Boniface Mwangi organised a group of graffiti artists to create controversial murals around Nairobi depicting the nation’s political elite as vultures and criticising the populace for voting them into office again and again. Credit: Mike Elkin/IPS

By Mike Elkin
NAIROBI, Nov 21 2012 (IPS)

A new website linking corruption and other scandals to high-ranking Kenyan politicians, created by a team of political provocateurs, has become one of the most-visited web pages in the country.

MaVulture.com, which means “many vultures” in Swahili, aims to collect, condense, and air the past wrongdoings of Kenya’s political class. Going live on Nov. 13, the site is the latest project from activist Boniface Mwangi, known for his political graffiti murals around Nairobi and his photographic exhibitions that documented the violent aftermath of the 2007 presidential elections.

Following a disputed election result in December 2007, riots and politically motivated tribal disputes broke out, leaving around 1,200 people dead and displacing 600,000.

Mwangi, 29, a freelance photographer, was twice awarded, in 2008 and 2010, CNN’s Mohamed Amin Photographic Award, named after a Kenyan photojournalist, for his work covering the post-election violence.

“Yo have y’all checked out mavulture.com?” tweeted Kenyan entertainment magazine Blink. “I think you need to check it out before you cast your vote next year.” Kenyans will be going to the polls to elect a new president in March 2013.

“Thanks for the info, mavulture.com,” tweeted a local twitter user called Msanifu. “I now know why/whom I should not vote for.”

The website so far features profiles on 17 politicians, including Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of Kenya’s first president, a current presidential candidate, and also one of the men under an International Criminal Court investigation for crimes against humanity during the 2007 post-election violence, which Kenyans refer to as “the Violence”.

Money laundering, land grabbing, drug trafficking and murder are just a few of the accusations Mavulture.com pins on its targets. Aside from articles, the site includes videos, infographics on each politician, and Wild-West-style wanted posters available for download. It is financed by anonymous donors.

Mwangi told IPS in an interview at his Nairobi office that the goal of the website was to educate Kenyans about the baggage their political leaders and candidates are carrying leading up to the presidential elections.

“We’re going to put online the records of every person involved in the government, every corruption case they’ve been in, and every accusation about them,” Mwangi said.

“So when you go to vote you’ll have this platform to have an informed perspective. We have grand-scale corruption in this country, and the same guys involved in the corruption have been for the past 49 years. So we can compare them and us. When they say, ‘we are together’, we will see that we are not together. Our kids don’t go to foreign schools, and we don’t have villas in the United Kingdom.”

Boniface Mwangi is known for his political graffiti murals around Nairobi and his photographic exhibitions that documented the violent aftermath of the 2007 presidential elections. Credit: Mike Elkin/IPS

According to Transparency International, the Berlin-based non-governmental organisation that documents global corruption, Kenya’s score in 2011 for perceived corruption was 2.2 out of 10, with 10 being clean. Overall, 153 out of 183 countries on the index ranked as less corrupt than Kenya. Transparency International estimated that corruption is costing Kenya up to 357 million dollars per year.

Mwangi said he moved into political activism out of frustration and anger after witnessing the post-election violence. In 2009 he founded Picha Mtaani, a traveling photo exhibition of the riots and killings, as a way to remind Kenyans of what happened.

Turning his gaze toward corruption, Mwangi then organised a group of graffiti artists to create controversial murals around Nairobi depicting the nation’s political elite as vultures and criticising the populace for voting them into office again and again.

In June, he led a rally that carried 49 black coffins to parliament while in session. Each coffin represented every year the politicians enjoyed impunity since independence in 1963. On them they stenciled, “Bury the vulture with your vote,” and each coffin was labeled with a political scandal.

Authorities painted over many of the graffiti murals in the Kenyan capital, but one of Mwangi’s most iconic images remains intact near the Nairobi city market. In it a man with a vulture head sits on a throne wearing a sly grin with a teacup in one hand and the other handcuffed to a briefcase. The thought cloud above him reads: “They loot, rape, burn and kill in my defence. I steal their taxes, grab land, but the idiots will still vote for me.”

“You know what a vulture does?” asked Nairobi taxi driver Kimani Jong Kimani Nganga as he looked at the mural. “It eats meat. We have had politicians since the elections that have been eating us. So we should change that.”

Mwangi said that he wants to provoke a response among Kenyans, because their apathy toward clear cases of political and financial abuse only emboldens those who seek to take advantage of the system.

