VIENNA - Islamists should be given a chance to govern, Egypt’s Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (Unescwa), Marvat Tallawy, said on Tuesday. The process of elections and democracy should not be stopped ”because we’re afraid of the result,” she said. Whether it was the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas - “Give them the chance to govern!”. If the same group was always in government, there would only be more corruption, she pointed out in the newspaper Die Presse. | The fact that there wouldn't be any more elections after the islamists took power seems to have escaped her. Or not. |
Tallawi, who was Egyptian ambassador to the international organizations in Vienna from 1988 to 1991, and social affairs minister in the Egyptian government in the late 1990Â’s, also commented on the WestÂ’s relations with the Palestinians.
It would be negative and even “disastrous” if the EU completely halted its payments to the Palestinians. If the problems in Palestine grew, it would weaken the moderates in Arab countries and strengthen the extremists, she maintained. “There’s already enough destruction and misery with the Palestinians,” she said, adding that if they were further isolated, the entire region could explode. | They seem to be exploding quite nicely on their own |
Asked about United States President George W. BushÂ’s project to bring democracy to the Middle East, also by means of the Iraq war, she said that democracy must come from within and could not be imposed from without. Citizens of developing countries, which had been colonized for so many years by western nations were very sensitive to anything enforced from abroad, she added. The situation in Iraq, with all the massacres and lack of security, was not be a vehicle for democracy, but only served to put people off, she said. |