Photography: Hayder Kandil
Design: Aya Saber
Video editing: Khaled Abdallah
He has had a role in the political arena since the 1970s, and his political activity continued until the January revolution, in whose square he was one of the leaders, before the square dispersed and politics divided the comrades. He ran in the presidential elections twice: in the first, he was the revolution’s closest candidate, while in the second, the votes he received were fewer than the invalid votes. In his interview with “Zawia3”, Hamdeen Sabahi returns to the mistakes of January that prevented it from becoming a complete revolution, and sets out a map for rescuing Egypt from what he considers a political desertification that could lead to a dangerous social and political explosion. He also reveals the reasons for the change in his position on the Syrian revolution, from supporting it to meeting Bashar al-Assad.
- There has been talk of three parties taking part in lists loyal to the authorities in the upcoming parliamentary elections, namely the Reform and Development Party, Al-Adl Party and the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, whose leaders denied making any statements regarding the elections. How do you see this position? And could it be a solution for the opposition to have a presence inside the next parliament?
No, this position is a solution for the authorities, but it is not a solution for the opposition. In fact, this position strips the opposition of the most important of the several conditions on which it rests, namely independence: being independent of the authorities and expressing the people. Joining the lists of loyalist parties such as “Mostaqbal Watan”, or other lists run by, or under the supervision of, state agencies, means that the opposition loses the condition of independence.
A subordinate opposition is not an opposition. I have friends in those parties, and I hold them in the highest esteem and respect on a personal level, and I understand their positions, on which I disagree with them, and they know this, both publicly and in any private meetings. But I see their position as wrong and harmful to them, even though they are free in their choice. With this position, they lose their status as opposition figures and become closer to a wing within the authorities, exactly as they are part of the “Mostaqbal Watan” list.
This approach, in my opinion, destroys the constitutional foundation, which rests on party pluralism, and contradicts its essence. Instead of genuine pluralism, the scene turns into the domination of a single party over power, and the opposition becomes merely formal, existing in order to lend false legitimacy to control and to the monopolisation of power. This will not solve the crisis of the authorities; rather, it will weaken the opposition and will increase the loss of popular trust in the authorities’ intentions regarding improving the country’s conditions. If this scene continues in this way, it is an invitation to further crisis.
You believe that the crisis of the current authorities lies in their lack of political representation or of a political map. How so, given all these loyalist parties?
The current authorities do not have an official party representing them, but most of the parties present on the political scene are parties loyal to the authorities. These parties line up behind the authorities and support them, and move according to what is dictated to them. In return, the authorities, through their security agencies, run a large number of parties, fund them, provide them with luxurious headquarters, and choose which of their members contest the parliamentary elections. These parties are tools in the hands of the authorities.
The authorities do not need an official party, since they possess all these parties, which they run as they please. They also create new parties to increase their ability to control the political scene. But the essence of the scene is that there is a central authority controlling politics in the country with a single opinion and a single administration. By contrast, opposition parties, such as the Civil Democratic Movement, are deprived of the support that loyalist parties receive, besieged in their headquarters and pursued because of their positions, and they are barred from representation in parliament unless they enter the “house of obedience”, where the authorities and their security agencies choose who should enter parliament.
This miserable situation is a continuation of the approach of drying up political life in Egypt, and it is the cause of the state of desertification we are witnessing. This situation represents a great danger to the entire country, including the authorities themselves. What we need is a major opening in the public sphere that lifts the security grip dominating political life, and I believe the authorities would gain, not lose, if they did so.
The idea of the National Dialogue began with your attendance at the Egyptian Family Iftar. Why did you attend the iftar, and what is your assessment of the dialogue experience?
I attended the Egyptian Family Iftar because I believed there might be an opportunity for the release of prisoners of conscience who deserve freedom, and that it might lead to an opening in the Egyptian political scene and secure a peaceful, democratic path for change. Of course, I had no guarantees, but from the first moment, as soon as I shook hands with President El-Sisi at that iftar, the response to the requests for the release of prisoners of conscience began, and they were released one after another. This is a positive outcome that we must commend.
At that iftar, the president called for a National Dialogue based on the principle that a difference of opinion does not strip anyone of their patriotism. We took part in the National Dialogue out of conviction and made a sincere effort. We had representatives on all its committees, and we submitted our papers, which were printed in a book.
