In an interview with “Cairo Today” TV show host Amr Adeeb this week, National Association for Change (NAC) Leader Mohamed ElBaradei stated that members of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) have been contacting him.
ElBaradei said that he often received messages from prominent officials within the NDP expressing their support for him. He refused to give the names of those officials and stressed that he did not pay the messages any regard as he saw them as “treasonous.”
The opposition leader said that he had even received a message from an NDP official stating, “We agree with everything you are doing.” He noted that many of the officials who attack him in the media later send him their apologies, saying, “We were forced to [attack you],” to which he responds, “God bless you.”
The opposition leader stressed that there was absolutely no contact between him and the ruling party. “Even though I had hoped that I would be contacted by the regime so we could discuss my ideas and how we could best guarantee a better future for Egypt, it seems that I burnt my bridges with them when I said that the regime in its entirety had to change,” he stated.
“It’s likely that my phone, e-mail and house are under surveillance… such things have become a part of my life,“ he told Adeeb. “When I speak to my daughter I know that the conversation is being recorded… it doesn’t matter to me because I’m not hiding anything and I don’t have a private agenda,” he declared, adding, “I travel around the country without security escorts because my guard is the Egyptian people.”
Regarding claims that he had stated that the Egyptian people had not matured yet, ElBaradei said that it was Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif who had uttered the expression. However, he did acknowledge using the expression “revolution of the hungry” to describe Egypt.
“I saw that Egypt was on the [Foreign Policy Association’s] list of failed states, and at the top of the criteria used to make the list were lack of regime credibility and a lack of regard for human rights,” he concluded.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
