By IRNA,
London: Egyptians feel that in the post-Mubarak era they have an unprecedented opportunity to reshape the political landscape but believe that military rule should be replaced by a civilian government as soon as possible, according to a workshop organised by Chatham House.
The workshop of Egyptian activists, opposition party members, journalists and civil society representatives together with a small number of UK policy-makers, also found that the Mubarak era had left a bitter legacy in Egypt’s relations with the west.
Discussions from a wide variety of political perspectives on the country’s future focused on evaluating the achievements of the Egyptian uprising to date, expectations of progress over the next five year and on relations with the UK and the West.
Chatham House, one of the UK’s foremost thinktanks on international affairs, reported that a great many shared concerns during the first session last month about the role of the military in the transitional phase, the need to address bread-and-butter issues and build a genuinely participatory democracy.
“Overall, workshop participants were almost all optimistic about possibilities for change in post-Mubarak Egypt, even if many had reservations about the current direction of travel,” their report said.
“A number of participants questioned whether the revolution was complete, noting that the majority of the military and security structures have been left in place. It was also suggested that there was a risk of counter-revolution by the remnants of the regime,” it added.
During the second session on relations with the west, Chatham House found that most Egyptians perceived the US, EU and UK as supporters of Mubarak’s rule and said Western policy-makers will have to make “serious efforts to build relationships of trust with the new political actors in Egypt.”
There was said to be a “high degree of scepticism about Western governments’ intentions towards Egypt” with a number of participants having raised the issue of political interference during the first stocktaking session and saw Western policy in the Middle East as driven by “self-interest and skewed perceptions.”
One participant cited the hypocrisy of Western researchers and journalists who focus their concerns on the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideas about Islam and Islamic law, when the “staunchest Arab ally of the West in the region is Saudi Arabia, which implements an extremely strict interpretation of Islamic law.”