20100817
reuters

CAIRO (Reuters) - Internet-savvy youths are more likely to bring liberal political reform in Egypt than the current contenders for power ahead of 2011 presidential elections, veteran activist Nawal al-Saadawi said.

But Saadawi, jailed for her views in the 1970s and threatened by Islamists, said hopes for change would remain bleak as long as school curriculums deterred independent thought and left young Egyptians open to radical religious thinking.

The 79-year-old doctor, feminist and writer said democratic change would not come from the ruling party, the conservative Muslim Brotherhood or former U.N nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei, who is campaigning for constitutional change.

Saadawi, who launched what she said was a symbolic bid for the presidency in 2005 when Egypt held its first multi-candidate race, said ElBaradei had been away for too long to win over the country, a popular criticism of his campaign.

"I can never follow someone who is coming from abroad, who lived his whole life abroad, and he comes here to become president of the nation. ElBaradei does not have a political agenda. Where is his agenda?" Saadawi said in an interview on Tuesday.

She also dismissed the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's biggest opposition group, in her calls for secular leadership in the Arab world's most populous state.

"PRISON OF IGNORANCE"

Saadawi said the current leadership had created a social environment of "intellectual paralysis" fuelled by a frail reading culture and an education system that did not foster creativity and left young people politically passive.