“Recently, teachers and doctors were striking over low pay, and the members of parliament sat down and over 30 minutes awarded themselves a pay raise,” Mwangi said.

“There was no uproar. Two hundred people can do this in a country of 40 million people and no one goes to the streets. What do you call that? Zombies, cowards… It defeats logic how people can be slaves to a system and never speak out. People see injustice every day and they watch it happen.”

Fear of the consequences of speaking out, he said, is one of the main reasons for Kenyans’ silence. So Mwangi said he is thinking of planning a protest where everyone will wear masks.

“This country is very small, the majority of the companies are owned by politicians and vultures, so if some people protest they fear repercussions or being fired. With masks, people can show their true colours.”

*Additional reporting by Lucas Laursen

Kenya’s first openly homosexual candidate David Kuria Mbote is running for public office. Credit: Mike Elkin/IPS

By Mike Elkin
Nov 5 2012 (IPS)

During an interview at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Nairobi, David Kuria Mbote, Kenya’s first openly homosexual candidate for public office, stresses that his campaign will not be only about gay rights.It is, he said, about tearing down the structural barriers in healthcare, education, and the economy that harm all Kenyans.

“We have many people who are trapped in the cycle of poverty,” he told IPS.

“My county Kiambu is not the poorest county in Kenya, but those who are poor in Kiambu are really, really poor, and many times they cannot escape that cycle of poverty. What we want to do is create small projects, like rabbit farming for example, to help them break that cycle. Once they can do this they will be more able to work their way to a better life.

“Another point of my platform is second chances, especially for people addicted to drugs and alcohol. Your life is not lost just because everyone has written you off. If I had believed the normal conceptions about people like me, I would have given up on myself. So I want to tell people not to give up.”

In a country where homophobia is the norm and most homosexuals keep their sexual orientation secret, Kuria, a 40-year-old activist, is running as an independent candidate for a senate seat in Kiambu County, north of Nairobi, in the March 2013 elections.

He is not only running against two veteran politicians, but against the prevailing view that homosexuality is repulsive.

In various polls taken in Kenya over the past five years, more than 90 percent of respondents said homosexuality went against their beliefs. And while the 2010 constitution aims to “preserve the dignity of individuals and communities and to promote social justice and the realisation of the potential of all human beings,” the pre-constitution penal code criminalises homosexual activity with up to 14 years in prison.

While very few sentences are carried out, there have been many cases of police officers demanding bribes from homosexuals seeking to avoid arrest, according to Kuria.

HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment is one of Kuria’s main issues, arising from his work as co-founder of the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya, an umbrella organisation. Kuria said that Kenyan doctors turned away homosexual patients, and that gay men were poorly educated in HIV prevention. In one case, he said, a nurse called the entire staff on the floor to come see the gay man.

According to the United Nations, as of last December 1.6 million out of around 40 million Kenyans were living with HIV – more than in the United States, Canada, Britain, and France combined. Kuria said that non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and cancer also need new treatment policies.

In Kenya, the only openly gay public figures are a few activists, including Kuria. When IPS asked him why he went public in a society so averse to his sexuality, he cited an experience trying to pressure the National AIDS Commission to include gay men as an HIV risk group.

“At first the woman in charge told us we were attention-seekers. But after they released the Kenya AIDS survey and modes of transmission, they started seeing the things that we were telling them: that gay men were a high HIV risk group, and that this needed to be addressed.

“And this same lady that called us attention-seekers became so pro-active for us it amazed me. It showed me that people could change. Witnessing that shift pushed me to do more,” he said.

Kuria’s frankness in public about his sexual orientation shocked many, especially considering that between the ages of 13 and 27, Kuria was preparing to become a Jesuit priest, graduating with degrees in theology and philosophy. Since leaving the seminary, he has earned an MBA at the University of Nairobi and this December he is scheduled to receive a master’s degree in finance.

“They call me the candidate with issues,” he said, laughing. “They don’t say I’m gay, they say I have issues. At the beginning I was worried people would see me only as gay, but after 30 or so public meetings, people are willing to listen. Whether they vote for me is another story, but at least they are listening.”

Countering African society’s take on homosexuality, however, will not be easy. Mike Waters in South Africa is the only openly gay member of parliament on the continent. And current Kenyan prime minister and presidential candidate Raila Odinga said during a speech in November 2010 that homosexuals should be arrested, adding that there was no need for gay couples because there were more women than men in Kenya.

