The Egyptian parliament does not accurately represent the people, writer and novelist Alaa Al-Aswany said yesterday, adding that the parliamentary elections had “very low participation”.
Speaking during the monthly gathering held at the Constitution party headquarters in Alexandria, he said: “Everyone witnessed with their own eyes and ears the buying of votes and that was something we criticised the Brotherhood for.”
Al-Aswany supported the increase of customs on some products that he described as “provocative”, saying “it is not logical for us to be suffering a currency crisis and still import such products, while, on the other hand, subsidisation is being lifted. This is what Moheyidden and Gamal Mubarak did, but the difference is that what is being done today is stronger and more powerful than that; it is an approach in economics known as neo-liberalism and it is a very brutal approach.”
Al-Aswany said, “Now, in Egypt, we have things that look like something they are not; we are living in an ‘as if’ republic, meaning not everything is as it seems.”
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