientists all sorts of people went and [ made] this revolution. And everyone was anticipating that, in 2010, something was going to happen because of the extreme circumstances. You know that the national party of Mr. [Hosni] Mubarak usually always won the election. But some genius decided in that last election [in November 2010] that even the 1 or 2 percent that they used to leave for decoration for other parties should also be closed. So, they falsified the election in a very great way, and that was it. People had enough, and the revolution happened. But the important fact is that what we call Islamists today did not join this revolution from the beginning. They jumped [ in] four days later, after the twenty-fifth of January, when they felt it s goingg to work. And all the young people, and the liberal people, and all different kinds of people were in the Square, and they thought: they ve done their job, the Mubarak regime failed, we need to go home now, and [they] left and the revolution was hijacked. And when I say hijacked, it was hijackedd because and this is not... if the press were not here, maybe I d be clearer, but [laughter].... The general feeling in Egypt is that the army actually decided that it should [make] a deal with the Islamists. And, I understand, maybe at that time and point, the country was totally in turmoil; the whole security system had collapsed. So, they figured that [the Islamists were] the only organized force in place, and maybe they should just play ball with them until the country... At least, I hoped that was the temporary situation. Butt it was not, because then the events started to take a completely different shape. They formed a committee to write the constitution. Instead of writing a new constitution, a postrevolution constitution that would secure all the liberties and the democracy, this committee whichh was dominated by Muslim Brotherhood members elected to change some parts of the constitution, which is the source of all the turmoil we have till this minute now.. Because they took an old constitution and said, whoever is going to vote they asked for these changes knows Allah and they go to heaven, and the ones who say no, they have no room in heaven. And of course we lost 1

2 on that [basis] and, instead of a full-fledged constitution, we ended up with the [inaudible] situation we are in now, and the story continued to go. And we, the secular, liberal parties, were confronted with a completely unfair fight. I was not a politician. I don t even know about politics, so all my colleagues decided that this is not what we want and this is not why we [started] the revolution. And we started to try to form liberal parties, but the fact was we had three, four months to build a party, and we moved against a party which was working underground for eighty years. If someone would ask me today, what s the biggest thing you blame Mr. Mubarak [for], or you would hate Mr. Mubarak for, I would say the fact that he has not allowed all the liberal, secular parties to exist while his party was there because we would have then been trained, we would have then been politicians, and we would have been able to compete fairly in a democratic process. So, if you think that the democracy in Egypt resulted in the Islamists winning, it is not correct. The fact is that the Islamists had the backing of the army, that the whole election process was tailored to give advantage to the parties that are of a [certain] size and that are more organized. The districts were enlarged. The fact that you could choose 70 percent from the parties and only 30 percent from individuals and to be honest and fair, this mistake was also done by the liberal parties. Having no experience, we said it doesn t really matter. But it mattered. As a result, the liberal parties and this is a very nice mathematical issue the liberal parties actually got 11 million voters and the Islamists got 13 million. So, mathematically, we should have been at 45 percent in the parliament. I don t know why we ended up with 15 or 20 [percent]. Because the system which was pushed said that any party that doesn t get 5 percent, this number will go to the highest party. As a result because, believe me, I m born in Egypt, I still live in Egypt, and not 75 percent of Egyptians are Muslim Brotherhood [supporters] or Salafists... You ve been to Egypt, you ve seen that it s a modern country with a lot of modern people. It is not the case. The case we are in today was that. Now, what s happening now? What s happening now is that the Muslim Brotherhood s success... So now we have the parliament, yes, but we want the government too, and not only the government, we want the president to be also from us. So the army starts to feel that it created a situation which was not [the army s] feeling was it s going to be a balanced situation, or we will be there, and so on. But the army does not know that the Muslim Brotherhood has felt its power and is even ready now to challenge the army. And, why, because they see the army is actually very weak right now because even, unfortunately, some of the secular, liberal people are more on the left side anarchists and so on so they will go against the army in any case, and we have the mess that is happening today. My analysis is that the Muslim Brothers think, okay, if we want it, we have to take it. Now, we have this parliamentary situation, so we have the legitimacy. We have to use it to complete the story and take the country.... I like to give the example of Iran, you know. Because, you know, if you looked at Iran s Islamic Revolution in the beginning, it was the young people, it was against oppression, and so on. And suddenly [Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini came with the parachute, and that was it for thirty years. And [the Brotherhood goes] and they say publicly that we want to establish an Islamic caliphate. And we are not 2