In mid-October the UK-based gay rights advocacy group Kaleidoscope Trust invited Kuria to speak at a seminar about leadership. He spoke there with Christopher Robert Smith, Britain’s first openly gay MP.

“He just told me to stick to the message, and that if the message was credible people would listen,” Kuria said.

“David is an inspirational and very brave man who is willing to stand up and be counted on a continent where for generations gay people have been forced to keep their heads down or risk physical attack or worse,” Lance Price, executive director of the Kaleidoscope Trust, told Oxford University’s student newspaper.

On Facebook and Twitter, Kuria’s campaign has stirred many hateful comments. And he recently received an email saying “Rest in Peace”, although it came from the United States. But he said he has not experienced many problems with homophobia.

At the moment, Kuria does not travel with security, but he said that might change if he starts polling well close to election day.

He said, however, that voters will look past their own prejudices come March.

“I think people will see me as a political outsider, with no roots in the establishment,” he said.

“I am not going to continue any of the establishment practices in terms of corruption or tribalism. So if the country is ready for a change, then I am as much of a change as they can get.”

A year after the Libyan uprising that overthrew dictator Muammar Gaddafi, the National Transitional Council (NTC) has yet to provide adequate security. Many armed groups are still calling the shots, as the NTC moves to restore normalcy.

Members of armed groups are being brought under new government discipline in Libya. Credit: Mike Elkin/IPS.

“These armed groups need to return to their homes,” Fathi Baja, an NTC founding member and head of the political committee that draws up national and international policy for the council, told IPS in an interview. “Those from Zintan who are in the Tripoli airport need to go back to Zintan. The checkpoints in Tripoli manned by people from Misrata have no place there. We have a state within a state.”

According to Saleh Aburajiga, an electrical engineer from Zintan who was active in the revolution, the Zintan brigades, who hail from the western mountain region, are safeguarding the airport and oil deposits in the south because the NTC is unable to provide security.

“They are all volunteers,” Aburajiga added. “No one takes money because they are working for the new Libya. There is a lot of bad press about them, but the majority is lies.”

In the eastern city of Benghazi, however, the defence ministry has already absorbed the diverse rebel brigades into its structure. Instead of wearing individual brigade patches, those handling security in Benghazi wear ministry badges around their necks.

“All the rebels in Benghazi have signed up with the defence ministry, and around 1,000 graduated from a training course last week,” said Halili Aguri, 20. He added that his Libya Al-Hurra (Free Libya) Brigade signed on with the ministry last April.

Security forces were put on alert last week, flooding the city centre and access points to the city with men armed with AK-47s and the larger Belgium FN-FAL rifles. The city has been relatively safe since the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) airstrikes began last March, but last week tensions rose after one of Gaddafi’s sons, Al Saadi, who escaped to Niger as rebels took Tripoli, called into a Saudi news channel and warned of an imminent uprising against the ruling NTC.

“We’re concerned about the threats Al Saadi made,” said Ahmed Binasser, 43, a car parts salesman and former rebel fighter. “Basically, we want to be prepared for any situation.”

Binasser was a member of the local Zawiya Martyrs Brigade, one of the toughest militias during the revolution. He and others were stationed last week at an intersection near downtown Benghazi.

“It’s going to take some more time to bring all the rebels into the framework, but there is a plan,” he said. “In the east we haven’t had too many problems because here we rose up against Gaddafi as one. But in the west there were different opinions. Also, we’ve had a year to organise while the west has had only four months.”

The NTC announced on its veterans affairs website that it has completed its first, post-revolutionary phase of its plan to turn the militias into a new, national army, signing up 5,000 men. The transitional government is now offering jobs in the army or police to revolutionary fighters, in addition to post- graduate education abroad.

Many experts see folding the brigades into a national force as necessary for the transition to a democratic government, especially before elections are held in June. At that time, Libyans will elect a 200-seat temporary congress that will be responsible for drafting a new constitution.

The NTC published its elections rules Sunday last week for candidate eligibility, campaign and voting regulations, and punishment for election fraud. Current and former NTC members, transitional government cabinet members, and local council heads cannot run as candidates.

But many activists have denounced the NTC for focusing more on its own power-brokering during the transition than on making sure that the country is safe enough to hold free elections.

“We have been very lucky because there are weapons all over the place, but things are relatively safe,” said Zahi Mogherbi, political analyst and former professor of political science at Benghazi University.

“But things can get out of hand just like that. We can’t be too complacent about these things. Things could explode quickly because situation is very fragile. We should not be deceived by periods of calmness.”

