Egypt turmoil: ‘Wise Men’ to discuss transition

Vice president to meet independents over solution to impasse as protests continue.

CAIRO: Egypt’s vice president will meet a group of prominent independent figures on Saturday promoting a solution to the country’s crisis in which he would assume the president’s powers for an interim period, one of the group said.

Diaa Rashwan told Reuters he and others had been invited to see Vice President Omar Suleiman to discuss solutions to the crisis based on an article of the constitution that would allow President Hosni Mubarak to hand his powers to his deputy.

Mubarak would stay on in a symbolic position under the proposal being promoted by Rashwan and a group of Egyptians calling itself the “The Council of Wise Men”

“Departure day” demonstrations continued in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the 11 straight days of protests.

At one end of the square the faithful prayed out in the open, beneath two traffic lights from each of which hung an effigy of Mubarak. “We were born free and we shall live free,” prayer leader Khaled al-Marakbi said in his sermon. “I ask of you patience until victory.”

The finance minister said the country had suffered huge economic losses during political protests that broke out 11 days ago. “Certainly it’s going to be huge,” Samir Radwan said in an interview with Reuters Insider television. He said Cairo would honour all financial commitments once banks reopen on Sunday.

The prosecutor-general, Abdul Magid Mahmud, has barred former trade and industry minister Rashid Mohammed Rashid from leaving the country and frozen his bank accounts, state news agency Mena said. Mahmud ordered the “preventative measures” until the “end of the inquiry” initiated by his office into suspected misappropriation of public funds, the agency said. The same measures will be taken against former interior minister Habib al-Adly and business magnate Ahmed Ezz. Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq has also said that Adly is under investigation.

Both Nobel Peace Laureate Mohamed ElBaradei and Arab League chief Amr Mussa, 74, indicated that they would be willing to run in the presidential elections.

Egypt has told the United Nations it is unhappy with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s public criticism of the Egyptian government and his calls for change, according to a spokeswoman for Egypt’s UN mission. Ban this week urged Mubarak and his government to take “bold measures” to address the concerns of people demonstrating for change. He urged Mubarak’s government to view the demonstrations “as an opportunity to engage in addressing the legitimate concerns of the people.”

Meanwhile Europe’s 27 leaders demanded the transition to democracy in Egypt start “now” in a joint statement Friday that also condemned violence in the country “in the strongest terms”. They called for restraint on all sides and no further violence as the country begins an “orderly transition” to a broad-based government.

The offices of Al Jazeera were burnt and destroyed by “gangs of thugs”. The news channel accused them or their supporters of trying to thwart its
coverage of political unrest in Egypt. Agencies

Published in The Express Tribune, February 5^th, 2011.