Asst. Prof. Dr. Imtiyaz Yusuf (Director of the Center for Buddhist-Muslim Understanding, Mahidol University) said the next step for the Muslim Brotherhood is how to go forward from now given the country’s deep political divide. The Brotherhood used to fight against authoritarianism, but recently it ‘became exclusive’.
More than 75% Egyptians wants change; they’re not happy with the drastic living conditions, taxis still have to queue up to refill their tanks, fuel and economic shortages.
Meanwhile, “external players have basically failed,” said Yusuf, in contributing to the peace efforts in the Mideast.
The other question in the meantime is whether we should call the Egypt situation a military coup or the people’s revolution? Assoc. Prof. Dr. Panitan Wattanakorn from the Political Science Faculty, Chulalongkorn University, said we must see whether is the toppled leader is being held by military without access to the world. But in this case, it would be hard to classify because it involves mass protests as well.
The situation has also become a dilemma for the US, as it provides around 1.3 billion USD of military aid to Egypt every year since 1987. If it acknowledge the situation as a coup, the US law states that all aids will be revoked. That’s bad for the US, because it will affect existing contracts with American arms manufacturing companies that could have shut down production lines, says a NYT report.
