After receiving a warm welcome at Cairo airport on 19 February, ex-IAEA head Mohamed El-Baradei has embarked upon a media campaign that includes sustained attacks on the regime, reports Gamal Essam El-Din Mohamed El-Baradei used his first visit to Egypt since the end of his term as secretary-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last November to launch a scathing attack on the regime. In an interview with the independent daily Al-Dostour on 21 February, El-Baradei poured scorn on state-owned national newspapers, describing them "as government mouthpieces rather than real newspapers". That he had been attacked in their pages following the announcement that he might consider standing as a presidential candidate had served only to reinforce his popularity with the public, said El-Baradei. "My responsibilities as head of the IAEA meant I could not comment freely on political conditions in Egypt," El-Baradei told the independent television channel Dream 2 on the same day the Al-Dostour interview was published. "Now I am free and I have the right, as an ordinary Egyptian citizen, to express my views on the conditions that prevail in my country." El-Baradei's anti-National Democratic Party (NDP) offensive was not restricted to interviews with independent media. To the anger of NDP officials, he also met with representatives of opposition groups critical of the regime on Tuesday. The activists El-Baradei met at his home on the Cairo- Alexandria Desert Road included Hassan Nafaa, professor of political science at Cairo University and chairman of the "No to Inheritance Movement"; George Ishaq, a member of Kifaya, the Popular Movement for Change; Mahmoud El-Khodeiri, the retired judge whose calls for greater judicial independence made him a household name; Saad El-Katatni, parliamentary spokesman of the Muslim Brotherhood; Ayman Nour, founder of the Ghad Party; Osama El-Ghazali Harb, chairman of the Democratic Front Party; Mamdouh Qenawi, an appointed member of the Shura Council and chairman of the Free Constitutional and Social Party (FCSP), and Abul-Ezz El-Hariri, a political activist expelled from the leftist Tagammu Party after he criticised its chairman, Rifaat El-Said. Yesterday El-Baradei met with the loose alliance of mostly young, cyberspace activists behind the Popular Campaign for the Nomination of El-Baradei for the Presidency, including Abdel-Rahman Youssef, a poet and the son of the well- known cleric Youssef El-Qaradawi. He told Al-Ahram Weekly that, "the Facebook activists have been in regular contact with El-Baradei and were at the forefront of those who gathered at Cairo airport to receive him on 19 February." "El-Baradei," said Youssef, "was keen to meet with us to talk about his political plans and listen to our proposals about our campaign in support of his nomination and how we might mobilise people in support." Qenawi, who has repeatedly invited El-Baradei to join the FCSP's higher council and contest the election as its candidate, told the Weekly the offer still stands. "This is the only chance El-Baradei has of running for the presidency and changing the political map of Egypt. As an independent he will be barred from the contest." El-Baradei has remained ambiguous about any presidential ambitions he might harbour, avoiding direct answers to questions about his intentions. In his interview with Dream 2 he insisted he would consider running as a presidential candidate only as an independent. "I cannot apply to form a party since permission to do so is given by the Political Parties Committee ([PPC], which is headed by the secretary-general of the ruling party," said El-Baradei. "How can anyone be expected to petition the ruling party for a licence to set up in opposition to it?" El-Baradei's words provoked members of the Shura Council to ask Safwat El-Sherif, NDP secretary-general and PPC chairman, for his comments on Monday. El-Sherif's reply was that "media interviews cannot be discussed in the Shura Council because it is a place for responsible talk". He then went on to praise President Hosni Mubarak as "the man who led the greatest process of change and reform in Egypt for 30 years". Ragab Hilal Hemeida, secretary-general of the Ghad and the party's only MP, insisted to the Weekly that "El-Baradei's words about the PPC were unfair." He went on to argue that by suggesting that opposition parties that have applied to the PPC for licences were no more than puppets in the hands of the ruling party showed "how unaware of most of the political facts about the country El-Baradei is". "He is a man who wants the conditions to be changed to serve his interests," Hemeida argued. "I am mainly concerned with the issue of change in Egypt," El-Baradei told Dream Channel. "This is far more