RAMALLAH, Feb 28 (JMCC) - Egypt's once-rote politics have been disrupted by the return of former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed Baradei.
Baradei has launched a series of scathing attacks on the Egyptian regime,
writes al-Ahram Weekly.
My responsibilities as head of the IAEA meant I could not comment freely on political conditions in Egypt, El-Baradei told the independent television channel Dream 2.
Now I am free and I have the right, as an ordinary Egyptian citizen, to express my views on the conditions that prevail in my country.
This open attitude, and the prospect that Baradei could run for president next year, has gained ground for Egypt's secular left,
argues analyst Abdel Monem Said.
In El-Baradei we find an authentic liberal. He is a staunch believer in the civil and even secular state. There is no equivocation or wavering in his support for the separation of powers and checks and balances between the authorities of government, for a state that does not intervene much in the lives and fundamental freedoms of individuals, and hence in a state that regulates but does not manage the economy. On foreign relations, we have a man who spent most of his working life in the West, absorbed its liberal democratic values and, therefore, can see no reason to create some grand ideological conflict with it. In this respect, he would be much more of a Sadat than a Gamal Abdel-Nasser on relations with Israel and Egyptian-Arab relations.
And while government forces seek to portray el-Baradei as an outsider,
reports The National, plenty of Egyptians seem ready to claim their native son.