For a country where over-the-top venality characterized politics for decades, Egypt’s first ever presidential candidates’ debate on Saturday was a sedate and courteous occasion.
So polite, in fact, that some of the hopefuls had forced the organizers to scrap the debate format and allow each candidate to answer prepared questions without having to face an opponent in the room.
Still, the event at a Cairo hotel, aired live on television, was the closest Egypt had ever come to seeing an intellectual contest between men — the one woman candidate, Boithana Kamel, did not attend — who want to rule the country.
The military, which has ruled since a popular revolt overthrew former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in February, has not yet determined a date for the presidential election. A parliamentary poll is scheduled for September.
First was Ayman Nur’s turn, a former parliamentarian who challenged Mubarak in a 2005 election and shortly afterward found himself in jail after a controversial forgery trial.
This time around, the talkative liberal’s biggest challenge was to cram in his answers before an attendant chimed a bell to signal that his time was up.
After such interruptions Nur would reach into a stack of party booklets that he had brought along and present one to the moderator, saying it contained the complete answer.
Next was Hamdeen Sabahi, a leftist gadfly parliamentarian who promised that he would stop exporting gas to Israel if elected president.
He was followed by a former military chief of staff, Maged Hatata, who gave terse responses — a military habit, he said — and then came reformist judge Hisham Bastawisi.
The two most prominent candidates, Arab League chief Amr Mussa and the Islamist Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh, did not take part.
All the candidates said they opposed a theocratic state and favored a mixture of presidential and parliamentary democratic systems.
“At home, I am a Muslim or a Coptic [Christian],” said Lieutenant General Hatata, who was chief of staff between 1995 and 2001. “But on the street, I am an Egyptian. The religious state ended with the Prophet Mohammed’s death.”
The candidates all agreed that they would revisit a 1979 peace treaty with Israel, while improving relations with Iran.
Nur, once a US congressional darling whose cause was taken up by former president US George W. Bush, said: “We will not be a party in the Israel and US trench.”
The peace treaty’s terms with Israel would have to be revisited to allow Egypt more troops in the Sinai Peninsula, he said. The other candidates agreed.
“No one that will come by popular will would play the humiliating role adopted by the former regime,” Sabahi said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion