WikiLeaks: Egypt’s new man at the top 'was against reform'

Source: Telegraph

Field Marshal Mohamad Tantawi, the head of the Higher Military Council that took control of Egypt last week, was also against economic reforms because they create “social instability”.

The briefings, in cables handed to the WikiLeaks website, raise questions about the field marshal’s suitability for overseeing transition to a democratically elected government.

Today The Daily Telegraph publishes on its website hundreds of leaked cables written by US diplomats in the American embassy in Cairo and sent to Washington. One, sent from Cairo to Washington in March 2008 ahead of an official visit, reports how the 76-year-old field marshal was against change.

The cable states: “Tantawi has opposed both economic and political reforms that he perceives as eroding central government power. He is supremely concerned with national unity, and has opposed policy initiatives he views as encouraging political or religious cleavages within Egyptian society.”



Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wikileaks-files/8326225/WikiLeaks-Egypts-new-man-at-the-top-was-against-reform.html

With true democracy in place, social and economic reforms are more likely to follow.

But I suspect that when elections are finally held, it will once more be the army candidate who wins. The army is simply not going to relinquish the power it's held for sixty years.

I also think though that perhaps next time the people might not just lie down and take it. They too have felt their own power, and it's going to be hard to take it away from them again.

It's going to be a very interesting year for Egypt.