The success of the Tamarod, or rebel, campaign, which seeks to withdraw confidence from President Mohamed Morsi, is mainly due to the fact that it exposed the failure of most of the existing opposition forces in building wide public grassroots and in introducing themselves as a strong alternative to the current Islamist regime. Recently, most of the opposition groups led by the National Salvation Front (NSF) announced their support of the Tamarod campaign, which managed, as its leaders confirmed, to collect around 15 million signatures, a peaceful means to press for ousting the Islamist-oriented President Mohamed Morsi. The campaign's leaders called upon all opposition groups to take part in mass protests scheduled to be held on 30 June, the first anniversary of Morsi's presidency, to press for ending his rule. Mahmoud Badr, co-founder of the Tamarod campaign, talked to Al-Ahram Weekly about their plans for 30 June and how campaign leaders assess their relationship with other opposition forces. What are your expectations for 30 June? The millions of signatures we have got on our petition is a strong indicator that something big will happen on 30 June and this is up to the Egyptian people. However, there are no guarantees that we will succeed in forcing the current president to step down and hold an early presidential election. However, we believe that we are taking to the streets to demand our legitimate rights to live in a democratic state and fulfil the demands of the revolution which thousands of Egyptians sacrificed their lives for over the last two years. We believe that the Egyptians support us and they will answer our call by participating in this protest and others until we achieve our goals.
Many experts have expressed their concerns that the June protest may turn violent. Do you have any plans to keep it peaceful? We are currently working with other political forces to come up with a plan to secure mass demonstrations that will go to the presidential palace. We are suggesting a number of procedures including recruiting tens of thousands of volunteers from young people to act as overseers to prevent any violence. The main responsibility of these young men and women is to make sure that the protest is peaceful and that there is no sabotage of any public or private property. Additionally, we are willing to install cameras on all the streets that lead to the palace to monitor any illegal activities that aim to turn peaceful protests into violence. At the same time, we have warned all youth movements which will participate that any violent activity by their supporters will be denounced by Tamarod and that those responsible should be held accountable. There has been much controversy over the relationship between Tamarod and the other opposition groups. What do you think? We may be critical of the way Egypt's political opposition has operated so far. Still, we are part of the opposition. It's hard to separate what we do from the moves made by other opposition forces and parties. We may disagree about the opposition's way of dealing with the Morsi administration. However, in the end we both agree that Morsi's legitimacy has fallen.
But you mentioned in your mission statement that you “are not part of any political group” and that you are independent. In many statements, the campaign distanced itself from all political groups especially the NSF. Would you explain? All the opposition groups including the NSF supported Tamarod from day one, and most of them opened their headquarters for the collection of signatures. Their supporters in many governorates have become part of the campaign. This explained how we could not separate the campaign from the opposition groups. Additionally, Tamarod was established to bridge the gap between the people and the opposition, which failed to win the heart and minds of millions of Egyptians because of the lack of skills to build grassroots support. Simply we are the grassroots force of the opposition groups.
How far could the disagreement between Tamarod and the opposition like NSF affect the unity of the opposition during the 30 June mass protests? We called on all political groups to join a million-man march outside the presidential palace in Cairo on 30 June to call for an end to the Muslim Brotherhood's rule and to demand immediate presidential elections. We agree with all the opposition groups in principle but we may disagree about the details. We may dislike the NSF's weakness, but in the end Tamarod and all the opposition groups view the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood as lacking legitimacy and we both seek civil political systems and we do not want Egypt to be an Islamic state.
Some analysts believe that some opposition groups want to hijack the success of Tamarod and attribute it to themselves? I do not think that is possible. Tamarod is made up of ordinary Egyptians. The people who we are collecting the signatures from are students, workers, street vendors, government employees, police officers and businessmen. What I mean is that Tamarod is representing ordinary Egyptians who reject President Morsi and who support the opposition goals of establishing a democratic state. It is also worth mentioning that when the NSF decided to support Tamarod it raised the ceiling of its demands from calling for dismissing the current prosecutor-general and forming a national government to pressing for ousting the current Islamic regime. The NSF has also adopted the same position of Tamarod by rejecting any dialogue with the ruling party and the Muslim Brotherhood. In a word, we can say that Tamarod empowered the NSF and other opposition groups and unified them.
