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Following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian presidential candidate and former prime minister Ahmad Shafiq, which aired on Al-Nahar TV on February 19, 2012:
Ahmad Shafiq: Are the people who go to Tahrir Square to demonstrate these days the same young people who demonstrated on January 25? I think that anybody who follows the events closely can see that there is a very great difference between the people in Tahrir Square today, and the people who were there on January 25, and who remained there until the main goals were achieved.
Interviewer: What is the difference between them?
Ahmad Shafiq: They are completely different. In my view, the young people who demonstrated at Tahrir Square represented the true Egyptian family. In contrast, many – I'm not saying all, but many – of the people who have been there recently... People have written about this in the papers and the media. When you watch the reports from Tahrir Square, and you hear the people expressing their views, you see that the type of people has changed drastically from the majority of the protesters on January 25.
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The intelligent young people who carried out the revolution hurt themselves.
Interviewer: True.
Ahmad Shafiq: They did not establish frameworks that would continuously represent their views. You can see that the entire process has gone astray. Everybody exploited the revolution except them. Other people – not them – purport to represent the revolution today.
Interviewer: They are not the people who carried out the revolution?
Ahmad Shafiq: Absolutely not. At the very least, most of them are not.
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