But the National Dialogue stalled after the presidential elections, and the Civil Movement decided not to take part in its second round, which began after the elections, because the decisions and recommendations of the first round of the dialogue had not been implemented, and we set three main points as a condition for the Civil Movement’s return to the dialogue:
- The release of prisoners of conscience, which has not yet happened.
- The issuance of laws regulating pretrial detention and preventing its use as a tool of punishment, which has also not happened so far.
- The issuance of new election laws guaranteeing their integrity and freedom of participation, including elections by proportional list, and this has not yet been achieved.
Therefore, the Civil Movement remains outside the National Dialogue, but it is waiting for these three points to be achieved; if they are achieved, the Civil Movement will be ready to discuss returning to the dialogue.
Do you think a unified list of the Civil Movement could compete in the face of mobilisation and political money?
Of course. If the Civil Movement succeeds in representing the civil democratic current in Egypt, and not only its members, I believe it will be a real competitor and a force to be reckoned with in the elections, and will enjoy popular trust. But to achieve this, three basic conditions must be met. The first is the release of prisoners of conscience. One cannot talk about running genuinely democratic elections while people of opinion continue to be imprisoned merely for expressing their views. The second condition relates to the election laws, which must guarantee genuine competitiveness. Here we demand that a considerable part of the elections be held under the proportional list system, and not under the absolute list system.
The third condition is the need for an electoral climate that guarantees a reasonable degree, even if not a complete one, of the ability to hold elections away from the sway of the security agencies, the administration and governmental authority. In this case, political money can be confronted, not by the Civil Movement alone, but by the masses. Egyptians are too smart to be bought with political money; they may accept that money or aid, but in the end they will vote for those they trust, for those who express them and sincerely defend their interests, and not for those who buy them.
The Civil Movement is capable, if these conditions are met to a reasonable degree, of becoming the most important force in these elections. But if the situation continues as expected, with the authorities possibly breaking their promises in the National Dialogue by not including the proportional list system in the new election law, it seems that the authorities want to keep the absolute list election system or the individual candidacy system.
In this case, the Civil Movement may seriously consider boycotting the elections, and this is a matter up for discussion. It could also consider freezing the activity of its parties in protest against this intransigence and rigidity, and against the failure to open the horizon to peaceful and safe change through elections. It may also choose to compete for a limited number of individual seats, or to support particular candidates for these seats.
In all cases, the Civil Movement does not view the upcoming elections in Egypt only from the angle of winning a number of seats, but sees in them an opportunity to spread hope in the possibility of achieving peaceful change that paves the way for a better future. If this opportunity is lost, Egypt’s crisis will worsen, but if it is used correctly, Egypt may begin to walk the right path towards enabling the people to choose their real representatives in parliament.
You have admitted that it was a mistake not to declare a position against the mandate and against the dispersal of the Rabaa sit-in. What prevented you from declaring a position at the time?
I did declare a position on the dispersal of Rabaa, but I was wrong because I did not sufficiently express my feeling of pain at the Egyptian blood that was shed in this way. Rabaa was, and will remain, a point that weighs on the Egyptian conscience, because it was the most painful and the most far-reaching event. Certainly, I did not express this at the time as I do now, because Egypt was threatened with a wider explosion; what we regret of what we witnessed in the dispersal of Rabaa could have been even more painful, which is why I saw the importance of stabilising the situation at that critical moment. So I decided then that expressing myself at the minimum level was enough to absolve me of the crime of silence, and that refraining from using the maximum degree of expression might absolve me of involvement in igniting more of the fires already burning in the country. This was my assessment of that moment.
As for the mandate, I did not take part in it and did not call for it. In fact, this may be the only large mass gathering in Egypt that I have not taken part in since I was a student in the 1970s. But I criticise myself for not taking a clear position against it, because the problem with the mandate lies in its being the beginning of the phase of reversal of 30 June.
The essence of 30 June was a continuation of 25 January, but the mandate robbed the masses of the two revolutions of their ability to shape the country’s future. The main force in Egypt, the people, was shifted from a civilian leadership that was present on 25 January and 30 June and actually led these events, to a military leadership, under the pressure of fear of the raging fires and of the blood that had to be spared. Although the moment was too big for a rejection of the mandate to bring about a real change in events, it was a duty to reject it; for what the situation actually came to as a result of the mandate ultimately led to the exclusion of the civilian component after 3 July in favour of the military component, which monopolised power and decision-making.
With talk of reconciliation with the Brotherhood recurring… do you think this is possible?
At the present moment, I do not see reconciliation with the Brotherhood as possible. The truth is that talk of reconciliation must be much broader than a mere reconciliation with a group such as the Brotherhood. Egypt needs a comprehensive reconciliation that includes all its children, starting with the political prisoners, who are not necessarily from the Brotherhood; there are many in prison merely for expressing their opinions. Likewise, Egypt needs reconciliation with its poor, who represent the majority and suffer from continuously rising prices and the difficulty of making a living.
Egypt also needs reconciliation with its social components that find no opportunity to obtain a fair share of wealth or to participate in power through genuine elections. It is in this context that the talk about the Brotherhood comes, and I am not against reconciliation with any party, including the Brotherhood. Rather, I believe that wisdom requires serious thinking about the broadest possible framework of reconciliations, including with the Brotherhood and other opponents abroad.
I see no need to maintain this degree of mutual rejection and enmity, as this situation is costly for Egypt. Reconciliation is the right choice, but it must come within a comprehensive framework with clear priorities. Reconciliation with the Brotherhood should not take precedence over other reconciliations that are more important and of higher priority, but in general, the right approach is reconciliation, and I fully support this direction.
– You ran in the presidential elections twice, and you have said that the political forces erred by not uniting their ranks behind a single candidate. Do you think reaching such an agreement was possible?
Yes, it was possible to agree on a single candidate for the revolution. The efforts made in this direction were serious, but they did not succeed. What I must dwell on now is that, had I known what I know today, I would have gathered the candidates and told them that I was ready to step aside in favour of anyone they agreed on, and this would have been the best thing for Egypt. We wasted a rare historic moment, a moment that comes in the life of any people only once every few decades, if it comes at all. The evidence for this is the results of the ballot boxes, where the revolution’s candidates won more than 50% of the votes. Had the revolution agreed on a single candidate, he would have won 60% of the votes, and our talk about the revolution today would be different; it would not have stopped then at the limits of an uprising, but would have reached power, and this would have changed Egypt’s fate.
Unfortunately, we made a grave mistake, and I feel sad because I was a partner in it. I did not see this as the right decision at the time, especially since it was a difficult decision, as estimates indicated that my chances were the best, and this is what the results proved. But had I realised at the time that I was the strongest of the candidates, I would indeed have followed this right path, because any of the revolution’s candidates could have ensured its continuation, and a decent life would have been achieved for Egyptians.
Why do you believe you were wrong to run in the 2014 presidential election?
My candidacy in the 2014 elections was, from my point of view, a mistake, because a reading of the popular mood in Egypt at the time said that Egyptians were not with me at that moment. I realised this clearly and told everyone so. I have long experience of elections, which began in primary school, and I have rarely contested an election merely because I wanted to run. Each time, I took part because the circle around me considered me ready, backed me with its confidence and urged me to take part. But at that moment, this circle was not pushing me to run.
The public does not communicate only through words, but also through silence, through looks, and through the squeeze of the hand in a handshake. I was confident that people in 2014 loved me, but they did not want me to run. The political battle at that time needed someone from the army, with his capabilities, to bring the threatened situation in Egypt under control. When the country is under threat and the people are afraid, peoples, and not only Egyptians, turn to those who carry arms and not to those who carry ideas. Our people were no exception to this experience, which has been repeated among many peoples and cultures. At that time, the public had rallied around Lieutenant General El-Sisi, seeing him as the person able to secure the country against the dangerous path about which there was an intense campaign of fear. Therefore, I saw that this timing was not suitable for fighting this battle, and this has remained my assessment until now.
After seeing the result, I realised that my decision was a mistake, and I alone bear responsibility for it. Many young people whom I love and respect were insistent that I run, and they had a respectable point of view, coherent and convincing. We argued over whether or not to run, and when the time came to take the decision, the larger circle, the board of trustees of the Popular Current, decided by a clear majority that I should run, and I respected this decision. But after the result, it became clear to me that I had made a mistake, and this candidacy was a great loss.