3 bound to Egypt. And we want to do all that and this and that. And where do we go, the liberals, you know? We actually feel that we have been let down by the United States, for example, because every senator and congressman who comes goes to Tahrir Square, takes a nice picture with the kids in Tahrir Square, meets the head of the Muslim Brotherhoods [gestures, shaking a hand], and thinks things are okay. Where is the support no support was granted to the liberal, the secular, people who don t want this situation. You know, we don t see that. We see that they really believe what s happening in Egypt is a democracy. It is not. And right now, you know, all of what you are seeing now... The mess you are seeing right now is coming from that, because a lot of people in Egypt today are worried. They feel that the Muslim Brotherhood wants it all and that they will all be oppressed, and that the situation will be very, very dangerous. Also, you can trust what they say, if you want. You want to say that we are going to be nice to the Israelis, we are going to respect [the] Camp David [Accords], we actually like Americans and they meet... So I think, good for you. If you want to believe that, I can only crack a joke, you know, to you. I was sitting two times with this gentleman, Mohamed Morsi. His picture is here also as one of the... Actually, he is the [Muslim Brotherhood s] candidate for the presidency. So history has put me two times next to him. One time, Mr. Omar Suleiman, the head of our intelligence, on February 8 or 9, was trying to salvage the last attempt of a relaxed move into democracy and not the abrupt one we had. So they invited all the political [figures]... So they put me next to him. It looked like fire and benzene, you know. So the guy thought that he wants to be nice to me because I didn t start the conversation. So he told me, So, Mr. Sawiris, when are you going to be nice to us? So I thought, Nice? I m going to do even more than that; I m going to join your party. So instead of laughing, which would have been the natural thing and we Egyptians like to laugh the guy looked me very seriously in the eyes and said, Yeah, why not? You can be an affiliate. This is not funny, because I m a Christian Copt, and I m Egyptian, and what he meant to say is that I m not qualified to be a member of his party because maybe he thinks I m not a full Egyptian because I m Christian. So, as I didn t like his response, I held his hand like that [gesturing] and he has a very big hand, you know and I told him, Don t you ever think there is anything better in you than me. I m a real Egyptian. I m more Egyptian than you are. [applause] And then I told him... the fact that you believe even that I would join your party [shows that] you don't have a sense of humor. [laughter] The second meeting was with the army chief and many other representatives of the parties. So they again put us next to each other, which is not really funny. And then they had Mr. Morsi again. So they were making jokes that we were sitting next to each other and the chief of the army [joked and said], You know, you are sitting very good, and Mr. Morsi said, you know, I tried to be nice to him one time, but he was not so nice. You know what his problem as Mr. Morsi was telling the military [figure] the problem with Mr. Sawiris is, whatever we say, whatever we promise, he doesn't believe anything we say. I said, [You are] absolutely right. And I told the military [chief], he is right; in this, he is not lying. So, my feeling is, okay, these people will smile and tell you we re going to be this, and we re going to respect Israel and Camp David [and] we re going to do that. So, who s blowing up our pipelines all the time for the gas? Who s doing that all the time? We have a deal to 3

4 supply gas. Who s blowing up the pipes all the time?... Now we have an alliance, the Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and where is this all going, you know? I m not saying that if it really was a fair game and a real democratic game, and we have time to prepare ourselves and to go into a real election process... Nobody talked also about any [inaudible] in this election process, you know. First the law said we will not allow any religious parties. The law, our law, says that. So what do we get in the end? A Salafi party and a Muslim Brotherhood party. If this is not religious, what is religious? When I made my party, the first thing I made sure about is that the party is mostly made of Muslims. The majority of the Free Egyptian Party are Muslims. And why? Because, as a Christian, I did not want to go and do a Christian party. Or I am playing the same game they are playing. I am a secular, liberal person, and therefore we avoided that, but this is what happened, you know. We have two religious parties now. And I have a good conscience because I did my best, you know. I would say the risks I took within this fifteen, eighteen months are equal to all the risks I took in my whole life. Because if you go out and you are against Egypt becoming a religious state, you are not a friend of the army, because the army in the beginning would [inaudible] with that solution, so if you don t like that solution, you take that risk too. I took also the risk that, actually, during the revolution, because I was a [person very critical of] the Mubarak regime, while all the businessmen s planes were leaving the country, [mine] was the only plane that returned that day on the other side to be there when this was happening, you know. So, again, I took all the risks that you can take in these fifteen [months]. The fact is, I am completely worried about Egypt. I am not so optimistic. I am sure you are looking at what s happening now. What is this last event that is happening today? What is happening is clearly an attempt by the Muslim Brotherhood to show the army, We want it all, we will get it all, and you have no choice but to play ball with us now. So, what does the army feel? The army feels, well, they created this monster. Now it s becoming bigger than they thought it would become, and they don t know