important to me than showing an interest in the post of president. But should change require that I stand for the post, then I will do so." But only -- here El-Baradei added one of the qualifications that so infuriate his NDP detractors -- if there are guarantees in place that the elections are fair, including full judicial supervision. "I cannot prevent people from dreaming of change," he continued, "and I urge those who think my vision for changing Egypt a viable one to exert whatever pressure they can on the regime." It is, El-Baradei argued, a result of the nature of the regimes that have ruled Egypt for the last 50 years that people are so isolated from the political affairs of their country. "What I hope I can do is to draw every citizens' attention to the simple truth that solving the daily hardships they face requires reform of the political system. Citizens who are unable to find a butane gas cylinder should know that theirs is essentially a political problem. What we are talking about is the fate of a nation. What we are talking about is the future of the next generation, of our sons and daughters, and what I am saying is that we have a problem and to solve it requires change." "People should not think of me as some kind of saviour. I am not a saviour and I can only try to change the authoritarian regime which has been in force in Egypt over the last 50 years with the help of the public. What we have now is a top-heavy, Pharaonic system, and it has killed politics." El-Baradei's father, Mustafa, was a member of the pre-1952 Wafd Party and chairman of the Bar Association in the 1970s. A liberal democratic, he often found himself at odds with the regimes of Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Anwar El-Sadat. El-Baradei sharply criticised the constitutional amendments proposed and passed by the NDP in 2007. "The amendments to Article 76 stripped seven million Egyptians living abroad of the right to vote and 99 per cent of Egyptians living in Egypt of the right to stand in elections. It is a tragedy that we do not have a parliament that truly represents the people, and that the reason we do not is because elections are neither free nor fair. In our farce of a People's Assembly the opposition accounts for less than three per cent." El-Baradei deplored that between 30 and 35 per cent of Egyptians remain illiterate and 42 per cent of the population live on or under the poverty line. "I will continue to draw attention to the policies, and the system that has permitted them to coalesce into such a miserable reality, as long as it takes to secure change. The real party to which I belong is the Egyptian people," El-Baradei said. He also recalled that "in 1977 I visited China with President Mubarak when he was a vice-president and at the time China was a republic of huts." "Now, after little more than 30 years, China has become the second biggest economy in the world," he said, begging the question of what had happened to Egypt in the same period. El-Baradei insists that he cannot predict his chances should he join the 2011 presidential race. "They are not nil, I know that. Any more precise answer is possible only a couple of months ahead of the poll though I do not think it really matters whether President Mubarak or Gamal Mubarak is my main rival." El-Baradei's comments were more or less ignored by the "official" opposition parties the Wafd, the Nasserists and Tagammu. Most independent political analysts, however, saw the flurry of media interviews as an indication that El-Baradei is seriously contemplating joining the presidential race. "El-Baradei chose to focus on the negative aspects of the current regime rather than express an interest in occupying the office of president," says Al-Ahram political analyst Amr Hashem Rabie. "What he has found is that interviews, either in print or televised, are the most efficient way to promote himself among the masses." "He has taken the offensive in his media campaign and attempted to embarrass the regime into changing the conditions it has imposed on entrants to the presidential race. He believes that not only is this good for him but good for others who want to participate. He is seeking to open the political arena for competition." Mustafa Elwi, professor of political science at Cairo University and an appointed NDP member, told the Weekly that, "El-Baradei may be an internationally respected figure but it is not enough for him to believe that he can impose his conditions on the NDP". El-Baradei met with Amr Moussa, secretary- general of the Arab League, on Monday. "My talks with El-Baradei focussed on internal conditions in Egypt," said Moussa. "Everyone has the right to discuss such issues freely and no one should get annoyed that we did so."