When I decided to run, it was not in line with the general popular mood, which was clear from my situation with my family and my supporters in Baltim (a city in Kafr El-Sheikh Governorate in northern Egypt), whom I know well and who did not want me to run. They represented a sample of the people, and I should have abided by this wish, even if they did not declare it, because I sensed it, and some of them did voice it. For this reason, I lost the popular mood when I decided to run, and then I lost the support of the young people when I refused to withdraw over the decision to extend the voting period to a third day. Therefore, I consider my candidacy in the 2014 elections a compound loss. Nevertheless, I am deeply proud of those who fought this battle, because they were the toughest, the purest, the most honourable and the most aware. But overall, we learn that the decisive factor at the time of decision-making is the popular mood of the people and not the opinion of the elite.
Could Hamdeen Sabahi run in the presidential elections again?
I do not think I will run in the presidential elections again. Egypt must put forward a candidate who expresses the demands of bread, freedom and social justice, and who represents the spirit of the 25 January and 30 June revolutions. No contest should take place in this country without the idea of change in favour of the masses being present through its candidates, provided that the minimum conditions for competition that we aspire to achieve are met, conditions that have not been met in any previous presidential election. But this candidate will not be Hamdeen Sabahi. We need a candidate who adopts this idea, who may make fewer mistakes than I did and be more able to learn. Most importantly, he must be a young person who shoulders this burden and is able to carry it.
How do you see the Egyptian authorities’ performance towards the Gaza war?
The performance of the Egyptian authorities, and of the official Arab order in general, was humiliating to themselves and to their nation throughout 15 months that represented one of the most glorious rounds of the conflict between the Arab nation and the Zionist enemy. The official Arab order let the nation down, either through impotence or through collusion, and it was the nation’s weak point, while the people from the ocean to the Gulf and the Palestinian resistance represented its points of strength.
The official Arab order, including Egypt, was like the “Achilles heel” through which the nation is targeted. Of course, Egypt has historically been the largest and most important part of this official Arab order, although its role has declined since the Camp David Accords and over four decades. It has been weighed down by the burden of mounting debt, which has constrained its role. Nevertheless, Egypt remains the heaviest weight in the Arab nation, not only because of its size but because of its historical, geographical and demographic standing.
Despite the general verdict that the official Arab order let the nation down, it is to Egypt’s credit that it was decisive from the first moment in its rejection of displacement. This position was clear from the beginning of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, and its importance is growing now with the ceasefire in Gaza and the escalating calls by US President Donald Trump to empty Gaza of its people. Egypt’s official position rejecting displacement now appears as an important factor in the equation, and it should be counted on in the coming phase. This moment may be an opportunity for the entire official Arab order to atone for its failings towards the nation, if it holds to a decisive position that cannot be subdued towards the project of displacement and the liquidation of the Palestinian cause, in the face of Trump, the supporter of the Zionist entity.
How do you see the calls for national alignment?
I am entirely in favour of an Egyptian national position that expresses serious national unity. It must include all members of the Egyptian people, foremost among them the opposition, which is supposed to back the official authorities and strengthen their position at this moment, so that they continue in the position in which they declared their rejection of forced or voluntary displacement and of the liquidation of the Palestinian cause.
Under these principles, I believe Egyptian national unity is a necessity, and I call for it. As for the term “alignment”, it is a word I do not like and do not use, because I prefer to speak of “national unity” and a “unifying national position” that protects Egypt’s security and restores its national role. “Alignment” seems like an official summons of the people, whereas I believe it was the people who took the position, and the authorities joined them, not the other way round. So we need to correct this concept, and it should be said that Egypt needs a unifying national position against the threats that affect and endanger its security, and against what is being plotted against Palestine, which is part of us and will remain so. Egypt also needs a unified Arab national position, in which the regimes hold together to confront the Zionist-American scheme, and the Arab people are given an opportunity to express the solidarity they have already declared on this issue.
This is a decisive moment in our Arab history, and it is an extremely important moment for Egypt. Getting through it in a way that protects Egypt’s interests and restores its role requires genuine national unity that everyone must be keen on, the opposition before the loyalists.
My share of the mistake… Why did you decide now to talk about the revolution’s mistakes?
Talking about the revolution’s mistakes is permissible at any time. I completed this text years ago, and when a suitable opportunity to publish it arose, I took it. In my opinion, we do not need an individual review of a great event like 25 January; rather, we need a collective review in which many take part, especially those who contributed to this event and were part of it.