what to do. And unfortunately, as I said, even some of the liberal parties have sided... And right now, today I don t know if you are following the news there was an attempt to enter the Ministry of Defense, you know, to conquer the Ministry of Defense. And my station on TV has filmed this demonstrators trying... Imagine someone wants to invade the Ministry of Defense here, you know, and what do you have left then, if this is... I am in the unfortunate position that today I am siding with the army, because they are my last resort. If they also fall down, we have no police, no army, and we have no country in the end. How long do I still have [addressing the moderator]? It s not twenty-five minutes? Ok, so maybe just a few words on the candidates for the presidency. I mean, we re stuck today also, we have a candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood. This is this gentleman with no sense of humor who I told you about. And Mr. Amr Moussa, who is someone you all know, and who I believe most liberals will support today, not because we believe in him because we would have believed in the young guys who died in Tahrir Square, who died by the police, who went and did this revolution... We were hoping for someone younger from the new generation to lead this country, but okay, this is it, we re stuck now between this or that. And, believe me, this is really the biggest thing I blame President Mubarak for. He has 4

5 not allowed the civil society, the liberal parties, to exist and be prepared for a day like [this]. He used to tell us: it s either us, the devils, or the other devil, which is the Muslim Brotherhood, so thank you very much. We re now with the other devil, and we have to work ourselves out. In the presidential election, I believe we have, actually, three presidential candidates. One is the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mr. Morsi. I don t think he will win, because Egyptians don t vote for people with no sense of humor and also because he lacks the charisma that is needed. So there s another charismatic guy, which is Dr. Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, who I must say is a very honest, nice man. He s a doctor by nature. He has a very good track record of being always with the [revolutionaries] and so on. But he is one of the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. So, some of my fellow liberals believe that he s liberal. I don t believe that, because I always feel very worried. In my building in Egypt, no priest can come and go up to our offices, because we think this is a place to work. If I went to pray, I would go to the church. And I m always very worried when someone is very religious and like that, and he takes this as the only scope to run a country from. So I believe, because of his heritage, it s going to be very difficult to convince me that he s a true liberal person, you know. But, unfortunately, I believe that the two highest contenders will be Dr. Aboul Fotouh and Mr. Amr Moussa. And, I think, in the second round, all the Islamists will unite behind Mr. Aboul Fotouh, and maybe he will be then the winner. We have a big problem, too; we have like four or five liberal parties and they are all [fractured] and small and they don t unite. So there is not a united voice for the liberals... I tried to create that in the elections, so three parties joined, but three or four others did not join. Actually, the ones who didn t join didn t get anything, so it was not a big deal, you know. I feel that the outcome is really going to be like I just said it now. I don t see any big surprises happening that is, if the elections take place. Because you can ask yourself: why are [thousands of] people demonstrating today, trying to invade the Ministry of Defense, when we are four weeks [away from] the presidential elections? Does that make sense? In four weeks, we will have a presidential election. Why it s not clear. It s just a demonstration of power power struggle, and so on and, as I said, some of the anarchists and some liberal parties joined this today. I don t know why. I mean, we didn t join for sure, you know. I think I m done. I wish I had some more pleasant, optimistic views to give you. I don t. I think I can take some questions and answers if you want. [applause] Question and Answer ROBERT SATLOFF: Naguib, thank you. You know, when I was talking to the trustees earlier today, I only half-jokingly said that people always ask me, Well, is there any good news? And your message is that there is not that much good news from Egypt today. I want to ask you about what people like you are looking for from the United States. I know you were very critical of how the U.S. has been acting, but I want to ask you about a certain paradox. And it goes like this: is it, in your view, America s interest to see this imperfect experiment at democracy, with the Islamists in control, succeed and hopefully lead to a better democratic situation in the future or is it in our interest to see it fail and thereby bring 5

6 about some other type of change in Egypt? The problem, of course, being that failure might mean the failed state of 88 million people and an important part of the Middle East. So, what do people like you want America to do that both secures our interests and helps you who share our values? NAGUIB SAWIRIS: First of all, you know, one has to be very careful when [one] asks America to interfere, to do because I think we should solve our own problems. One thing I would say is America should not do anything, because every time you do something, we get into trouble, you know. [laughter, applause] You know, first of all, if they wanted to help, they should have been supporting the liberal criticism that we had. Because, we liberals, we shared the same values..,. So they should have come out and said: Why did you write a new constitution? Why did you take the old one and just [cut and paste]? You should have had a new constitution first, because how can you do an election without