With the June deadline for congressional elections approaching, Libyans previously in exile are returning home to take part in the construction of a new political landscape. Political churning is well under way as Libya marks the first anniversary of the ouster of the Muammar Gaddafi regime Friday.

Ibrahim Sahad, secretary general of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya Credit: Mike Elkin/IPS.

Since the early 1980s, opposition figures and groups, based largely in the United States and Europe, launched both military and media campaigns against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. Now with the dictator dead and an opportunity to create a new country from scratch, they are transforming into political entities to complement and sometimes contest the actions of the National Transitional Council (NTC) that is leading the transition to a democratic system.

“Now that Gaddafi is gone, we are not an opposition party any more,” said Ibrahim Sahad, secretary general of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL), one of the largest anti-Gaddafi groups. “Now we are trying to support the NTC, but of course, if we see something that we don’t like, we are going to say so.”

The Front will soon be a political party, likely changing its name to something along the lines of the National Front, but Sahad said the group was still discussing its transition into Libyan politics. He hopes that the new party will run in the June elections.

Cleric Ali Al-Sallabi, previously living in exile in Qatar, is also leading a political movement to stand for elections in Libya. His party, for now called the National Gathering for Freedom, Justice and Development, supports basing Libya’s constitution on Islamic law, but using the moderate model of Turkey and Tunisia. The Front hopes to institute a model similar to the American one, but Sahad said that Islam will play a role seeing as the country is almost entirely Muslim.

“We envision a civilian government, three separate branches of government, and a constitution that works as a governing document, outlining the relationship between the different branches,” Sahad said. “Our number one issue will be human rights. Libyans have suffered for 42 years from a lack of human rights, and our constitution should be influenced by the universal declaration of human rights.”

On the economy, Sahad said that his group supports free enterprise, but the state should control the oil and mining industries. International cooperation is a must, he added. “Oil is a strategic commodity, and we need the oil companies to help pump out the oil. But every city should receive its share of oil revenues, to be put towards development projects, new industries, education, and healthcare.”

Sahad was a signal corps officer in the Libyan army, and was doing military training in Britain when Gaddafi staged his 1960 coup and took over the country. The new regime, knowing Sahad would not accept Gaddafi, shipped him and other likely dissident officers abroad as diplomats. After working in Amman, Washington DC, the United Nations, and Argentina, Sahad resigned in 1981 and went into exile to Morocco and then to Virginia in the U.S., where he has lived since 1984.

The same year he left the regime he and other former diplomats founded the Front. Sahad was elected secretary-general in 2001, and re-elected five years ago.

Working in parallel with the NTC, the Front met with the U.S. government to push for the no-fly zone that the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) eventually imposed. It also formed groups to travel to Egypt to bring food and medical supplies across the border into Libya after the liberation of the east.

Sahad’s son smuggled in four large servers from the United States through Egypt to help the NTC set up their communications. The Front sent men to fight as well. Several Front members died in Misrata and Benghazi, Sahad said.

Prior to the 2011 revolution, the Front called for a democratic Libya with free elections, a free press, and a separation of powers. In its early years, it also supported armed action against the Gaddafi regime, launching an assassination attempt on Gaddafi in May 1984 that was foiled by Libyan security forces. The Front also made headlines that year in Britain when it organised a protest outside the Libyan embassy in London. Shots were fired from the embassy into the crowd, injuring 11 people and killing police officer Yvonne Fletcher.

The most common complaint from Libyans in the east is the alleged presence of former regime members in the transitional government. The lack of transparency and communication from the NTC has turned easterners – historically suspicious of Tripoli – into pessimists.

“Obviously, there were a lot of people who worked in the Gaddafi government,” Sahad said, “but I’m talking about those who participated in the repression of Libyans. There are still some of these people in sensitive positions in and around the NTC. They shouldn’t be working during the transitional period. If they want to run for office later, that’s fine, but now they cannot contribute anything except for what they learned from Gaddafi. And we don’t need that.”

The NTC said it has 15 guidelines to keep former Gaddafi people out of the leadership, affecting around 2,000 people. “Many Libyans think this is too few, but we don’t want to make the same mistake as in Iraq when the Americans banned Baath party members from the new government,” said Fathi Baja, who leads the NTC political committee.

Many people in Benghazi thought former political science professor Zahi Mogherbi would be involved in writing the constitution, but his work within the Gaddafi regime has marginalised him. Mogherbi drafted constitutional reforms alongside Gaddafi’s son, Saif Al-Islam around five years ago that the regime eventually shelved.

