FULLY BOOKED First Wednesday: What does the result of Egypt’s Presidential election mean for the country and the region?
After being sworn in as Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohammed Mursi, will begin to form a government. He has promised to be a leader for all Egyptians, but many challenges lie ahead.
With the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf) reasserting control over areas of policy there are questions about how much power he will actually be able to wield. On a domestic front he has inherited a divided country in which corruption, poverty, unemployment and security problems are rife.
Although Egypt’s foreign policy remains in the control of Scaf its neighbours in the region and further afield in the West will be watching closely at the moves being made by the new Islamist leader.
Join us with a panel of experts to examine the challenges Mohammed Mursi faces at home and abroad. We will be asking how accepting Egyptians are of having an Islamist leader and whether he will keep to his promise of being a leader for all Egyptians; women, children, Christians and Muslims alike.
Chaired by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.
With:
Dr Omar Ashour, the Director of the Middle East Graduate Studies Programme at the University of Exeter and a visiting scholar at Brookings Doha Centre. He is the author of The De-Radicalization of Jihadists: Transforming Armed Islamist Movements. He currently works on two research projects; on security sector reform in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia and on Islamist-military relations in North Africa (Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria) before and after the Arab Awakening. He participated in monitoring the Egyptian parliamentary and presidential elections and worked on security apparatuses oversight procedures with the National Security Committee of the now dissolved Egyptian Parliament. Twitter: @DrOmarAshour
Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University, he also teaches at the Oxford Faculty of Theology. He is Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Islamic Studies (Qatar), Senior Research Fellow at Doshisha University (Kyoto, Japan) and Director of the Research Centre of Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE) (Doha, Qatar). He is the author of many books including most recently The Arab Awakening: Islam and the New Middle East.
Dr Maha Azzam, Associate Fellow of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House. She has recently authored a report entitled The Military Council and the Transition to Democracy. Twitter: @mahalondon
Carina Kamel, a senior correspondent and presenter for Al Arabiya. She reports on international and Arab affairs with a focus on emerging economies in the Middle East and business news. She also writes for the Huffington Post on Middle East politics, governance, and social and cultural issues. Twitter: @Carina_bn.
Khalid Abdalla, a British-Egyptian actor, producer and activist. His films include United 93, The Kite Runner, Green Zone, and the upcoming Egyptian film In the Last Days of the City, filmed during the last two years of Mubarak’s Rule. Co-founder of Zero Production, an independent film and documentary production house based in Cairo, last year he launched Mosireen, a non-profit media centre in downtown Cairo to support filmmakers and citizen journalists through the revolution. Twitter: @khalidabdalla