a constitution? How can you elect a president who doesn t know how he s going to rule? Is he going to be a full presidential person, or is it going to be a parliament and president? What kind of system, what kind of powers does he have? So, if we would have gotten something from the United States, it should have gone right at this... like help, advise. You know, the funniest part the one clever party that used the [International] Republican Institute to help them gear up for the election was the Salafist party. I mean, yes, that s why you won. They were clever enough. I mean, my people didn t even resort to get that kind of help. So, I don t know what more you can do, but what we definitely don t want is senators and congressmen coming, visiting Tahrir Square and thinking, this is democracy. Just remember that Hitler was elected in a democratic process, you know. What did he decide after that? I like democracy when I m here. After that, I don t want any more, because I want to stay forever.... Do you believe that what is happening in Iran today is democracy? Do you believe, in these elections in Iran, when two hundred people get beaten up and taken from their homes or [with] the Iranian bloggers today: two thousand bloggers disappear from their families and their homes. This is a democracy? When people cannot see any other satellites because the government is blocking satellite where a president who I wouldn t even hire to wash my car says that he wants to see a country like Israel wiped [off] the map? This is democracy? Do you believe democracy brings someone like that? SATLOFF: I m going to press you one more time and ask the question this way: when the new government of Egypt is formed, it s going to come to Washington, and it s going to ask our support for loans at the IMF [International Monetary Fund], our support for Egypt to get through economic problems. They re going to ask for economic assistance and military aid. And if this is an Islamist-led government, what do you think people in Egypt like you how do you think you would like to see America respond to those sorts of requests? SAWIRIS: I don t think America or the West has a choice. I want to explain to you something: if Egypt falls, the whole Middle East will go into chaos. Egypt is not just like any other country. Egypt is the gate[way] to the Gulf: it has the biggest army, it has the biggest educational base it s our doctors and engineers who go to Saudi Arabia, to Kuwait, and to the Emirates to help it has the culture. It is a very important state in the Middle East, so Islamist, non-islamist, whoever comes to you, you will be forced to help, because otherwise 6

7 ... the consequence of Egypt falling is just [immeasurable]. Also, you need to understand that a weak Egypt, or an Egypt that goes down the drain, is not good for Israel [either], you know. Israel, too, needs a stable Egypt. So if Egypt is unstable, then instead of just these pipelines being blown up all the time, and instead of the Hamas people doing their picnics in Egypt and so on, we will have much bigger problems. So you don t have a choice, my feeling is. And as a nationalist, I want my country to be better. If someone would think that I want Egypt to fail so that the Islamists fail, I would not be a real patriot if I thought that. SATLOFF: Okay. Thank you. Let me ask you a question about your own political lessons from your experience of the last year. One hopes there ll be another election, whenever that will be. Now that you have gone through the experience of creating a party, of trying to put parties together, trying to align people, and seeing that it didn t work out as well as you had hoped, what do you do between now and then to have a better outcome? SAWIRIS: First of all, I am not in agreement that it did not work as I knew from the beginning that a party that is made in ninety days would never make more than 5 percent of the parliament. And we got 5 percent, so I was not really expecting anything better, to be honest. What happened, meanwhile, is that many people in Egypt today have lost faith in the Muslim Brotherhood many even from the ones who elected them. Because they feel they are going to be a replacement for Mr. Mubarak s party. They want it all, they want all the power. And Egyptians, by nature, don t like this dominant position, they like people to live and let live, and so on, and so they have lost a lot in the last elections. The one mistake we did and I have to take responsibility we thought if you vote for 70 percent parties and [30] percent individuals, this is a good thing. We were ignorant, we were amateurs, as I said. When someone tells me, But you went into politics, I [respond, I] didn t want to go into politics. I just didn t want this new system to reign and I didn t see any[one else] fighting and so I jumped, because nobody wanted to jump. I m a businessman.... Now I am enemy number one to the coming government, coming regime, and everything. So who is this sane businessman who fights against the current? Many businessmen who used to donate to our party [stopped] because they re worried. [They say,] if we donate to the liberal party, are we going to get 5 percent? We want to donate to the one that gets 90 percent.... So, the one other thing that we learned and would do differently is that we would want the votes to be free. Individuals, parties because all the individuals of the liberal party won. Because the Egyptians like characters. They judge a person. They don t understand this concept of parties very well. But they trust someone, you know. So if I would have run in any of my districts, with a [pre]dominance of Muslims, they would have elected me because they know I am a secular guy, I am not biased toward my own religion or toward any religion. This we would have done differently, and we would [have insisted] on a real, foreign [observation] on the ballots, because... I mean, I always crack the joke, we saw the box where people were putting the ballots and then we saw a box at the main center where the ballots were being counted. Between this point and the other point, nobody knows where the cards, or the boxes, went, you know... If you have seen the mess that was happening during our election, you wouldn t call this an organized election. 7