“Many people don’t want to touch anything related to previous regime, and I understand that,” Mogherbi said. “I was well known in the opposition, but many of us felt that our window of opportunity was to work within the regime. No one in his wildest dreams thought that a revolution would take down Gaddafi. So we tried to reform from within.”

Mogherbi, who lived in the United States in the 1970s, has criticised the NTC for sloppy work since the Gaddafi regime fell in August. “In the beginning, the goal was clear: to get rid of Gaddafi,” Mogherbi said. “But since then, the number of NTC members has grown and the unity has disappeared as everyone wants his chunk of the cake. We first need to write a constitution. Once we have the rules of the game, then we can start playing politics. But they’ve already started fighting.”

It’s been almost a year since Benghazi launched its uprising against former Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi and three months since he was killed, but there is a growing sense of frustration in eastern Libya with the National Transitional Council. Two weeks ago, a group of protesters attacked the Council’s Benghazi headquarters as chairman Mustafa Abdeljalil was inside, forcing him to flee through the back door.

The Libyan economy has not recovered from the revolution. Government workers are not receiving their salaries. Liquidity is in such a dire situation that banks can only give out 2,000 dinars (about 1,500 dollars) per month per account.

The economic pressure has created an atmosphere of mistrust for the once-loved National Transitional Council (NTC), and rumours circulate about corruption and the infiltration of former regime members. Many activists want the NTC and any future government completely free of Gaddafi’s men, but others feel that such a break is impossible considering that many Libyans worked for the regime because there was no alternative.

The real culprits, however, are a lack of transparency and communication by the NTC.

“The NTC has lost its credibility with the people,” said Abdel Salam El Sherif, 33, a lawyer and political activist. “The council earned its legitimacy from the revolution, but it needs to serve the people.

“Many people joined the NTC in secret because there were still pro-Gaddafi elements around, and the people accepted the secrecy for security reasons. But after the liberation of Tripoli, you still see the NTC not revealing information about its members. So we are asking, ‘Who are these people and why hide their names?’ This is basic transparency. We don’t even know how many there are. Every time we ask we are given different answers.”

According to Fathi Baja, a founding member of the NTC who heads the political committee that draws up national and international policies for the council, there are 72 members. But El Sherif’s point is valid. The NTC website lists 66 members with their names, positions, hometowns and biographies.

Not only is it incomplete, but this was uploaded only on Jan. 29. On the NTC’s Facebook page, it says on Dec. 24 that there were 42 members, and on Dec. 8 there were 61 members.

“We are not opposed to the NTC’s existence,” El Sherif said, “we just want to know who they are.”

Baja, a former political science professor at Benghazi University, admitted the council’s communication mistakes, but said measures have been made to improve them. He stressed that the NTC will cease to exist after elections are held in June. In addition, the NTC members all pledged to not run as candidates.

“The attack on the NTC building showed us just how bad things had become,” Baja said. “We are now reorganising the state media to use it to communicate better with the people. Maybe if we had done this a month ago we wouldn’t have these problems.”

He added, however, that the NTC has accomplished a lot considering that Libya lacked any institutions and had to start building a state from scratch. Security, he said, is still a problem. The army and police are absent, and filling the vacuum are local militias – a phenomenon that the NTC is trying to reverse, he said.

Concerning the economy, Baja said that the transitional government the NTC appointed is now preparing a budget that will allot money to different sectors.

“There are a lot of rumours flying about regarding money and the NTC,” he said. “The NTC do not receive salaries, but people say we get 5,000 dinars per month. They hear that foreign governments unfreeze Libyan money and they think boxes of money are being sent to the NTC. It’s not like this.

“We have money at our disposal, but we have to create a budget first. Not only are the Libyan people watching us, but so is the international community. But we have to change the nature of the economy. Gaddafi spent 17 billion dollars per year on government salaries, and this cannot continue. You cannot run a state with this system. We have to promote the private sector to grow.”

The most pressing issue for the NTC is laying the groundwork for the June elections when the country will elect a national congress. This assembly will in turn elect a committee to draft a new constitution. The current plan envisions 200 seats, of which 120 will be reserved for individual candidates and 80 for political parties.

“This is a disaster,” El Sherif said. “A national congress needs to include representatives from all parts of society. Using parties may marginalise sections of the country. Political parties can come later on, once the foundations of the new country are written.”

