The following video of an interview with Ahmed Samih of the Andalus Institute for Tolerance and Anti-Violence in Cairo, Egypt has been edited for time and content. A transcript of the interview conducted by Ryota Jonen, senior manager of the World Movement, is included.

 Ryota: What are your goals for institutional reform after the revolution?

Ahmed: I was active before the revolution and during the revolution, and I think I will still active until I see the point my country to become a real institutionalized democracy. When I see division or divided authorities between the parliamentary authorities, judiciary authorities and the executive authorities. And I’m quite sure that we are doing our best back in Cairo to make these things happen. That’s first.

Second, we had a huge problem in the relation between the Egyptian people and the Egyptian police because of the legal framework that the Egyptian police is working with. Since 30 years they have been working under Emergency law and they have like a green card to do whatever they want to any Egyptian. So that needed to be stopped and once we get to the point that the Egyptian police is respecting and understanding the meaning of human rights and how to deal with Egyptians, even if they are criminals with no torture and with no thuggy attitude, I think this will be one of the fruits of democracy and one of the fruits of this revolution. Once we maintain as Egyptian people to monitoring our government and criticize it freely and trying to change its policies and try to use the parliament as a platform to contain and control the legal framework of the country to make it more easier more democratic, more open, more welcoming to the international investors and make the whole society is ready to be working and create an open society. I think then we will see the fruits of what we’ve been doing.

Ryota: Can you tell us a little bit about the kind of justice that you and your colleagues through the revolution is looking for. This violation of human rights that happened, you know, last couple of decades, how do you want to bring justice to that?

Ahmed: We need first to have an independent judiciary system. Once we have an independent judiciary system, the law, the legal framework in Egypt is not that bad. We can make small reforms in it and then everything will happen. But the most important thing from my point of view is the fast justice. One of the main problems creating a lot of frustration in the Egyptian community or in the Egyptian context is that you need to be standing in front of the court from 1 year to 10 years to get your rights. We don’t want to see Egyptian civilians facing the military court. I am talking about 12,000 Egyptians facing the military court, which is something very very strange especially when it’s happening after the revolution. This is something that needs to end today, not any day before.

Ryota: Finally, we know that the election is coming up in Egypt. Can you tell us the importance of this election, what are the issues that the international community should be looking at?

Ryota: What should the international community watch for during Egypt’s upcoming election?

Ahmed: We should first understand what will happen after the election.

Second, we should to implement international monitors to come and viewing and visiting and evaluating the election process in Egypt.

Third we need to make sure that the counting part of the elections is happening on air publicly and people can see it. Not everyone need to come to the voting polling stations, but TV can air what’s going on and put what’s going on on-air directly to the people to see the counting. Especially in the proportional list system.

Ryota: How are young Egyptians being encouraged to vote?

Ahmed: The young people is doing their best to do go voting campaign. Even the Egyptian people who is abroad they created an ideal which I found very interesting, that even the Egyptians that who live abroad and don’t legally have the right until now to vote in the elections and the next elections, they create the concept of call your family and ask them to go and vote for you. So, and we have like 7 million Egyptians abroad, and each one of them, if each one of them just make 10 phone calls, this is mean that we will have 70 million phone calls coming from outside the country asking the Egyptian families to go and vote and participate. This is the most important thing. We paid blood in this revolution as Egyptian people, and we wanted to see that our country is much much successful than it was previously. Much much peaceful, much much democratic, much much rich, much much happy. I would love to see the Egyptian people have the smiles on their faces in the streets again.

Ryota: Great. Well thank you.

Ahmed: Thank you.