8 SATLOFF: For those of you who aren t up on Egyptian election regulations, what Naguib is referring to is that the Egyptian election system is a mixed system, in which 70 percent of the seats are allocated according to party lists and you could vote for party lists but only 30 percent of the seats were individual candidates named in individual districts. But what he was saying is, in individual districts, his party would have done a lot better. Just one last question and then I ll open the floor to the audience. Naguib, one of the greatest surprises for people who are watching the Egyptian elections is not that the Muslim Brotherhood won 40-some-odd percent, but out of nowhere, the Salafist party won 25, 27 percent. Where did they come from, what do they want, and how could they actually do so well in a first election? SAWIRIS: Can I be honest? SATLOFF: Yes. SAWIRIS: I don t know where the hell they came from or how the hell they got [so many votes]. [laughter] All I know is that the Mubarak regime has been very good in hiding them everywhere, and all I know is that when I walk in Cairo like this [pointing to his suit], I feel like a stranger like even now all the taxi drivers have long beards and everything and so I really don t know. SATLOFF: Let s open the floor to your questions. Right up in front, Barbie Weinberg. If a microphone could come up to the front, I d appreciate it. BARBIE WEINBERG: You re a courageous man. Thank you for being here. What is the future for Christians in Egypt, or is there a future for Christians in Egypt? SAWIRIS: The Christians of Egypt ask me that question. I mean, if you want to look at the during Mubarak s regime, I would say every three or four years, we would have one church burned, and ransacked. I think in this revolution within twelve months we had six burned and ransacked completely. And the way the government dealt with this was very funny. Every time we had a church burned, instead of looking for the guys who did it, we had to mediate with the guys who did it to allow the church to be rebuilt. If the one who went and ransacked the first church was put in jail, the other five churches most probably would be safe now. But that was not the case, so we had six churches being burned. Not only that, but as you remember, in front of the TV station were a few courageous Christians, because I want to say that a Copt is not, by nature, very courageous. So I always tell my friends, I m Muslim, you know because this cheek and the other cheek, I don t think it works very well in this environment, the Christian way, you know. [laughter] So there were [inaudible] brave Copts who went in front of the TV to object to the burning of the churches. The result was, I think, thirty-eight murders. The young people were killed in front, all Christians. And they were killed under the army s control and there are big stories [as to] who killed them and I don t believe any of these. And I went the next day to the funeral, to the cathedral. So I m not a very frequent visitor to the cathedral, being a secular guy and so on, but this exact question was asked to me by everybody in the church: where will we go? And [my answer to them was] this is our country and we re going 8

9 nowhere. Because they needed support. But frankly speaking, I think if the situation gets out of hand, I don t believe that the Muslim Brotherhood will risk alienating the Christians, or losing the Christians completely, but you have a lot of scholars who went on TV and said Canada is open for immigration. You can go to the States, you can go everywhere as if we should go somewhere else, you know. And many Christians, I would say, as a fact since the revolution, the number of Christians asking for immigration and so [forth] has increased. So there is a real worry in the Christian community because they believe, okay, this country is going to be an Islamic-ruled, a religiously ruled country and we might not even be allowed to go to church and pray. And so there is a lot of fear and there is a lot of danger, and I believe it depends on how sane the [coming] regime will [be]. But it s not very clear, you know, and I m not very optimistic. SATLOFF: Thank you. In front, Dennis Ross, and then we ll move around the room. DENNIS ROSS: You know, your presentation s a remarkable presentation, and I think you offer an extraordinary perspective. I d like to hear your perspective on the Brotherhood and what they really want to do right now. You suggested they want control and they want power. But if they have the power, then they assume the responsibility and they have to deliver something. I mean, you now have an Egypt where people now have a sense that they have a voice. Now, what does the Brotherhood expect? What do they think they have to do to be able to deliver? And, if they don t deliver, what do they think the consequences are for them? SAWIRIS: One theory [behind] the reason they did so well in the elections is that they sent to every poor home a bottle of oil, a kilo of sugar, and some milk. Week by week, during the election. After the election, of course, they were out of funds, the Qataris maybe stopped sending money, so the oil and sugar stopped. That s again [a reason] the people now feel uncomfortable with them, you know, because they re not sending any more of that. It doesn t help me if they come in faith. They think that when they come, they will go to Qatar and they will go to Saudi [Arabia], which I am not sure will respond, and get investments and try to push the country and everybody s going to be happy and it should be an easy ride, you know. I don t think so. They don t have within their ranks very sophisticated businessmen. They don t have within their ranks very famous administrators.... They are well organized. They have a good organization. So, I don t it doesn t do me well to say they will come and reign for ten, fifteen years and then they will fail and then maybe we all will come. You know, it doesn t help because I am not going to wait for fifteen, twenty years? And should I tell my kids to wait fifteen years? And meanwhile live under an autocratic, a dictatorial system? Their behavior even now is not very democratic. I mean, anybody who criticizes or says anything against them, he gets completely lashed the same way as during the Mubarak regime. Same way, same attitude, and so on. 9