By Mike Elkin and - -
CAIRO, Nov 30 2011 (IPS)

Egyptians in Cairo and Alexandria went to the polls on Monday in the first parliamentary elections since the January 25 protest movement drove former president Hosni Mubarak from a 30-year grip on power.

Since then, the power vacuum has been filled by the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces (SCAF), which sided with the protesters at the beginning of the revolution. When the Mubarak-controlled police force disappeared from the streets, the army took up positions around the country to provide security for demonstrations.

The SCAF, led by Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, pledged to provide stability for a transitional government that would prepare for these elections and later presidential elections. But many Egyptians have turned against the so-called guardians of the revolution, claiming that the SCAF has delayed the handover of power to a civilian government.

Recent protests in Tahrir Square called for the army to remove itself from politics and to end nearly 60 years of having military strongmen run Egypt.

“The people in Tahrir feel betrayed by the military and by the political parties who have agreed on a kind of status quo,” said Ayman Fahmy, a 52-year-old doctor who took part in the January 25 protest. “They feel that the army has hijacked their revolution and that they’re not getting the complete change to the system that they wanted.”

The SCAF has not been very open to the public or to the press, issuing statements on its Facebook page and holding only occasional press conferences. Retired general Sameh Seif Elyazal, however, has been a defender of the military in the Egyptian press and many Egyptians view him as an unofficial spokesman for the military, a label that the general rejects.

The 64-year-old former tank commander is chairman of the state-sponsored think tank Al Gomhouria Centre for Political and Security Studies.

“The SCAF definitely made mistakes, although they corrected many of them quickly,” Elyazal told IPS during an interview in his Cairo office. “Not being in contact with the people was a mistake. The SCAF needs to hold a press conference every week so all the facts will be out there and fewer rumors will circulate.

“But on the positive side, the SCAF opened the door for establishing parties. Before there were only a few, and now we have 49 parties and 268 political and religious groups. We released thousands of prisoners who had not been convicted. And let’s not forget that the army went against Mubarak while he was still in power. The SCAF said that they were with the protesters and that they were going to protect them. Had the revolution failed, Mubarak would have executed that group of officers.”

One of the SCAF’s recent announcements, a result of the massive turnout last week in Tahrir Square, was to promise to hold presidential elections at the end of next June. Previously, the military council had not specified a date. For Elyazal, who left the military 15 years ago after serving in the 1967 and 1973 wars with Israel, plus the War of Attrition in between, that date will be the end of a political role for the Egyptian army.

“Once we have presidential elections in June, the army will disappear from political life forever, guaranteed,” he said. “As of Jun. 30, they will go back to their barracks and be regular soldiers again, and that will be it. You won’t see anyone from the army in political life, that’s for sure.”

Regarding the five days last week of violent clashes between protesters and security forces, which left 38 people dead and more than 2,000 injured, plus the additional days of peaceful demonstrations, the former general thinks that political machinations and not popular frustration with the direction of the political process were the driving forces behind the protests.

“First of all, I’m personally against any violence of any kind,” Elyazal said. “What happened was crazy. But Tahrir Square knew elections were coming and they wanted as much power as they could get. Timing was crucial. They did it just two weeks before the election to show the people that they were strong, that they could put pressure on SCAF, and that they were the right people to vote for.

“And we can’t assume that the 50,000, 100,000, 300,000 or half a million people in Tahrir represent the 85 million who live in Egypt. If you go to Facebook and watch television, you will find other people who want the army in control of the country. Last Friday, during the protest in Tahrir, there was another demonstration in favour of the SCAF.”

Speaking of people criticising the military in Tahrir Square, Elyazal said the movement was against holding elections because a working democracy would make the protesters obsolete.

“If we have a parliament, then these members of parliament will talk on behalf of Egyptians,” he said. “So Tahrir Square won’t have much meaning. Who will they be representing? The government and the SCAF will listen to the parliament and not listen to Tahrir Square anymore. There will be no need for unofficial representatives and there will be no role for Tahrir Square.”

Nevertheless, Elyazal said, Egypt must adapt to a new political system and that will take time. “This is the first time we are trying to be democracy,” he said, “People must get used to that. We are a kindergarten democracy.”

Elyazal also said he believed that other countries might be trying to influence events in Egypt as well. While he admitted that he did not have any evidence, the ex-general named Iran due to its desire to lead the region and Israel because five of its spies were caught by Egyptian authorities over the past seven months.

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