The Path Forward
for Restoring Democracy
in Egypt
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
12:00 to 2:00 p.m.
National Press Club
529 14th St. NW
13th Floor, Ballroom
Washington DC 20045
Panelists will be available for one-on-one interviews following the event.
Participants:
Speaker of the Egyptian Parliament in Exile
Dr. Mohamed Heshmat
Deputy of the Egyptian Parliament in Exile
Dr. Abdul-Mawgoud Dardery
President of 2012 Egyptian Parliament's Foreign Relations Committee
Moderator:
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The latest human rights reports on Egypt paint a gloomy picture. Recently, Keith Harper, U.S. ambassador to the UNHRC, said Egypt had violated "freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly and association [and] deprived thousands of Egyptians of fair trial guarantees." A delegation of leaders from Egypt's parliament in exile and representatives of Egyptian opposition groups are visiting Washington DC to engage with policymakers, congress, think tanks, academia, and others to discuss "The Path Forward for Restoring Democracy in Egypt." These prominent opposition leaders--some of whom are affiliated with political parties and some of whom are independent--are here to give their assessment of the current situation and offer their views on how to put the country back on track toward a true democratic transition with good governance and respect for human rights.
SPEAKERS:
Dr. Sarwat Nafei was recently elected speaker of the Egyptian parliament in exile. He is a well-known independent, liberal politician and veteran pro-democracy activist, who believes in the separation of church and state. He graduated with an engineering degree, and acquired an MBA from ESLSCA-Paris, a Ph.D in computer science from Western University, and a doctorate in strategic management from Manchester University. Dr. Nafei lived in Canada for 20 years and served as an executive at multiple Fortune 500 firms in the field of information technology with specialization in cyber-security strategies. Sessional academic professor at the American University and York University. Dr. Nafei represented Egypt at the ITU-UN in Geneva. Elected to parliament in 2012 as a liberal member of the Al-Wasat Party, he served as a member of the national defense and foreign affairs committee until its dissoluton.
Dr. Maha Azzam is head of the Egyptian Revolutionary Council, a broad coalition of opponents to the military regime in Egypt. She is Chair of Egyptians for Democracy U.K. She is a founding member of the Brussels Initiative of May 2014, a set of 10 principles that were agreed upon by leading Egyptian democratic forces abroad. Azzam was on the first Egyptian Delegation for Public Diplomacy following the coup. She has actively campaigned publicly and behind the scenes, meeting with government officials, parliamentarians and policy makers over the last year in order to explain to them the situation in Egypt and to try to bring pressure to bear on the current Egyptian regime. In Washington, Azzam has met with officials in Congress, the White House, the House Appropriations Committee, and leading think tanks. Recently, she addressed the 28 states of the EU and leading officials. She has met with United Nations agencies and permanent missions in Geneva and with policymakers and parliamentarians in Brussels, Berlin, Bern, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Madrid, Paris, and cities in South Africa, where she went with a delegation for the funeral of Mandela and engaged with officials and civil society groups.
Dr. Gamal Heshmat is Deputy of Egyptian Parliament in Exile and a member of the National Alliance Supporting Legitimacy. He has participated in dozens of programs of Egyptian satellite channels since 2000. He ran for parliament in 1995, 2000, 2003, 2005 and 2011, and served in it from October 2000 to January 2003 and from January to June 2012. He is a leading member of Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and was Vice President Foreign Affairs Committee of Parliament in 2012. He was a Shura Council member from January to July 2013. He participated in the Rabaa demonstrations and sit-in against the July 3 coup, and during the August 14, 2013 massacre (in which 638 people died in one day according to official statistics, and at least 817 according to Human Rights Watch), he was injured in the back, legs and hands.
Dr. Abdul Mawgood Dardery served as President of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Egyptian Parliament from January to June 2012. He is known to be "an academician by profession, politician by necessity." He was a founding member of Parliamentarians against the Coup and served as senior advisor to the newly established Luxor Islamic Center for Global Dialogue. He has also served as member of the Tourism Committee of the Egyptian Parliament, as Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies at Metropolitan State University in Minnesota, as a Fulbright Scholar studying Islam, and as Assistant Professor of English and Cultural Studies at South Valley University. His dissertation at the University of Pittsburgh in 2000 was on Eurocentrism vs. Islamism.
Dr. Radwan Masmoudi is the President of the Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy (CSID), a Washington-based non-profit think tank dedicated to promoting inclusive dialogue and democracy in the Muslim world. He is also the editor of the center's quarterly publication, "Muslim Democrat." He has written and published several articles and papers on the topics of democracy, diversity, human rights, and tolerance in Islam. He is active with local Muslim organizations and was elected member of the Board of Directors of the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. He is a member of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Tunisian Scientific Society (TSS), and a member of the board of the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies (ACSIS) and the International Forum for Islamic Dialogue (IFID). In April 2012, he was elected as a member of the Steering Committee of the World Movement for Democracy. Under Radwan's leadership, CSID organized 15 Annual Conferences, bringing together thousands of scholars of Islam and democracy from all over the world. Radwan appears regularly on radio and television, including Voice of America, Fox News, CNN, CBS, CNBC, NPR, and Al-Jazeera.
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