10 So, whether they will deliver or not, this is not my point. My point is that countries should not be allowed to be turned into religious states. Actually, I classify myself as someone who is not an anti-israeli guy. And I was in Washington here one time and I asked, I think, Mr. [Ehud] Barak this question. I told him: Why are you insisting on Israel being a Jewish state? I have a problem like that. He told me, What s your problem? I said, Look, I m Christian. I m from a minority in Egypt. And that s exactly what they re saying in Egypt: it s an Islamic state. So tell me where I go as a Christian Egyptian? So if you want to do religious states, then we end up in a problematic [situation], because also in Israel you have the Palestinians, the Christian Palestinians and the Muslim Palestinians. So, we should all try to be you should be a proud Israeli, regardless of if you are Jewish or not. You should be a proud Israeli or a proud Egyptian, regardless of if you are a Christian or a Muslim. But if you start from the religious angle, I m worried. I have to be worried. [applause] SATLOFF: Thank you. Ziad Asali, I ve got some names down. Ziad Asali, in the center, right here, standing up. ZIAD ASALI: Welcome to Washington, Mr. Sawiris, it is a pleasure to hear a secular and cogent, coherent [inaudible] put together in Washington, explaining what the future might hold as a possibility. The system that advocates for the citizen disregarding the religious or the ethnic or the regional affiliation... My point is that this is probably the first time this case was made in Washington, from that perspective, by an Egyptian. I would say that a whole year is too long to have this kind of message delivered in here. We have established ourselves from the American Task Force on Palestine. I would recommend for you to have something called the American Task Force on Egypt to represent that kind of voice in Washington. I d be interested in your [newly embodied] activism if it crosses the Atlantic. SATLOFF: Okay, the suggestion. Josh Weston, then Lionel Leventhal, here. JOSHUA WESTON: We just heard one assignment from the previous speaker. I ll give you another hypothetical one. You ve got the compliments for what you ve said, which was terrific. They were in the political and the religious area. If I had the power to appoint you the next democratically elected president of Egypt, given the economic situation in Egypt, given the literacy situation, given the birthrate in Egypt, as the next democratically appointed Egyptian president appointed by me what would you do to tackle those issues, even though the antecedent issue is the one you talked about? SAWIRIS: The first thing I would do is not to reinvent the wheel. My dad sent me to a German school, and I never knew why. He didn t speak German, my mom didn t speak German. Nobody in the family spoke German. So after a few years, you know... And then when I graduated he even insisted that I go to Zurich to the Polytechnic in Switzerland for my engineering.... Again, they had nothing [in connection with Germany]. So I asked, I said, why did you insist on he told me, look, look at Germany. Look what they did after the Second World War. Look where they are economically. You need to go and be taught by the same people, so you end up with the same background and the same thinking and you can change the country. 10

11 If I was president today, I would ask the Germans, the British, the French to, instead of giving us aid and money, come and build our schools, to put [in place] our curriculum systems, our educational system, to open a branch from MIT in Egypt, a branch from Harvard in Egypt. This is the kind of help we want so that we can... What will this also do it will insert the same culture in the minds of people so that we can eliminate these cultural differences and the thinking, you know... Again, as I said, Egyptians like to joke. We always believe like, the Muslim Brotherhood says, Our solution for Egypt will be an Egyptian solution. I hope not, because if you look at our traffic [laughter], and if you look at the way we did our election, and if you look at how clean our streets are, I don t think an Egyptian solution is the right solution, you know. [laughter] And I am the biggest patriot a patriot is someone who knows what s wrong in his own country, who can criticize his country, who can see the dirt. Like, my mom one time I sponsored a book for a young girl who was very efficient, so she took some nice photography. One photograph, in the middle of the book, was of the garbage which people throw over the houses. When they don t know what to do, they put it on the decks of the houses. So this big picture in the middle of the book was very colorful because it had all the garbage of Cairo on the decks of the houses. So my mom came to me: You call yourself patriotic, and you sponsor a book that shows the garbage on the roofs. I told her, Mommy, if you are a good patriot and all the Egyptians are patriots [you] should not have the garbage on the house, to start with. So if you clean the garbage, then the photo is only a reflection of what is. So, it s not like she invented the photo, you know. So, if we want to be good [patriots], we should clean our we should not throw our garbage on the [roofs]. What I want to say is, I would not reinvent the wheel. If you ask me, like, what you want