6 June 2012One of Egypt's leading opposition figures, ex-head of the IAEA Mohamed El Baradei said that currently his country is not ready to hold presidential elections due to contradictions between Egyptian political forces.
“Present-day Egypt is not ready to elect a new head of the state as the country now is in ruin, people have been split and a disappointment prevails everywhere after a year and a half of an incompetent management of the country,” El Baradei told journalists.
Egypt is set to hold the second and final round of the presidential election on June 16-17. The Muslim Brotherhood's candidate for the Egyptian presidential election Mohammed Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq, who was the last prime minister under Mubarak, won most of the votes in the first round of Egypt’s presidential elections on May 23-24 and will face each other in the runoff.
El Baradei said it was high time for all political forces in the country “to sit with each other and find a way out from the current crisis in Egypt,” and if they fail to agree “the country will explode.”
According to El Baradei, Egypt needs the government of the national salvation that will implement the tasks of the 2011 revolution, which are the provision of Egyptians with food, guarantees of freedom and the establishment of the social justice.
Current conditions in the country are not suitable to hold the presidential election as a new constitution should be adopted at first to comply with the tasks set by the revolution, El Baradei added.
Former President of Egypt Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in February 2011 after an 18-day popular uprising. Over 800 people were killed during the revolution, many of them shot dead by security forces. Last week the Cairo Criminal Court ruled to sentence Mubarak, 84, to life imprisonment. |
