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“Egypt’s ruling military council is silencing critics while polishing its image amid increasing signs that it is plotting to stay in power behind the scenes even after a new parliament is in place early next year. Activists and politicians are worried that the military, the country’s most revered institution before the revolution that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak in February, refuses to have its authority and financial interests answerable to an emerging democracy. Concerns were heightened this week when the military-backed interim government announced parameters for writing Egypt’s new constitution. The proposals allow the generals to appoint 80% of the constitutional committee. They also state that the defense budget would be kept secret and the military would be the “guardian” of the constitution, raising the possibility of intervention in legislative and presidential affairs……….”

Egypt will probably have an elected parliament and president. But the military will remain the most powerful institution in the country: the military, not the parliament, not the president, not even the lousy Mubarak-appointed and Saudi-oriented Shaikh of al-Azhar. Like Turkey of old, like some Latin American nations of the past, the military junta is here to stay. It will not rule directly, its Arab and Western friends must have told the generals that is not a good idea. It will rule by pulling the strings, by drawing “red lines”: Arab potentates are fond of “red lines” that people should not cross. Like I said once before here, they will have their own Supreme Ayatollah Tantawi.
That is Mubarak’s revenge against the Egyptian people, if they accept it.
Cheers
mhg


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