12 November 2011

An Islamist Egypt?

.... The military like the taste of power and don’t want to abandon their privileges. Their average salaries are a third higher than civil servants’. They run more than 4,000 companies that pay no taxes. The military import virtually whatever they like duty-free. They have their gated residential compounds, exclusive hospitals, supermarkets and resorts.

.... Flush with foreign (mostly Saudi) money, Islamists are spending on a no-tomorrow basis -- offering interest-free loans, free doctors and hospitals, free food and clothing and cash handouts to persuade poverty-stricken Egyptians to help them dominate the parliament.

The good news is that 2011 is not 1953. There is a new factor in Egyptian politics: people power. This election is far from lost for democracy. [NEW YORK POST] Read more