from us, I would say, help us build a good educational system in our country, help us build a good health system in our country, help us deal with our social problems and how to adapt a good retirement and a good social program for people. This is what I would do. I would depend on the West for help and would not restart the wheel because my success stories are basically coming from the fact that I was sent to these kinds of schools, you know, and got this kind of education. Even my success in telecom when everybody tells me, Wow, what you did is magnificent. You built the biggest telecom company in the Middle East in five years. [And I tell them], Look, you have to understand. I didn t really invent the wheel. I looked at Europe. They used the cellular phone there. And the big idea I got is, this should also work in my part of the world. [laughter] So what s so genius about that? So that s what I did. Many people didn t get this notion, and so I started selling cellular phones in the Middle East and I built my company. But it was because, when you find a good idea, you don t need some people, in life, and I m sure many of you meet them [in the business world], whatever idea comes from you, they don t like. They want to have their own idea, even if your idea was the right one because it s not coming from them. LIONEL LEVENTHAL: So we all know that Egypt has a history of some of the best businessmen in the world. And so this is not a political or a religious question, but so how proactive, do you think, the Muslim Brotherhood is, given it s almost a forgone conclusion that they ll win? How proactive do you think they are in terms of thinking about how to 11

12 create a climate that is welcoming and stable for business in Egypt after the election? And, you know, how high a priority is that and what are the implications? What do you think could happen if it is not something they ve given a lot of thought to? SAWIRIS: They are being very active. They have, for the last three months, been gathering a lot of information about all our ministries and the administration and they re preparing themselves for that mission. Mr. [Khairat] al-shater has traveled to Qatar. Recently and this is not a joke, it s serious Mr. Morsi made a statement that he has assurances that once they are in charge, $200 billion [will be] flowing into Egypt. I repeat: $200 billion. This is like twenty times the Marshall Plan for Germany, and Egypt has never seen, not $200 billion, but even $20 billion. These are the kinds of figures they throw. So I know that the main concept will depend on going to Qatar and getting $4 or $5 billion from here and persuading the Qataris to invest, persuading the Saudis to invest, and so on. But I don t believe they have a detailed business plan geared toward employment, geared toward attracting investment. I don t believe that they have the necessary technocrats to prepare for that, but as far as they are concerned they are preparing for that. They are being proactive, if this is your question, yes. SATLOFF: Khairi Abaza, in the back. KHAIRI ABAZA: Hi, I m Khairi Abaza from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. I think we agree as Egyptians that Islamists have purchased the Egyptian parliament, with rice and sugar and social services. Also, the question, when it comes to the Islamists: how to beat them? Do we have to do what they have been doing, but do it better? That is, provide social services by rice and sugar. Is there a plan from the liberal camp to do the same, because it s an unequal [inaudible]. And, if the liberals do not do that, I see very slim chances for them to win over the villages of Egypt [inaudible]. And I d like to know your thoughts on this. SAWIRIS: I think we recognize that, but we don t want to give sugar and oil [and so on]; this is like charity. This should be done by charity organizations. It s like the Chinese proverb, you know, don t give me a fish, teach me how to fish. So, what we want to do is we really want to go and do social work and provide support through microfinance and support creating small entrepreneurs and support the communities. And this requires a lot of funding, you know, and the problem we have as a liberal party is funding. And you can say, well, you are a rich guy, you should be able to fund that. I did. I mean, my father thinks I m insane, because when I told him how much I spent in the election, he thought that he should take all my money back, you know. We are going to do that, and we are preparing for that. It needs a lot of funding. And it s not fair to have, like, one person fund it all the time. It s purely a problem of funding while the other parties, they can go to Qatar, and they will give them another $200 million in a nutshell, like that, and things are done, you know, differently. There is also a big mistake which has been made, in my personal opinion, by the Emiratis the Emiratis, for me, are the most modern and the most secular and the most open, liberal 12

13 regimes in the region. But they underestimated the fact that this was happening in Egypt [and] would somehow have a resonance on them. I believe that they should be coming to Egypt and trying to invest in Egypt and trying to help us in such a manner because we would be for them the first line of defense, and when people have a job and have prosperity, they will really start... I mean, even me I m a strong believer in God, you know I don t pray every day. When do I pray? When my daughter was sick, or someone died, or I have a big problem, you know. So we all remember God under stress. So if you can relieve some of that stress, you will also relieve some of the extreme religiousness in people. You know, I m not against religion, but obviously it should be balanced. SATLOFF: Okay, two more questions and then we ll close. Hanan Elbadry and David Makovsky. HANAN ELBADRY: Welcome again. I just want to ask you about the new party of ElBaradei. How far will the effect and the impact be on the grassroots in Egypt [inaudible] or especially on young Egyptians? SATLOFF: This is, just to explain, the new party announced by Dr. [Mohamed] ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a main political actor in revolutionary Egypt. SAWIRIS: You know, Dr. ElBaradei is one of the most respectable people we have in Egypt. I am one of the people who would have loved to see him president and this would have been the best solution for Egypt. Even if he was prime minister, it would have been the best solution. But, of course, he was not treated with the honor he deserves. And many games were played against him, and there is one point about him he is not willing to go down to the streets and get his shirt torn, you know he has a status. But this last move about the party: personally, I think, it defies reason, because we don t need another liberal party, we need the liberal parties to unite. You know, our problem is that we are [fractured]. We have no leadership we are [fractured]. Dr. ElBaradei should have been the person who should have gone out and gathered all these liberal parties and moved them into one front. But creating a new liberal party and telling me four years, and five years I mean, I don t know how many four, five years in my life we have. We have a fight right now, ok. So, he should have been the guy who and I told him that, I m very close to him I told him that, you know, he listens to some people around [him], why are you going to form another party which might get another 3 or 4 percent in four years.... What does that [do to] help us now? We are in a mess right now. DAVID MAKOVSKY: Thank you very much for your talk. It s fascinating. Two questions: you know, in America, when the economy improves, they say the president gets credit and he s reelected; if the economy doesn t improve, he s out. In Egypt, under this new system, do you think it will be so performance-based that after four years, if the Brotherhood doesn t produce, they will be out? Or is it more identity politics that people will say, look, I m a religious Muslim, they re religious Muslims, I don t care if they perform so quickly. The problems weren t made quickly. We ll keep voting for them even if they don t perform. So, 13

14 is it about performance politics or identity politics, question one. And two, when it comes to the issues like peace with Israel, how do you give weight between the Brotherhood as the head of the government, the military, and whoever is president? Who will make this decision on foreign policy about whether to maintain the treaty with Israel? Is it going to be the prerogative of the president or the military? Or is that too simplistic of a definition? SAWIRIS: First of all, before I answer the question: if what I think might happen happens and that is that the new ruling party, the Muslim Brotherhood, decides to adapt the kind of dictatorship they have shown us in the last six months since they were elected in the parliament... In the parliament today, they go out, they put a law, they vote, sanctioned. They have 70 percent, so any law can be sanctioned. So they want to make a law that all the pornographic sites should be eliminated from the internet. They want to make a law that eliminates anyone from being elected if they worked with or if they even said good morning to Mr. Mubarak. Okay, they make the law and pass it. If we turn into a dictatorship and they have the tools of dictatorship... I mean, Mr. Mubarak stayed thirty, forty years because he had the tools: the police scared people, anybody who had the guts to voice any kind of a different opinion was taken, was put in prison, and so on. So, they might resort to the same tools and then there is no discussion about the results.... Do what you want, we are here to stay. If it s not the case, and I m wrong, and they do an economic program and they fail, I think today the Egyptians, many of them will not accept failure anymore because they thought that this revolution would also bring wealth and [over]night their lives would change and that there would be prosperity. And, of course, it doesn t happen this way, you know. So, the expectation has been taken very, very high, and the circumstances now are at their worst. And the Muslim Brotherhood is actually clever in a way. They say, okay, if we don t take the government, how can you expect us to deliver? So, we will be blamed by the population for failure while we don t have the means of execution. Sounds fair to me. The problem is, do you want the power to really do what s good for Egypt or just to stay in power and say, thank you, democracy, you ve given me what I want. That s it. What was the last question? SATLOFF: Israel. Who chooses? SAWIRIS: Okay, this is very easy. They go to the parliament, and they say they want to cancel the treaty with Israel. They have 70 percent, so they can cancel the treaty. What can the army do? The army definitely doesn t want to cancel the treaty. The army definitely never wants to go to war with Israel anymore. They actually have positive sentiments, you know. And there is another factor: we can t afford another war with Israel because all our defense system is U.S.-based, and the United States will never allow us to use it against Israel. So it s fictitious, you know, when we think that the Egyptian army will go and do that. But, to answer your questions, even if they re saying today they will not cancel the treaty, they will not [do so and so], their idea of the Islamic caliphate includes Hamas. The murshid [Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood] said clearly, openly, our aim is to do final[ize] 14

15 the dream of the Islamic caliphate. So maybe they want to turn Israel also into part of the Islamic caliphate, using Hamas or whatever, you know. So, if you guys want to trust them, trust them. They ll give you all the nice words right now because they re not fully in power. Once they re in power, we are all in deep trouble. [applause] SATLOFF: Friends, please join me in thanking Naguib Sawiris. 15