Day: July 6, 2013
ElBaradei should not make Morsi’s mistakes
If Americans remember Mohamed ElBaradei at all, it is for his stubborn and ultimately vindicated resistance to the George W. Bush administration’s claims that Iraq was acquiring nuclear weapons. ElBaradei was then Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, with which he shared a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. While an important figure on the secular/liberal part of the political spectrum since the February 2011 revolution, he polled poorly and withdrew as a candidate in the 2012 presidential election that Mohamed Morsi won. ElBaradei said it was a mistake to elect a president before revising the constitution. He wanted a more inclusive, slower process. He then founded the Constitution Party, with his eye on the 2016 election.
Now ElBaradei is to be prime minister of an interim government resulting from this week’s military coup. He faces no lesser challenges than Morsi did. The economy is in a tailspin. The government’s coffers are empty. Security is deteriorating. Rival demonstrations are clashing in the streets of Cairo, Port Said and other major cities. Plus he faces the enormous resentment of the Muslim Brotherhood, which rightly claims Morsi had democratic legitimacy that ElBaradei lacks. Read more
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Yemenis in DC
I spent a couple of hours with visiting Yemenis earlier this week, focused on the current national dialogue. This was not a cross-section of Yemeni society. These were well-educated, mostly mid- to upper-level bureaucrats who certainly know what people in Washington want to hear.
The vision they projected is not reconstruction but rather building a New Yemen: a single (but not overly centralized) civil state, stronger provincial and local self-governance, stronger protection of individual rights. Three hurdles seemed foremost on the Yemenis’ minds:
- fuller integration of the south;
- security for the population;
- international community engagement. Read more
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