POMED Notes: U.S.-Egyptian Relations: Where is the Bilateral Relationship Headed?
The Center for National Policy hosted an event on Thursday (10/4) entitled “U.S.-Egyptian Relations: Where is the Bilateral Relationship Headed?” The discussion centered around the slow and initial tepid response of the new Egyptian leadership to the attack on the U.S. embassy in Cairo. The response caused some members of Congress to advocate for a cut in U.S. assistance. On the other hand, both Egyptian and U.S. officials have indicated ...
Jordanians Call for Boycott of Upcoming Elections
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of downtown Amman on October 5 to call for a boycott of the upcoming parliamentary elections. The demonstration was the largest since weekly protests began in early 2011. Jordanian opposition groups ...
Debate over U.S. Aid to Egypt Continues
In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Chairman of the House Republican Study Committee, expressed concerns and raised a number of questions ...
State Dept. to Consult Congress on Egypt Aid
State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland explained that due to concern from Congress over the recently-announced $450 million of assistance pledged to Egypt, the State Department is "going to have to work with the Congress in the coming days ...
POMED Notes: Beyond Dichotomy, Building a New Egypt
The Woodrow Wilson Center International Center for Scholars hosted an event on Wednesday (9/26) entitled “Beyond Dichotomy: Building a New Egypt,” featuring Wilson Center Senior Scholar Margot Badran. Over the past year in Egypt she saw how a society which has been polarized for several decades along the lines of “the religious” and “the secular” has witnessed a decrease in significance of such categories. According to Badran, such distinctions are ...
Morsi’s Response to Criticism Over Embassy Attacks
Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi will be landing in New York on Sunday, for the U.N. General Assembly amidst criticism over Egypt's response to last week's demonstrations. Egyptian officials condemned the violence, but expressed sympathy for the public’s anger ...
Egypt Requests $4.8b from IMF
Egypt's president Mohamed Morsi formally requested a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) during his meeting with IMF chief Christine Lagarde. Negotiations between the IMF and Egypt has spanned more than a year, and the ...
Critical Voices Being Silenced in Egypt
State-owned Al-Akhbar newspaper has announced that the paper will reduce the number of opinion pages from three to two, and will preference staff writers over independent contributors, in a move widely seen as an attempt to silence critics of the Muslim Brotherhood. ...
Egypt President Forces Top General to Retire
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi ordered Minister of Defense Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi to retire Sunday, along with Chief of Staff Sami Enan. Morsi then appointed military intelligence chief Abdel Fatah El-Sisi to succeed Tantawi and Sedky Sobhy to replace Enan. The move came after ...
Constitution Drafted This Week Says Egyptian Official
The Secretary General of Egypt's Constitutional Assembly, Amr Darrag, announced Tuesday that the country's new constitution will be drafted by the week's end. According to Darrag, all committees have finished reviewing proposals and will submit their suggestions to the drafting committee, who will ...
Electoral Analysis: Full Election Results Released In Libya
(A Libyan polling station worker checks electoral material; Photo Credit: Getty) Libya's High National Elections Commission (HNEC) released the complete set of preliminary election results (Arabic) on Tuesday. As part of POMED's ongoing Libyan election coverage, we have translated HNEC's party-list results chart into English. The chart provides a breakdown of how many seats each party attained by electoral district. Of the upcoming General National Congress' (GNC) 200 seats, 120 were designated for individual candidates ...
Libya Bans Unauthorized Protests
The Libyan Ministry of the Interior announced Saturday a ban on all unlicensed protests, which some believe will include strikes as well. All future protests will require the permission of the Interior Ministry, and all unauthorized protesters will ...
Clinton Meets with Morsi, Tantawi in Cairo
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reiterated her calls for consensus building in Egypt to work towards a full transition during her meeting with President Mohammed Morsi Saturday in Cairo. Clinton is in Egypt for a two day visit to meet with ...
Islamist Party to Boycott Jordanian Elections
Jordan's Islamist Action Front announced that they will boycott upcoming parliamentary elections in protest of a new electoral law which they say does not go far enough. The controversial law moderately expanded the number of seats in Jordan's lower house that ...
POMED Notes: Democratic Transition in the Middle East
On Thursday, Professor Mokhtar Benabdallaoui of Hassan II University in Casablanca, Morocco presented his research entitled “Democratic Transition in the Middle East: Between Authoritarianism and Islamism” which tackled the current state of Islamism in the Arab world, as well as its likely trajectory in the future of politics. Professor Samer Shehata of Georgetown University followed Dr. Benabdallaoui’s presentation with comments and questions. For full event notes, continue reading below or click here. Dr. ...