25 January is the most wonderful thing our people has achieved as a collective act, and it opened the door to a very great dream, but it was stolen. The same thing was repeated in the wave of 30 June, and it was a harsh lesson. This situation left a legacy of great frustration among those who lived that moment in the squares, robbed this generation of much of its psychological strength and its ability to perform, and quite simply led to psychological trauma for many.
I am certain that the revolution was broken, but it was not defeated. Basically, the revolution was not completed and stopped at the limits of an uprising because it did not reach power. And as much as it unleashed bright hopes and a wide mass presence, the frustration resulting from its breaking deserves deep reflection. Criticism is part of this reflection. I hope that what I have written will inspire others to take part and express their views. In my opinion, this will be important sustenance for the young generation, because the crisis-ridden situation in Egypt should not continue like this. I believe one of the possible paths to changing it is to determine the course of the uprising: will we allow the uprising to be renewed only to be stolen again? That should not happen, or else our sacrifices will have been in vain. Part of avoiding a repeat of the same scenario, so costly for Egypt, is to pay attention to our mistakes. I hope and wish that what I have written, and what others will write, will contribute to enabling our people to protect their revolution and prevent it from being stolen again.
You said that leaving the square on 11 February was a mistake? Why?
I saw it that way because the scenario at that moment held many alternatives, and I saw that the right alternative, since the people were in the squares, had imposed their will and forced Mubarak to leave, was for the people to have genuine representation emerging from the million-strong square (Tahrir Square). Consequently, it was natural for the square to announce the formation of an interim presidential council to run the country until the first presidential election.
We made a grave mistake when the square dispersed without taking this decision, as the protesters returned to their homes after difficult days, which was of course their right, but they returned without mandating anyone whom they could hold to account, and without choosing a civilian presidential council, which put the reins of affairs in the hands of a single party, the Military Council, which Mubarak had mandated. And he was a president whom the people had removed, and therefore he had no authority to choose his successor; this is not acceptable in terms of logic.
At that moment, the army was in genuine harmony with the will of the people, and that was the most favourable moment to form a civilian presidential council that would cooperate with the army in running the transitional phase. This mistake did not become apparent only in retrospect; there was awareness, while we were in the square, of the importance of forming a civilian presidential council, and many sessions and discussions were held by the national movement in its various currents in Tahrir Square, but it did not come about. This shows that revolutionary awareness was less than it should have been. This was the state of the Egyptian currents and elites at that time.
Therefore, I blame myself and the elite because we did not pay attention to this matter, and I absolve the people of responsibility, because the elite, which was supposed to be more aware and experienced, should have put forward this alternative. Had this been put forward in the square, the masses would have endorsed it in principle, regardless of its details.
I see it, as I have called it in my writings, as “the original sin”, like the sin of leaving paradise: that we left Tahrir Square without forming a civilian leadership that we would entrust, hold to account and use to complete what we had begun.
There are attempts to blame 25 January for the current economic situation. What is your view? And can Egypt bear another wave of January?
Blaming the 25 January revolution for what has become of the economic situation in Egypt is a deliberate falsification of the facts, and is also one of the methods of the counter-revolution. The aim of these accusations is to turn public opinion against the very idea of revolution. So part of the smear campaign against the January revolution consists of blaming it, unjustly and falsely, for the economic deterioration.
The economic conditions Egypt is going through today resulted from multiple circumstances and causes, the most important of which are economic mismanagement and the policies followed after the revolution; the real damage was not caused by the revolution but resulted from its setback. Had the square produced a leadership accountable to the people, working to implement economic policies that care for people’s interests and meet their demands for bread, freedom and dignity, Egypt would not have reached the stifling economic crisis it is currently living through.
Bread, freedom, social justice… what remains of the January slogan?
The slogan still stands as an authentic dream of Egyptians, because it expresses their aspirations from before the revolution, which came as an opportunity to renew this dream or to formulate it more clearly. A great people such as the people of Egypt cannot progress without a renaissance project that meets its needs and gives it the opportunity of a decent living. This project set its major goals as social justice, human dignity and national independence.
In fact, the January revolution expressed nothing but what was in the hearts of Egyptians and what they had struggled for over long decades; it is an extension of a long historical path of the national movement, and it was also the product of its moment locally, regionally and globally. The slogan endures because it meets a real need, and it is still inspiring. Any Egyptian who sits and reflects on what he wishes for Egypt’s future will find that the square’s demands for bread, freedom, social justice and human dignity are what he wants.
