Engineer Mohamed Farid Hassanein, an industrialist and a former member of the Egyptian People’s Assembly, has called to change the previous political discourse and to pressure the West to support the freedom and democracy in our countries, stressing that without support from the West, we will not achieve anything. His call came during a lecture he delivered on Friday evening April 29 2011 at the Egyptian Club in Vienna under the title “The revolution on January 25 2011: What remained? What we have done? And what should we do?” The lecture was attended by a number of the Egyptians and Arabs living in Vienna.
Hassanein wondered at the outset of his lecture about the demands which the demonstrators had repeated, saying: “The nation wants to overthrow the regime” and he said: “Which regime is it that people have demanded to overthrow? Is it the financial, the ruling government, the judiciary, the parliament, the media …?
He answered the rhetoric question by saying that it was the regime what was rejected by the people, who demanded “down is the totalitarian regime” – everything – and that the government that the people want today includes a separation between the powers. They want a democratic, justice judiciary and free media.
Hassanein strongly criticized the current military council, calling it far worse than the Hosni Mubarak regime. He said that the army must be subject to the Legislative Council and take an oath to pledge its allegiance to the people and not to the military council.
He called for the need to achieve social justice in Egypt. He said: “It is very important to achieve social justice since nobody knows what will happen if social justice not achieved”. He added: “In Egypt there is a group of extremely rich and opulent scoundrels and criminals. For each of them, there are thousands of poor people”. He added that the rich people can not live in the middle of the poverty and the poor people, because, if the poor run to the streets in a revolt against the social injustice, they will turn everything upside down. He also called to denounce the differences between the Egyptians in Vienna. He said that everyone should be responsible and aware of what the revolutionaries made to the Egyptians. He said: “the good (Egyptian) people in Europe and Vienna should make pressure on the evil among them in order to achieve the best for their community”.
In a question I had directed at him about what should be done if the revolution did not achieve its goals, Hassanein said that the pressure from inside and outside Egypt should continues in order to achieve the desired objectives. He said: “from the inside we have to change and improve our political discourse towards the West and prove to them that what they were told by the Mubarak regime, that we want to occupy their countries, was not true. We have to prove the opposite to them and to do our best without them, because we will not be able to get out of our frustrating situation without the help of the West.
We have a gross problem of illiteracy and ignorance, and without the support of the West and its promotion of freedom and democracy in our country, we can not get out of our miserable situation. And achieving justice, freedom and democracy in our countries does not mean that we will threaten their interests. We have to show them that and also keep up the pressure on them through the media, direct dialogue and demonstrations of fact”. He added that the Egyptian people knew the way to Al-Tahrir square in Cairo and that they would keep protesting and demonstrating until they felt that things have changed in Egypt.
Answering to a question related to Palestine and if the political changes would make it a possibility to use the Egyptian legal system to attain arrest warrants against israeli war criminals, Engineer Hassanein said that it was premature to talk about this, as now the priorities are to provide food and the basic necessities to Egyptians, to stabilize the situation in general, and generally to appeal to the good will of the West, because, quote “nothing happens in Egypt without the assent of the Americans”.
It is worth mentioning that Dr. Mustafa Eltelbi, President of the Egyptian Club, opened the lecture by welcoming guest lecturer, Engineer Hassanein, and that he provided a brief CV about him. He also thanked the audience for their interest and coming to hear the lecture.
At the end of the lecture a hot discussion round arose among the audience, during which everybody expressed what was in their soul, their thought, wishes, concerns and demands about the coming period in their homeland Egypt. The lecture and the discussion session were held in both Arabic and German.
There was ONLY one woman seen among the otherwise all-male audience!?
On the other hand, Engineer Hassanein stated in 2007 during an interview in the well-known Egyptian newspaper “Al-Masri Al-Youm” his favor for Jamal Mubarak as a successor to his father as a President. He also stated during that interview that “there will be no revolution in Egypt because the situation in the country is good”. He visited israel and Palestine in 2006 and was an observer to the Palestinian elections in 2006. He is in favor of continued diplomatic relations between Egypt and israel. Engineer Hassanein resigned from Parliament because “the people elected him to find a solution to the unemployment situation”, what he was unable to do because “everything is in the hands of the government”. He was arrested during a demo against the American war against Iraq. Together with his family, Engineer Hassanein manages a successful business in Europe.
The problem arises when the West is relied upon for freedom and democracy, because when it all is booiled down to reality, we have neither ourselves. Freedom and democracy reached their highwater mark in the West and they are now being rolled back. This is not a system spreading either value, but consuming all in its path.
It seems to me that the engineer has a few screws loose upstairs. The entire reason that Egypt is in the mess it finds itself in, is due to its over-reliance and subservience to America. The only way for Egypt to really progress is to develop independent policies to create a manufacturing base, and embark on new projects to create wealth and jobs. Egypt needs to become agriculturally and militarily independent once again and to use the values of islam as a springboard to progress. The west will never have the good of our lands in their hearts – they only care for their own interests – if we dont learn this we will slide back into the mess we are trying to climb out of.
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