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March 10, 2013

Correlated: Piloting Luxor's hot balloon and Morsi's leadership

Prof. Dr. Mohamed Elmasry

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As much as it was inevitable the sad end of the landing of Luxor's hot balloon, killing 19 innocent people, it is also inevitable the disastrous result of the leadership of President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood; innocent men, women and children killed and being killed or injured and the hope for a better future for next generation Egyptians dashed away.

Hot balloon experts blame pilot’s error due to lack of proper training for the Luxor’s accident, the worst ballooning accident since the Hindenburg disaster.

Phil Dunnington, Chair of the British Balloon and Airship Club called the training of Egyptian pilots “very weak” and said authorities did not regularly assess local pilots’ skills and that examiners were often not balloon experts.

Similarly, resulting in a disaster is inevitable for the whole of Egypt, politically and economically, under the leadership of Morsi and his MB, as their managing of post-revolution Egypt in the last 8 months clearly points out.

Morsi and his MB regularly use excuses to justify their mediocre performance. The first month Morsi was in office he complained that the military Supreme Council did not give him full authority to run the country. But when the military returned to their barricades soon after, Morsi failed again and again and again.

Morsi also regularly blames the opposition for everything that goes wrong in the country but he never takes responsibility for any of his wrong political decisions, which are plenty. Even when he became an elected-president-turned-a-dictator on Nov 22 with full powers, he never utilized that power to improve people’s economical conditions while the economy went into a negative spin. Instead he facilitated the passing of an Islamist constitution that representatives of the opposition parties, farmers, labor, women, the Church, academics, and journalists have withdrew from its drafting committee.

Inflation is currently running at 15% due to the deteriorating value of the pound in a country that imports some 70% of its needs. At gas stations there are long lines and recently one person was killed and 10 were injured when temper flared at a station outside Cairo.

Morsi insists on running an election for a new parliament in April even when the vast majority of political parties declared that they will boycott the elections protesting the process the new constitution was written, how it was approved by only 20% of the registered voters, and the unfair election law that favors the MB-held ridings.

Morsi and his MB are supported by the US as they both willingly offered themselves as good replacements to Mubarak and his National Democratic Party maintaining Egypt’s position as a strong ally in the American main axis in the region; Israel-Egypt-Qatar  against the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis.

Qatar financed Morsi’s presidential election campaign with some 200 million dollars channeled through Islamist charities based in Cairo. Qatar also has lent Egypt millions ahead of the approval of the World Bank’s loan. Qatar also is shopping on the cheap for Egyptian banks and proposing to rent some ancient Egyptian monuments to fill up its empty national museum catering for only few thousands visitors a year.

During the two day visit of the US Secretary of State John Kerry only few opposition party leaders met with him while the major opposition groups, led by the National Salvation Front, have turned down his invitation accusing the United States of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood to create an anti-democratic oppressive regime.

In the coming April 22 election only Islamist parties are likely to run but most will leave the Muslim Brotherhood and its Freedom and Justice Party lonesome forming alliances away from FJP as they accuse Morsi of favoritism by appointing MB members to key positions in the presidential office, government, state-owned media, upper house, several governesses, police and army.

While the Suez Canal city of Port Said is burning with civil unrest for weeks and unprecedented clashes were reported recently between the army protecting the protesters and police, Morsi, in a dishonest way, keep calling for a national dialogue that ends up as usual only in photo-ops.

On Sunday a military source in Port Said said that a senior officer was injured due to the firing of live ammunition and five Armed Forces soldiers suffered the effects of "friendly" tear gas fire and were taken to a military hospital during the ongoing clashes between protesters and security forces, in the vicinity of the Port Said Security Directorate.

The Interior Ministry had earlier in the week decided to transfer inmates from Port Said’s central prison to Cairo before March 9 when the Port Said Criminal Court will issue a ruling for the remaining defendants in the case of 72 Cairo soccer club fans killed on February 2, 2012. Previously, 21 defendants were harshly sentenced to death, pending approval from Egypt’s grand mufti.

In Port Said since January heavy clashes between protesters and police are daily, leaving more than 40 dead and the city in a state of civil disobedience but Morsi is nowhere to be found.

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