Dean's World

Free Elections for Egypt?

Dean

Egypt's quasi-dictatorial President, Hosni Mubarak, claims he wants to see free multi-party elections this year.

It'll be interesting to see if he's telling the truth--right now, frankly, I'm skeptical, especially if he doesn't like the results of the elections, or jerry-rigs things to make it impossible for real challengers to mount effective campaigns. It would be nice if it were more than just words, though...

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Mike "Veeshir" Fisher (mail):

I'm much more sanguine about Egypt than about the Palestinians.
Egypt isn't as anarchically violent as the Palestinians where you have 5+ murderously violent groups to deal with. Egypt has a murderous gov't (not as murderous as the PA) and one or two groups they keep around for cover.

The Arab Street is speaking, and they're calling for freedom.
I don't envy the death and destruction that will follow, but at least it's a start.

2.27.2005 9:06am

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Dean Esmay (www):

Yeah well it's going to be up to us in the West to put these guys' feet to the fire. We can't just accept blathering and half-measures.

I was talking to a friend of mine from Lebanon last night. He was nearly crying with his rage at Syria and the group of thugs surrounding the weakling figurehead Assad. He said point blank that if the United States doesn't go over there and straighten shit out, nothing will straighten shit out. He was practically begging for the Bush administration to send a few batallions straight into Damascus.

You're damned right the Arab street is riled... but guess who it is they're really getting riled at? The right people this time. Or so it appears anyway.

2.27.2005 9:23am

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Dave (mail) (www):

And apparantly this is the result of Condi doing the diplomatic equivalent of giving Hosni the ol' "I'm sure you're a nice guy and all, but you're really not my type" speech. Egypt is eager to at least go through the motions of doing stuff we'll like in order to get clearly on our good side (publicly).

2.27.2005 1:01pm

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Steven Malcolm Anderson (www):

I'm a reactionary. If Egypt was still under the Pharaohs, we wouldn't be having these problems today.

2.27.2005 1:31pm

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Sandi (www):

While I hope that Egypt really can have free multi-pary elections, I have my doubts. Their parliament will be setting the rules for candidates as well as what parties can run. As the article says some parties are banned in Egypt and it could be only a ploy to make the Egyptian government look good.

Dean The Iraqi's have also had it with Syria. Omar from Iraq The Model is attending lectures over the weekend to teach blogging to people. In his post, which I blogged here, the Iaqri Pajamadeen is pissed and moving into high gear to expose terrorist, especially those coming in from Syrai.

2.27.2005 1:41pm

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Jane (mail) (www):

There's a rising tide of expectations that can't be turned off now.

2.27.2005 7:16pm