This is almost making me nostalgic. Well done, sir.
Did you know letting non-rich Egyptian kids become judges could lead them to suffer from “depression and a lot of things”?
The former minister of justice, Mahfouz Saber was there to inform you. His knowledge and concern for the psychological well-being of the poor is the reason he argued that the sons (forget daughters) of trash collectors should not join the judiciary, regardless of how academically accomplished and gifted they may be. A judge needs to grow up in an “appropriate,” “respectable” environment, and be able to cultivate the necessary “loftiness” of judges, he told Ten TV’s Ramy Radwan. Saber's remarks ignited a media debate and led to his forced resignation.
Prime minister Ibrahim Mehlab later told to CBC host Lamis el-Hadidi that Saber’s statement was a long slip of the tongue, and that he was actually the son of a peasant, who was lucky to continue his education. Saber then came out to say that it was not a tongue slip after all and that he stood by what he said.
“(I said that) to placate the people,” Saber all but muttered to el-Mehwar’s Mohamed Sherdy. Luckily, the poor were too busy being socially immobile to pay much attention to this back-and-forth.
OnTV’s Ibrahim Eissa found it amusing that the sad little public didn’t know that the minister of justice has no say in the appointment of judges. It is the State Council’s job, and they should be focused on the alleged attempted assassination of a judge working on MB cases -- presumably by the MB --- rather than on the overt scorn the head of the entire judiciary just poured over the population.
Saber’s statement brought out an interesting and new side to Rola Kharsa, the TV presenter who frequently criticized the MB for “mixing religion with politics.”
“If you go back to religion ,I can simply tell you: If God willed, He would have made you a single people,” Kharsa said without further explanation, prompting one to assume that Kharsa thinks God has created people different -- and unequal, given the context -- and wants to keep it this way. This is funny because this verse (which is no. 48 from chapter 5, Surah al-Maidah) has nothing to do with social class. It is about religion and how Allah wanted to create diversity in beliefs to test humanity.
But Kharsa said that even if many might agree with the minister, it is not right for a government official to speak this way, and that individuals should be judged on their merits.
Also mixing religion with politics this week was Rotana Masirya’s Tamer Ameen, who said that since we elected president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to run the country for us while we “sit at ahwas, smoke lots of shisha, go out a lot and don’t work a lot” rather than collectively run the country ourselves, we are religiously mandated to support him according to this Hadith: “Support your brother, whether oppressor or oppressed,” meaning when he is right back him up and when he is wrong correct him, which is another form of support -- one I don’t remember Ameen preaching for former president Mohamed Morsi, who was also elected. What’s more amusing than that is that Ameen is talking religion on Rotana of all channels. (Rotana sponsors music and broadcasts movies often laden with sexual innuendo.)
Refusing to be the only official not making classist generalizations this week, Minister of Urban Development and Slum Areas Laila Iskandar came out to blame (poor) Upper Egyptians for Egypt’s informal housing problem, as opposed to the government. She later said that she, too, is from Upper Egypt and deeply cares for the people there.
While the government told the poor to dream small, ElHayah TV’s Ahmed el-Meslamani advised the government to adopt China’s Internet censorship policy, just like he thinks France will do. The French interior minister, el-Meslamani claimed -- despite knowledge that Google is not blocked in Egypt -- said that 90 percent of terrorists today were radicalized on social media, making Facebook and Twitter the new nuclear bomb. What actually happened is that the French minister visited Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Google to ask for direct cooperation with the French government. He did not give any statistics or compare these websites to weapons of mass destruction.
Sharing el-Meslamani’s disrespect for Google, Al Kahera Wal Nas’s Amany el-Khayat aired an amazing reportage about April 6 to warn Gulf states of the imaginary spread of the once-influential student protest movement, whose leader, Ahmad Maher, is in jail.
The report starts with a series of superimposed edited logos of April 6, claiming it has branches all over the world and that it is related to “Zionist Christianity, which is heralding the nearness of the apocalypse and seeks to establish The Structure.” The leading US Republicans controlling this branch of Christianity include George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice.They chose to name the movement after the month of April, because of Passover, the regrettable day when Jews were freed from Ancient Egyptian slavery (which explains why they are targeting Egypt now). The number 6 was chosen because it is apparently important to Jews and probably because of the 2006 film The Omen, in which the spawn of Satan had the numbers 666 as a birthmark on his head to prove he was the spawn of Satan. The bottom line is that the “6” and the “April” in April 6 links it to Judaism which links it to Free Masonry.
