My interview on Democracy Now on the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 is available on the Web. A text transcript follows at that link.

Zewail’s 4 point Plan for Egypt

Nobelist in chemistry, Dr. Ahmed Zewail of the California Institute of Technology, is an Egyptian-American who has sometimes been mentioned as a candidate for president of Egypt. He has served as a science envoy to the Arab world of President Obama.

In an interview on Aljazeera Arabic, Zewail called for fundamental change in Egypt, not just cosmetic alterations. He gave as the causes for the current uprising:

1. Power games among the elite, competition over the succession to President Hosni Mubarak, lack of transparency and phony elections.

2. The economic situation: the masses of the poor have been left behind, the situation of the middle class has actually gone backward, while a small elite at the top benefits from what economic progress there is– because of a marriage of power and capital.

3. Corruption and constant demands for bribes by officials.

4. Education: The deterioration of the education system, which is central to every Egyptian household’s hopes of progress, to a state that does not in any way reflect Egypt’s standing in the world.

(Zewail is right about that. You have poorly paid professors with 2000 students in the class, and what learning gets done is often rote, then there are not enough jobs for the graduates; the state spends its money on something else, and the best Egyptian minds have been attracted by the much better salaries and working conditions in the Oil Gulf or the West.)

Being a chemist, Zewail seems to like sets of four. So he also put forward four resolutions of the crisis:

1. The Constitution: A constitutional assembly of wise men should be assembled to draft a new constitution, based on liberty, human rights, and the orderly transfer of power

2. the independence of the courts must be guaranteed

3. Free and fair elections must be conducted for the upper and lower houses of parliament and for the presidency, overseen by the independent judiciary.

4. Government: A new transitional government of national unity must be appointed. The military must intervene to keep order and to protect the nation in this transitional period.

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Original, and more, at JuanCole.com

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