Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, 76
Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces
As head of the military, he is de facto ruler until the military finally cedes power to civilian rule, which it has said it will do after June 30, with a new president in office. Not a presidential candidate.
Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh, 60
Moderate Islamist candidate for presidency
A key member of the Muslim Brotherhood, he resigned as a member of the organization — which had said it would not field a presidential candidate — last year to run for election as an independent, angering former colleagues.
Mohammed Morsi, 60
Candidate for the Freedom and Justice Party of the Muslim Brotherhood
A former independent member of parliament when the Brotherhood was banned, he was selected after Khairat al-Shater, the preferred candidate, was disqualified. An uncharismatic figure, his stance has become more conservative as he seeks to reassure his own party.
Amr Moussa, 75
Former secretary-general of the Arab League
Regarded by some as the frontrunner. Admirers say he has the most experience of all the candidates — a plus for those desperate for a return to stability. However, his history as a veteran of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s regime and his lack of support for the revolution make him deeply unpopular with both Islamist and younger, secular revolutionaries.
Ahmed Shafiq, 70
Former commander of the Egyptian air force and ally of Mubarak
Appointed president by Mubarak to appease protesters, he was replaced after a few weeks. Disliked by revolutionaries of all political persuasions, who regard him as a holdover from the last regime. Although he was disqualified from standing last month, his candidacy was reinstated on appeal. He has suggested that he is the military’s favored choice.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Ursula K. le Guin in The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas proposed a thought experiment of a utopian city whose existence depended on one child held captive in a dungeon. When taken to extremes, Le Guin suggests, utilitarian logic violates some of our deepest moral intuitions. Even the greatest social goods — peace, harmony and prosperity — are not worth the sacrifice of an innocent person. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), since leaving office, has lived an odyssey that has brought him to lows like Le Guin’s dungeon. From late 2008 to 2015 he was imprisoned, much of this