Al-Hayat published on its website dozens of comments posted in response to what I had written on Egypt, and blocked other commentsو which were not suitable for publication. I also directly received a number of messages, and replied to them all in agreement or disagreement. Those rebelling against the rule of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt include some of the best people seeking to reform their country's affairs, with a minority of gangs and mobs such as the ones who attacked the national museum, the most important museum of its kind in the world, and others who are criminals or petty thieves, who exist in all countries. The readers' messages reflected this mixture of an educated and refined majority, with a minority whose messages betray the nature of those who wrote it, i.e. in being unfit for publication. The sheer volume of comments posted on Al-Hayat's website and the rate by which they are sent every day mean that I cannot respond to each one of them as I would have preferred. All I can do, instead, is to choose from what I had written prior to the elections and after them. The reader will find that I criticized the regime when it was still strong and stable, and that I did not add anything after it was shaken to take advantage of the opportunity, as chancers would and do. I requested the archive department of Al-Hayat to print out my articles on Egypt published since last September, i.e. on the eve of the elections, and I received 16 articles in total, from which I chose the following excerpts: -The role of Egypt at the Arab level has declined. Since the leadership in the Arab world is cut to fit Egypt, the decline of the nation may be attributed to a decline in Egyptian leadership. For years now, the entire political discourse in Egypt has been focused on the presidential elections, specifically the issue of political inheritance. Since the upcoming presidential elections are a year or so away from now, the entire government will be a hostage to these elections… (15/9/2010). In the same article, I wrote about the impressive performance of the Egyptian economy, and I said that this success would somewhat compensate for some of the “political failure”, but added immediate afterwards, “I will continue to consider it a failure until Egypt returns to its Arab leadership role”. On the next day, 16/9/2010, I said that I have many other candidates for the post of President of Egypt, including Gamal Mubarak, along with the dean of journalism and writing Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, were he in his seventies, and Lt. Gen. Omar Suleiman, Amr Moussa, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Mostafa El Feki, and Mohamed ElBaradei, whom I said to be a dear friend and praised his role as Chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency where he stood up to the U.S. and Israel. I also nominated Dr. Ahmed Zewail, Ahmed Nazif, Rasheed Mohamed Rasheed, Faiza Abu Naga, and Youssef Boutros-Ghali. On 29/9/2010, I said: My opinion on all Arab countries without exception is that they are all undemocratic, and that there is no independent rule of law, transparency, or women's rights in place in them. (I have expressed this opinion about 30 times, according to the statistics of Al-Hayat's archive department.) - In another article, I compared the economic track record of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in the West Bank and the role of Gamal Mubarak in the Egyptian economy, based on the information published by the World Bank, the IMF, and the business section in Al-Hayat. After that I literally said, “There is corruption, and the improved performance of the economy has not yet spread to the poor…The good performance of the economy does not deserve its name if not all the citizens benefit from its results.” (11/10/2010) On 22/11/2010, I said, “Since the parliamentary elections in Egypt will take place soon, they will continue to be a controversial and highly relevant subject. I say to all Egyptian readers that it is their right to support or oppose whomever they want, but my only hope is that they will not falsely attribute anything to me, or read two lines out of sixty or seventy in an article, and then claim that those two lines represent my full stance…” On 30/11/2010, I said, “I was in Cairo in the days prior to the parliamentary elections in Egypt, and I tried my best not to follow the elections, stemming from two convictions: the first was that the ruling National Democratic Party will win with an overwhelming majority, and the second, that I prefer the government over the opposition which consists of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose candidates ran in the elections as independents and which remains the largest opposition faction in the country. I am not fond of the Egyptian government, as corruption continues to be rampant there. And while the government did indeed have some good economic achievements, their benefits are still to be seen among the poorer segments, as these achievements seem to reach a certain level below which they spread no further”. The results of the elections then came as a surprise for me. On 22/12/2010, I literally wrote, “By the way, I wrote before the election results emerged, and I have never expected the Muslim Brotherhood not to win any seats. I hope the president will dissolve the new parliament at the appropriate time, and order new elections to be held…” I concluded 2010 and began 2011 with three articles that examined Egypt's leading role between 1800 and 1850, and urged President Mubarak to stand up to the U.S. Congress. Today, I still stand by what I said about Hosni Mubarak before he announced that he will not seek a renewal of his term. I will not add or retract anything from it, whether the President stays or leaves, and I will not ride any waves, as that is a quality of those who have no morals.
