Shaimaa Fayed CAIRO — He has no army pedigree, lived in the West for decades and has criticized successive rulers of Egypt, from Hosni Mubarak and the generals who replaced him to the now ousted Mohamed Morsi. Now, more than two years after the anti-Mubarak rebellion, Mohamed ElBaradei, 70, is the designated negotiator for the opposition forces that clamored for the army to remove Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government. Military, political and diplomatic sources tipped him as favorite to head an interim government under Adly Mansour, a senior judge sworn in on Thursday as Egypt's acting president. ElBaradei met Gen. Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on Wednesday and was present when the armed forces commander announced that Morsi was no longer president and suspended the constitution. “ElBaradei is our first choice,” a source close to the army said. “He's an international figure, popular with young people and believes in a democracy that would include all political forces. He is also popular among some Islamist groups.” The source was referring to some members of the Nour party, an ultra-orthodox Salafi group that has been both an ally and a rival of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood. Political sources said ElBaradei, who won the Nobel peace prize for his work as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), would also be acceptable to Western powers that have studiously avoided calling Morsi's removal a military coup. Other contenders include former prime minister Kamal Ganzouri and former Central Bank governor Farouk El-Okdah. ElBaradei said Thursday that the army's roadmap, under which a panel for national reconciliation will be set up and the constitution will be reviewed before parliamentary and presidential elections, would “continue the revolution” of 2011. ElBaradei entered Egypt's political stage in 2010, stirring up decades of calcified politics under Mubarak by saying he might run for president in 2011 if a fair vote was guaranteed. At the time, many of his countrymen admired his pluck in challenging Mubarak, who had rigged elections for decades, but otherwise found it hard to identify with the bespectacled, soft-spoken UN diplomat who had spent so long abroad. Mubarak's allies painted ElBaradei, a defender of human rights and social freedoms, as a “foreign agent”. The opposing Islamist camp dismissed him as “too liberal” for Egypt. A hate-figure for some hardline Islamists, ElBaradei was named in February, along with a leftist politician, by a Muslim cleric as meriting the death penalty under Islamic law for seeking to topple Morsi. ElBaradei has long pressed for Egypt to sign a $4.8 billion loan deal with the International Monetary Fund, which Morsi's government initialed in November but never ratified. The deal could help kick-start an economy battered by the collapse of tourism and investment due to political turmoil since the 2011 uprising. But it would also entail politically risky tax increases and cuts in fuel and food subsidies. ElBaradei, a supporter of private enterprise, says austerity is the price Egypt must pay for the IMF loan. “I think there is no other option. Nobody disagrees that the economy is ailing, and nobody disagrees that you have to take certain measures,” he said in an April 30 interview. Egypt needed private investment, but to attract that it needed political consensus, something he said was lacking under the Muslim Brotherhood government. “Private investment obviously needs 100 percent political consensus. People need to come here and see there is law and order, institutions, a minister who can sign a piece of paper. It's not there right now,” ElBaradei argued. — Reuters