Meanwhile in the world of reasonable adults, the beloved political analyst and former member of parliament Amr Hamzawy kind of sold out. Hamzawy gave Khairy Ramadan a mercilessly long interview earlier this month that was so boring, one almost missed/no longer cared about his selling out. Hamzawy was one of the few liberals to publicly say that July 3 was a coup, but that was before he made his “revisions.” He fell silent when Khairy said the following: “Amr Hamzawy is not saying now that July 3 is a coup. Amr Hamzawy admits that the president of the republic Abdel Fatah el-Sisi was democratically elected.”
Hamzawy is also no longer wishes to bring down the regime. He wants to reform it from the inside and he regrets his support for the law which banned former members of the Mubarak’s dissolved ruling National Democratic Party from contesting elections.
Recent weeks have seen something of a Mubarak come-back tour, with the president and his sons being covered and quoted in the media. “Who is the first one to admit to the mistakes that we lived through in the past 30 years?” asked Mahmoud Saad. “Mubarak,” he answered. He is the one who removed his son, Gamal Mubarak, and notoriously corrupt NDP members like Ahmed Ezz and Safwat el-Sherief from power (admittedly after putting them in power in the first place). Mubarak’s only fault was letting his son and wife rule with him, said Saad (who also at one point asked someone off camera if he was being polite enough about the former ruling family). So what is the point of this walk down Saad’s edited memory lane? It is to say that the wife and son did a poor job and that el-Sisi now is trying to save what Mubarak couldn’t.
The only thing stranger than Saad’s logic was Wael el-Ibrashy’s awkward recent interview with Ahmed Fouad, the last king of Egypt and the son of King Farouk, in which el-Ibrashy kept asking his docile guest to tell us in his accented Arabic how much he approves of July 3 (which is arguably in bad taste, since his father was deposed by the military too) and how grateful he is to el-Sisi for giving him a diplomatic passport that says “Former King of Egypt” under occupation.
The team at Industry Arabic -- look to them for all your Arabic translation needs -- brings us the latest installment of our In Translation series. Abdullah al-Sinnawi is the editor of the socialist newspaper Al Araby and one of the many public intellectuals who supported Morsi's ouster and the ascension of Abdel-Fattah El Sisi, couching his support in terms of restoring the authority and prestige of the state. Now he harsh words for a regime that he describes as rudderless if not deeply disingenuous. The title used a particularly loaded term: the word "normalization" in Egypt usually refers to normalization of relations with Israel, something much of public opinion does not really accept and much of the leftist intelligentsia has always viewed as a humiliating capitulation.
Gamal Mubarak, Hosni Mubarak's son -- a free man again -- visited the pyramids recently with his family.
Normalization with the Past
Abdullah al-Sinnawi, al-Shorouk, 6 May 2015
“Why are we protecting Mubarak?....You’re accusing us of being traitors.”
With this unequivocal expression, he tried to dispel any suspicions as to why the Military Council was putting off trying a president who had been ousted by his people.
During the first weeks of the January 25 Revolution, public squares full of anger were calling for the past to be put on trial for its sins. They called for all issues to be opened to questioning and accountability, so that Egypt would not be governed in the future in the same careless manner as before.
This forthrightness was not customary in other leaders and gave the strong impression that the young general who made this statement might be the future of the military establishment.
It did not occur to him, during this lengthy meeting in April 2011 that was attended by six journalists and military figures, as he made this firm response to the questions and doubts raised by the protests, that the question of the past would rear its head again, with greater anxiety and more serious misgivings, four years later when he would be president of Egypt.
It is natural for radical transformations to raise major questions.
It is not a sufficient response for President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to say time and again that the past will not return. Pledges must be given shape through policies and confirmed by solid stances. This is what is sorely lacking in Egypt at a time when the public’s anxiety has almost reached a breaking point.
A quick glance at the current mood in Egyptian society reveals that its great gambles have been frittered away and its confidence in the future has fallen; that it does not know what priorities govern politics or where we are headed.