The problem lies in the fact that this slogan has found neither the policies that express it nor an authority that sincerely seeks to achieve it. So we should not disown the slogan because it has not yet been achieved; rather, we must disown the practices that thwarted its transformation into realistic policies that touch citizens’ lives.
Can a single faction be held most responsible for the breaking of January?
The breaking of January is a collective responsibility, for the revolution was a collective act par excellence, and no one was absent from the square. Therefore, every political faction has a share of the mistake, even if those shares may differ in size. But January should not be approached from the standpoint of “I am innocent and the others are guilty”, because this will set us back many steps.
Reform or revolution… what does Egypt need now?
When I talk about reform or revolution, I see both as expressing society’s need for change. But I am one of those who believe that change in Egypt and the Arab world must take place in a safe way that enables the people to impose their will without paying the price with their stability or at the expense of state institutions.
For example, that I stand with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and King Abdullah, King of Jordan, supporters of Camp David and Wadi Araba, in their position against the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza; to the same degree, I say that reform and revolution are two expressions of society’s need for a path to change. I am one of those who believe that change in Egypt and the Arab world needs a safe path that enables the people to impose their will without paying a cost at the expense of the people or at the expense of state institutions.
What we call for is that Egypt needs a path to peaceful change. This path can be achieved through fair elections that give the people the opportunity to express their will. But if these doors are closed, what remains is popular uprising. However, no one can predict whether that uprising will turn into a revolution or not. Personally, I am not one of those who support reproducing uprisings that succeed and revolutions that fail.
I believe the current moment in Egypt is a critical moment for the forces seeking change. If these forces are able to cross the difficult road towards change through fair elections, they will have chosen the safe option, especially since Egypt suffers from social tension due to poverty that drives citizens to despair. This situation prepares the ground for a social explosion, and if this explosion happens, it will not be merely a peaceful uprising, but an angry explosion of the poor who feel humiliated.
I believe this represents a real danger to Egypt, its people, its state and its institutions. To avoid this danger, every rational and responsible person must do everything in their power to open the door to peaceful change through free and fair elections, to ensure the country’s stability and avoid social collapse.
Between your support for the Syrian revolution in 2012, your meeting with Bashar al-Assad in 2023 and your stand against Ahmed al-Sharaa in 2024, what happened?
What happened is that the Syrian revolution began, like the 25 January revolution in Egypt or the Tunisian revolution, as part of the Arab Spring made by the people, and it carried beautiful dreams. But when the revolution was armed, it lost its meaning and turned into a bloodbath. This is what happened in Syria. Instead of the revolution being a promise of peaceful democratic change, it turned into a bloody conflict that drained the people and the authorities, and projects emerged to partition and subjugate Syria and to break its stance of resistance, especially since it was one of the few countries that refused to sign a peace agreement with the Zionist enemy.
This transformation took place under American sponsorship and with Gulf funding, and included bringing in extremist groups to fight on Syrian soil, which turned the conflict into an international project aimed at fragmenting Syria.
Our question was: are we in favour of change through violence and fighting? My answer was, and still is, “no”. I do not believe that change can be achieved by arms or through blood, because then the one who wins is the one with external backing, funding and arms, and not the one most committed to democracy and freedoms. This is what we saw when it ended with extremist forces with external ties taking control.
In 2023, I visited Damascus at the head of a delegation from the General Secretariat of the Arab National Conference, of which I am honoured to be the elected Secretary-General. We met President Assad to deliver a clear message: we are with the Syria of resistance and defiance, with its unity as a people, a land and an authority, and with its Arabism and its role as a source of support for the resistance. Without the Syrian role, the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance would not have had this level of preparedness and readiness, as we saw in Al-Aqsa Flood.
But our message was not limited to that. We also stressed the need for internal reconciliation on democratic foundations, the release of prisoners of conscience, and the search for political solutions to the internal conflict. We met the Syrian opposition that was against Assad but rejected violence and the carrying of arms. We submitted lists of the names of detainees and demanded their release, foremost among them members of the Arab National Conference.
And I want to make clear that the constant conflation, part of which is contrived and perhaps malicious, between the nation’s right to seek democracy and its right to resist Zionism or foreign hegemony, and the portrayal of the matter as requiring a choice between the two, so that if you support the resistance you are against democracy, or vice versa, is false and dangerous to prevailing awareness.
