Washington has failed to heed warnings from inside Egypt about the true intentions of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian opposition leader Ahmed Said tells Newsmax in an exclusive interview.
“Unfortunately the United States was not listening,” Said told Newsmax. Said, a former member of the Egyptian parliament, heads the Free Egyptians Party, a staunchly pro-Western, pro-democratic political party.
“I was a member of parliament for the past five months before the parliament was dissolved, and I have met with several congressional delegations and met with Sens. John McCain and John Kerry — and I don’t think they’re really listening, to be very honest Said, whose group is among the many opposing Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, the first elected head of state in the country’s history, tells Newsmax.TV that Egyptians hoped that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney would be elected to the White House last month because of his tough foreign policy positions.
“The United States has a reputation of only respecting those in power who think they are strong — and people were hopeful, to a certain extent, that if Romney took over, he would be more aggressive with respect to dealing with human rights in Egypt and things like that,” he said.
“But the United States has had a reputation during Mubarak: Hillary Clinton, in her very famous speech, when she said, after a few days of revolution, that they saw that Egypt was stable — but we didn’t understand what ‘stability’ was and what’s the definition of ‘stability’ with Clinton.
Americans, Said noted, need to be concerned about the Muslim Brotherhood because of a pretense — with Morsi’s endorsement — with being concerned about the rights of all Egyptians.
“It’s not about fearing the Muslim Brotherhood, but they have to see for themselves that Egypt has about 15 million Christian people whose rights would be completely ignored under the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said. “They might be pretending, now, to the U.S. administration that they respect the rights of everybody — but you have to come and talk to the Christians here and listen to their views about what is going on.
“They have to study very thoroughly the documents called the constitution, which (Morsi) wants to pass next week, a document that is meant to divide the people more than to unite them. Constitutions, supposedly, unite nations rather than divide nations.
“So they have to look at the constitution and to see how human rights, how women’s rights, how babies’ rights are violated in this document, and to see that this is a step backwards with respect to theocratic rule,” Said added. “It’s a very critical situation now — and if I were to tell something to the American people, and the American administration, you have to rise above short-term interests and look at the future.
“We are in a world of globalization now and it has become very clear that unless the whole world is peaceful and safe, no country will ever be safe. We have to rise above some small interests like the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in order to see how we can build a country that is built in the correct way. It will affect the rest of the Middle East.”
As far as Said is concerned, Morsi’s days as president are numbered.
“Yesterday, the National Salvation Front announced that he’s not legitimate anymore because he has accepted to see Egyptian people killing each other in the streets,” he said.
Said also referenced Morsi’s speech late Thursday in which he refused to retract the Nov. 22 decree he used to assume sweeping powers and said that his regime would stop those seeking to overthrow the government.
Morsi also refused to cancel a referendum next week on a constitution that had been newly drafted by the Islamist-dominated assembly. But Egyptian Vice President Mahmoud Mekky said on Friday that Morsi would be ready to postpone the Dec. 15 election if it could be done to avoid legal challenge.
“His speech was a bit provocative and did not touch on the rest of the Egyptians, rather than touching on his driver that has been wounded and went to the hospital,” Said tells Newsmax. “It was shocking in a lot of things. He called us the opposition — and he called his proponents the supporters of legitimacy, making us against legitimacy. So we’re in a very awkward position right now.”
And Egypt grows even more unstable as Morsi apparently seeks to move closer toward dictatorship, Said disclosed.
“The situation is very critical right now. The economy’s going down, big time. The [International Monetary Fund] is reviewing its loan that was supposed to be given to Egypt that would have enhanced the creditworthiness of Egypt worldwide.
“People are becoming jobless every day,” Said added. “Unemployment is rising. Poverty is more and more. It’s been two years now. The country is completely unstable and, at the same time, tourism has been totally devastated after the revolution. We are in a serious crisis.
“We need to think very closely about the future and, unfortunately, the president has not been moving in this direction so far,” Said continued. “His decisions have been very provocative to the Egyptian people.”
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