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patrick martin

He's probably the best president Egypt never had.

For years, people in this country named Amr Mousa, a long-time foreign minister under Hosni Mubarak, as their favourite public official and their first choice for a president to succeed his stolid boss.

Time magazine once named him the most popular official in the Arab world. The appeal arose mostly because of his good looks and his propensity for speaking out against Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.

Mr. Mubarak, who had his own plans for his son Gamal to follow him in the presidential palace, expelled Mr. Mousa from the cabinet when his popularity grew too great and rivaled the president's.

It was a hit song – I Hate Israel But I Love Amr Mousa – that was the last straw. Everyone was singing it.

Mr. Mubarak had inherited a peace treaty with Israel negotiated by his predecessor Anwar Sadat and was politically unable or unwilling to criticize the Jewish state in public. But Mr. Mousa, first as foreign minister, then as head of the Arab League to which he had been banished, felt no such constraints.

Egyptians loved it.

Yet, when the votes were counted in last year's first-ever free election for president, Mr. Mousa found himself only in fifth place.

It may have been his age. He was 75 last year, though still, today, his trim physique and full head of hair help him pass for a man 15 years younger.

With the military's ouster of president Mohamed Morsi last week, the country will once again be holding a presidential election early next year. But Mr. Mousa, who will be 77 by that time, said in an interview with The Globe and Mail this week that he wants no part of another race.

"Those days are over," he said.

But the man still has influence. Along with Mohammed ElBaradei, who was named interim vice-president this week, and Hamdeen Sabahi, the left-wing politician who came third in the presidentials last year, Mr. Mousa is one of the leaders of the National Salvation Front (NSF), a consortium of several opposition parties and groups that banded together to present a united front against Mr. Morsi and his policies.

The Front was among those calling for Mr. Morsi to step down or be removed.

"It became a necessity," said Mr. Mousa, explaining that some of the president's policies and statements threatened the very nature of Egypt. These included his decree last November that his decisions were above review by the courts, and his declaration in June that Shia Muslims were unclean apostates. Only a few days after that statement was made, a gang of men attacked and killed a number of Shiites, dragging one body through the streets.

"Morsi was obsessed with such things," said Mr. Mousa. And "whenever I offered advice, I was suspected of trying to undermine him."

More recently, the NSF and Mr. Mousa have consulted with Adly Mansour, the interim president, on the makeup of an interim prime minister and cabinet.

But, as happened so often during the Mubarak years, Mr. Mousa found himself in disagreement with his colleagues, this time over the choice of prime minister.

He tried to persuade the NSF not to put forward his colleague Mr. ElBaradei, the Nobel Prize-winning former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, as the group's preference for prime minister.

"There are two kinds of interim governments that can emerge from this process," he explained. "One is a coalition of political parties; the other is neutral government of technocrats.

"I have been on the record for months advocating a non-political technocrat government," he said. "It's the only way that all the people will feel represented."

But the first two names Mr. Mansour put forward were members of political parties. The Nour Party, a Salafist group that sided with the NSF and others in wanting new elections, rejected both of the president's choices. It was not so much that the individuals were secular rather than religious, but because they were active in political parties.

Like Mr. Mousa, as well as the secular conservative Wafd party, the Nour Party thought the new prime minister should be a technocrat, preferably one with an economic background.

In the end, they got a economist, Hazem el Belbawy, whose political background with the Social Democratic Party is being ignored. However, he vows to assemble a government that is not made up of technocrats, but is one in which political trends are "balanced."

Mr. Mousa worries about the new government not being inclusive enough. There is almost no chance that the Muslim Brotherhood will accept an invitation to participate in an interim government since they are miffed at their president having been removed from office and upset by the killing and mass arrests of their members this week.

"It is important that the Nour Party be part of our process," he said. They are the only Islamist group to side with the military takeover and they came second in last year's parliamentary elections, an indication of how much support there is for this highly conservative Islamist movement.

And he is worried that the Islamist trend, which captured 70 per cent of the vote in the parliamentary elections, will walk away from the process. Already they withdrew from the prime ministerial discussion in protest of the military's killing on Monday of some 50 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood who were protesting outside the Presidential Guard facilities where, it is believed, their ousted president, Mr. Morsi, sits in custody.

"We have to get to the bottom of this incident," Mr. Mousa said. "We have to find out who was responsible."

Without the Brotherhood and without the Nour Party, the interim government and the whole constitutional process will be unrepresentative and suspect.

Patrick Martin is the Globe and Mail's Middle East bureau chief.

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