Newsflash, Egypt Currently

On Tuesday in Newsflash, Fareed who lives in Cairo came to speak to us about what was the current situation back home. I tried my best to take notes, but some of the names went past my head so please don't take this all for fact. It’s a bit jumbled as well…

Let's see...

·         The Muslim Brotherhood is now 60% of the parliament, more pro secular conservative, but the revolution wanted more democratic

·         The Muslim Brotherhood were imprisoned for the assassinations of the president before Mubarak, all for 15 years

·         He was part of the millions that went several Friday’s to Tahrir Square

·         Now people are going to the Presidential Palace where Morsi lives, he has paralysed the circulation of the area, which has become a criticism of his rule

·         The reformations called for his glorification, the main one that he holds is the veto power [hearing this I immediately thought of History and the League of Nations = no good]

·         Seems he has more power than Mubarak

·         He wannts loans, Germany refused, China gave 4 billion

·         Fareed isn’t a big fan of Morsi, his appeal to the majority of the population is that he’s very religious, but Fareed isn’t Muslim so this doesn’t affect him. Supposedly he went to NASA and helped in something or other, but his English is very poor. His political etiquette is horrible; he apparently checked his watch while the German diplomats were speaking repeatedly.

·         The population want someone is old and wise, 30-40 years old is too young, Fareed was unable to vote in the election because although the voting age is 18, you have to be 18 for six months to be eligible

·         During the revolution the security measures were chaos, the police basically didn’t exist for 2 weeks as they had to go and protect their house. Fareed did this too; all the men guarding the house ‘it was very tribal’, most houses have at least one weapon of protection ‘this is Cairo’. They had to do this as all of the prisoners were let out of jail, this included gang members and rumours of Al Qaeda members going back to Palestine.

Improvements:

·         Media has been the biggest change, he can now read a newspaper without being disgusted at the favouritism for the old regime, it’s not something that tourists would notice though

·         Bassem Youssef, the Jon Stewart of Egypt started an Arabic version to the Daily Show

·         Improvements for women in every sector but medicine

·         Investigation Police [attempted English translation], basically like the Gestapo is non-existent now