Pro-democracy supporters call for unity among revolutionaries in Egypt

A new coalition of Egyptian political and public figures have released a “charter of principles to reclaim the 25 January revolution”, ten months after a military-backed coup deposed the country’s first elected president Mohamed Morsi from power.

The charter was announced by a proposed new alliance, which will incorporate a broad spectrum of anti-coup voices, at a press conference in Brussels on Tuesday. Speakers included Ayat Oraby, an Egyptian-American journalist and activist, and Tharwat Nafee, a former presidential advisor, who called for a national dialogue and urged the army to stop interfering in politics. 

“We urge free Egyptians to align behind us…so as to overcome this critical phase, support these principles and resume dialogue,” Mohamed Mahsoub, leader of the centrist al-Wasat Party and former minister of legal affairs, said in a statement.

The panel called on revolutionary forces to “reunite” and set out 10 demands of Egyptian authorities that included electing a pluralist government, upholding human rights and tackling corruption.  

The new coalition is made up of various political figures and includes political party leaders and public figures living inside and outside Egypt. Although not yet confirmed, it has been proposed that the alliance be called the National Democratic Council and it will be made up of various political and public figures who are pro-democracy and oppose last July's military coup.

Egypt is due to hold presidential elections on 26 and 27 May, in which former army chief Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi is widely expected to win a two-horse race. In an interview on Wednesday Sisi said Egypt will need 20 to 25 years to establish a functioning democracy.

“Our problem is that we try to import well-established democracies in the West to our reality,” Sisi told editors of Egyptian newspapers.

Sisi has promised there will be “no entity called the Muslim Brotherhood” should he be elected, and with the latest opinion polls showing 72 percent of voters back his candidacy, it is likely he will become the country’s next president.

More than a thousand protestors have been killed by Egyptian forces since last July, at least 20,000 put in prison for opposing the coup, and hundreds more sentenced to death in trials dubbed “grotesque” by Amnesty International.

Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood expressed hope on social media that the announcement in Brussels will lead to the fractious revolutionary movement coming together once more.

The coalition will now seek to grow support for the charter and bring together more voices who oppose the coup, according to one of the speakers at the conference in Brussels. 

“We will seek to gather more signatories for our proposal to plan a political and economic project that will be needed for a transitional phase when the coup inevitably collapses,” Maha Azzam, chair of Egyptians for Democracy UK , told MEE.

“The reality is those who oppose the coup are not just Islamists, but include a broad spectrum of political opinions, and we are seeking to unite all those voices that exist inside and outside Egypt,” she added.