As Race Takes Shape, Former Foreign Minister Says a Muslim Brotherhood Presidential Victory Could Imperil Democracy

ICC Note:

Amr Moussa, a presidential frontrunner, warns that the “Muslim Brotherhood controlling the legislature and the executive could return the country to the kind of autocratic rule that corrupted the ousted regime,” The Wall Street Journal reports. A non-Islamist candidate, Moussa has the support of many Christians and liberals in Egypt.

By Matt Bradley, Charles Levinson, and Adam Z. Horvath

4/18/2012 Egypt (Wall Street Journal) – The presumed front-runner in Egypt’s newly winnowed presidential race cast himself as the last bulwark against a surge of Islamist power, as remaining candidates rushed to define themselves in their bids to lead the country’s first post-revolutionary government.

Former Egyptian foreign minister Amr Moussa, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal a day after the country’s election commission dismissed 10 candidates from the race, warned that if the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate wins the presidency as well as its party dominating Parliament, it could yield a one-party system that would brook “no serious debate” in public.

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Egypt’s emerging political system will “require” a non-Islamist president who “would cooperate and ask other people to cooperate with him, rather than have only one current and one policy,” he said.

Mr. Moussa warned that the Muslim Brotherhood controlling the legislature and the executive could return the country to the kind of autocratic rule that corrupted the ousted regime.

“It would be very destructive,” he said. “The [former ruling party] should not be replaced with a different color and a different hat.”

He noted that the Brotherhood had initially promised not to run a presidential candidate, partly from the same concern.

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Mr. Moussa has assiduously courted Coptic Christian voters and appears to be the candidate of choice for Egypt’s roughly 10% Coptic minority.

“I am relieved at what took place [Tuesday] because the fundamentalists are out,” said Youssuf Sidhom, the editor of the Coptic Christian daily newspaper Al Watani. “They never cease assuring us they care for Copts and equality, but there always lies a vast area of historical mistrust. With the Muslim Brotherhood, you never know. They easily change their position. They easily lie to Egyptians.” Despite those doubts, Mr. Sidhom described Mr. Morsi as a decent man.

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