Morsi: More patience needed to pass through transitional stage

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi expressed confidence that Egypt will pass through the transitional stage despite all hardships but more patience is much needed. In an interview with Globe and Mail newspaper's writer Patrick Graham, Morsi said he is sure that Egypt would have strong democratic institutions and a developed economy in the future. He added that the current combination in Egypt of liberals, Islamists, secularists needs to have some opportunity to get together and manage different opinions then integrate in the society. He stressed that overcoming the Mubarak legacy, including corruption and the yawning gap between rich and poor, is difficult for any government. He expected that Egypt would manage to realize a hoped-for progress in five years. As for the accusations levelled at Tv satirist Bassem Youssef, he said the comedian had only been charged, not arrested, a distinction, he added, the United States failed to make because it did not understand the Egyptian justice system. Still, libel and slander remain the criminal offences they were under the old regime. "I think you can see that it is not appropriate to compare what we have now in Egypt and what we had, for example, in 2010. "We are learning democracy, we are getting together more than before, we are a little bit deeper than before - we have freedom of speech, freedom of expression." "But one has to understand that in Egypt the general custom does not accept even average people insulting each other," he insisted. "It is a major social issue." About his statements against Jews as "descendents of apes and pigs", he stressed that those statements were not directed at Jews but came out of anger at the way Israel treats Palestinians. "I do not hold any prejudice against Jews as a faith, as a people, that would be in direct contravention to my own belief as a Muslim," he said. "I was speaking very specifically about practices that were taking place around the killing of innocent people." About the widespread coverage in the West of Gaza ceasefire, he said "from our point of view our relationship [with the West] hasn t changed, and I say that sincerely". He added that he received a call in November from US President Barack Obama to help reach a Gaza ceasefire. "I saw an opportunity for the Palestinians and President Obama saw an opportunity with respect to the Israeli side," Morsi said. "And we found when we looked at both sides that there were some shared demands and some differences. So we made a decision to work on - the ceasefire: to come to a point where the aggression stops, where the firing stops." Morsi, as an Islamist, embodied some of America s biggest fears about the consequences of the Arab Spring. "Obama was impressed by Morsi s pragmatism and lack of ideology. He sensed an "engineer s precision" and told aides that he had seen a "straight shooter who delivered."