World: “The Worst Speech Ever”: Where do we go from Mubarak’s rant?
- He offered a vaguely worded delegation of power to Vice President Omar Suleiman, long after everyone in Egypt had stopped listening. It is virtually impossible to conceive of a more poorly conceived or executed speech.
- Foreign Policy writer Marc Lynch • Scoring the speech at home and saying the obvious. We could have made a better speech than Hosni Mubarak, and we suck at public speaking! That’s why we use the internet! Lynch notes that the speech from Omar Suleiman was as damaging, if not moreso than Mubarak’s, because it inextricably tied an unpopular figure to his potential successor – especially since he implicitly blamed Al Jazeera for his problems. “It solidified the already deep distrust of his role among most of the opposition and of the protestors,” Lynch wrote, “and tied his fate to that of Mubarak.” From here, things will only get worse for everyone involved – especially the United States, who have a hard game of chess ahead, and the protesters on the ground, who may grow more unruly and already have a protest planned for tomorrow. source