What the Arab National Conference has always called for, and still calls for, is an Arab renaissance project, the first part of which is national and pan-Arab independence and at whose head is the liberation of Palestine, but among whose six main pillars are democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of the people. We represent an independent position: neither the regime in Syria nor any other regime holds the decision in the Arab National Conference, and neither the Conference nor I personally have at any moment been a backer of any despotism in the Arab world. But when I go to Syria and shake its hand as part of the resistance and of the defiance of Israel, and call for its unity, I believe I was right, and when I go to Syria to ask for the release of prisoners of conscience and for a search for a political solution to the dispute without blood, I believe I was right.
Finally, I do not boycott any Arab ruler; I boycott only Israel, and my meeting any president does not mean that I am satisfied with all his policies. In Egypt, I have never at any moment been anything but an opposition figure, and in truth I have never refused to meet any Egyptian president. The visit in itself is not a matter to be attacked or supported separately from the message carried by the Arab National Conference, a message that I believed, and still believe, to be correct, and if the situation were repeated I would make the same visit in any similar circumstances.
Speaking of prisoners of conscience, if we asked you to send a message to Dr Laila Soueif, what would you say?
Laila Soueif is a great Egyptian model of a person who loves her homeland and serves it with complete sincerity through her humanitarian and political role, and also through her work as a distinguished scientist and university professor. In truth, her recent hunger strike to demand her son Alaa Abdel Fattah’s right to freedom has raised her standing in the hearts of all who have a living conscience.
I am entirely with Laila Soueif in her right, and her son Alaa’s right, to his immediate release from prison, just as I am with the right of every prisoner of conscience to obtain their freedom. Egypt needs to clear its prisons, to clear its name before the world, and to put its conscience at rest.
You began your political life at university. How do you see the situation of universities in Egypt today?
Universities today are besieged and miserable; there is no politics in them and no effective student movement, and this reflects the state of political desertification that Egypt is witnessing. A society in which universities do not play an effective role, and which does not enable young people at a vital stage of their lives to take part in the renaissance of their society, is a society condemned to political atrophy, and this is the state Egypt is in now.
How do you see the state of freedoms and the media in light of the blocking of many independent news websites, the latest being Zawia3?
We have clearly demanded an end to the phenomenon of blocking news websites and the unleashing of genuine press freedoms in Egypt. The current state of the press in Egypt arouses pity at what things have come to. Egypt’s soft power has always been a key part of what enables it to play its regional and international role, but with the current state of the press, Egypt is losing one of the most important tools of its soft power.
We will not be able to restore this role without genuine press freedoms, and this cannot be separated from the idea of public freedoms in society as a whole. The matter requires a serious improvement in the conditions of journalists and media organisations. The Egyptian press is completely removed from its actual role, and this represents another sign of political desertification in Egypt and of the destruction of public life.
You belong to the Nasserist current. How do you see the state of this current, whether in terms of parties, at the level of the elite or among the masses? And how do you see it on the street?
Gamal Abdel Nasser is a great and iconic symbol for the entire Arab nation. Perhaps the new generations do not feel Nasser’s importance in the same way as those who lived through his era or were close to it, but in every major crisis facing Egypt, we find that Abdel Nasser is present, with his approach, as a solution to that crisis. This is the reason for the attack on him and his vilification, which have not stopped for more than half a century. The attack is not only on his person; it is an attack on the idea he represents and on the symbol that embodies it.
This is not a battle over the past, but a battle for the future. The forces that seek to strip Egyptians and Arabs of their rights to food, freedom, national independence and dignity are the same forces that are hostile to Abdel Nasser to this day.
Abdel Nasser symbolises our right to live in dignity, to receive a good education, to receive good health care, and to confront Israel and America without hesitation. He is the one who said: “If you want to cut off the aid, cut it off”, and of whoever says a bad word about Egypt, “we will cut out his tongue”. He is a symbol of this dignity, of the project of liberating Palestine, of Arab unity, national independence, civilisational renewal and democracy. This is what the Nasserists added after Abdel Nasser’s departure, and it is the component that makes up his project.
I see Nasserism as the solution that can save this nation from the deterioration it has reached. As for the Nasserists, they suffer, like other political forces, from organisational weakness and fragility in their parties, in addition to the siege imposed on them from outside. Nasserism in the popular conscience is well and will remain so, but in the party and organisational movement it is going through a crisis and needs to renew itself.
