Prime Minister Kamal El-Ganzouri addressed the People’s Assembly for the first time on Tuesday after being summoned by MPs to speak about the revolution's slain and injured.
He began by expressing relief that the old vanguard of corrupt MPs had been replaced by new faces, before going on to defend his record as a Mubarak-era prime minister by claiming Mubarak had sacked him for refusing to accompany a visiting Israeli prime minister to Ras Al Tin international airport.
“I am the only ex-prime minister who was not honoured or given a job after leaving the cabinet,” he added.
In comments that raised the speech's only round of applause, Ganzouri said money alone would not adequately compensate the revolutionaries killed and injured during the uprising that brought down Hosni Mubarak – retribution against those who stole the wealth of the country for thirty years was also necessary.
A cabinet report on the status of the revolution's killed and injured would be distributed to MPs, added Ganzouri, and he announced that the official number of dead and injured during the 18-day uprising was 775 and 4325 respectively.
Compensation had been paid to 3883 of the 4325 injured so far, while delays paying compensation to slain protesters' families had occurred due to bureaucratic problems with inheritance documents.
Ganzouri blamed ten years of failed and corrupt government policies for the parlous state of Egypt's economy, and said social justice could be achieved by increased efficiency and production.
Furthermore, he claimed that Western and Gulf countries had failed to fulfil any of the financial promises they had made over the past year.
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