El Baradei will not Run for President
Via the BBC: Mohamed ElBaradei will end Egypt presidency bid
Mr ElBaradei, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005, said he had taken his decision in protest at the way Egypt’s military rulers governed "as though no revolution had taken place".
[…]
"My conscience does not permit me to run for the presidency or any other official position unless it is within a democratic framework," he said.
[…]
Mr ElBaradei had wanted a new constitution to be drawn up from scratch before any elections took place.
However, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf) opted to go ahead with parliamentary elections first.
Now, as the piece notes, El Baradei’s odds of winning were probably small to begin with.
However, this situation does underscore what has been my concern from the beginning: that the ouster of Mubarak has not led to actual regime change (and more specifically that did not remove the military from power) and that the lack of serious constitutional reform is a major signal that democracy has not come, and may not be coming, to post-Mubarak Egypt.
![Military Coup Underway In Egypt [Update: Morsi Deposed]](https://otb.cachefly.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/egypt-flag3-512x256.gif)
Is there any reliable information on the human rights situation since the fall of Mubarek? Have they just switched faces at the top, or has there been any modest improvement for the people?
I’m not sure democracy sweeping the mid-east would be in the US’s best interests, but less brutal dictatorships would be a good thing.
@Gustopher:
Based on the reporting the BBC’s been doing, pretty much nothing had changed and in someways things have gotten worse because people who thought things were going to change stood up to the powers that be, so far more people have been getting detained than before.
He was polling really badly in South Carolina.