There is no discourse that interprets or explains the causes of crises or the nature of issues.
There is no coherent policy put before public opinion and no free media able to address the public mind.
There is an abject poverty in the public discourse that is unparalleled in Egypt’s modern history.
It is as if Egypt “the sorrowful” is a sail without a ship, in the words of the late Abdel Rahman al-Abnoudi in his last rubaiyat. The crisis of public discourse results from the lack of any vision of the future that determines the main goals.
It is impossible for any regime to advance one step forward and solidify its legitimacy without declaring where it stands and what its commitments are.
The return of the past to the forefront of the political, economic and media landscape is a complete tragedy for a country that launched two revolutions to claim its right to social justice, human dignity, and the transition to a democratic society and modern state.
The country paid a heavy price in terms of its security, stability and the blood of its children, and it did not reap any rewards either time.
The first revolution was hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the second one has almost been hijacked by the party of the past.
Based on past experience, a second hijacking of a revolution will have a steep price, as it will tarnish a regime that bases its legitimacy on the revolution and on a commitment to the constitution that emerged from it. It will make a dent in the popularity of the regime and exhaust its political capital.
This will lead to renewed political tumult that Egypt cannot bear, and to chaos that will confound any attempts to end violence and terrorism.
Like any crisis of this sort, breaking the cycle takes time.
Any claims to the contrary are ignorant of history and the progress of societies.
The issue is not that Mubarak appeared on a private satellite channel talking about how proud he is of the role he played in war and government, and praising the current president’s wisdom. Nor is it that the media carried coverage of his 87th birthday celebration with the song “May you long live as the leader,” while other media went further afield to follow the social news of his family attending funerals and visiting the pyramids.
The real issue is not about what certain media does as much as it is about the reality of certain policies.
What is the nature of the current regime?
There are two main hypotheses.
The first is that it supports normalization with the past and its policies and figures.
This hypothesis has its logic, as the current economic policies are almost entirely copied and pasted from those adopted by the Policies Committee headed by Gamal Mubarak, youngest son of the former president.
Lots of talk about investment, the private sector and growth rates, without any plan that makes social justice a priority, even though it is a pressing need.
The Hosni Mubarak issue is above all a political one. He was the head of a regime who was overthrown by his people without being held accountable for the mistakes of the thirty years that he ruled Egypt. The issue of Gamal Mubarak is just as serious, since he symbolizes a project to bequeath the republic as an inheritance without the least constitutional basis, as well as policies that married power to wealth in a way that led to the largest plundering of public funds in Egypt’s history.
Certainly, the former president is the preferred example for a class of influential businessmen and his youngest son, their economic leader. Their influence in visual and print media continues to be felt.
Their first and last concern is to whitewash the past and subject the present to the same choices, as if matters had resumed their natural course after July 2013 and as if the January 2011 Revolution were nothing but a “conspiracy.”
Promoting the past lends legitimacy to violence, which is a terrible tragedy in any political or ethical sense of the term.
The most serious crime against this country is that the July 2013 Revolution is being portrayed as a “counter-revolution.”
This is a responsibility borne by the current regime before history.
Power cannot handle a vacuum of vision and direction.
In the absence of vision, the past steps forward to fill the vacuum and enlists the present to its cause.
When the public sphere narrows, politics retreats and security come to the fore.
The most dangerous part of this is that the political vacuum extends to the media in a manner that forebodes a potential collapse. It must not be forgotten that half of politics is talk.
This means that exchanging information and opinions is a vital necessity for any society.
A society deprived of politics and a country with a barren media landscape will descend into crisis at the first dangerous juncture.
Everything is hanging over an abyss; a collapse isn’t far-fetched.
On the other hand, the second hypothesis is that the current regime has nothing to do with all this celebration of the past and with the attempts to whitewash Mubarak’s reputation.
This hypothesis rests on semi-confirmed information that the president is perturbed by this media coverage.
In this context, the president’s statement that he does not intervene in the judiciary or the media is worthy of note.
The statement in itself is positive, but the president’s responsibilities require that he declare his position and solidify the constitutional legitimacy of his regime.
Slipping into the past – which means opening war on the future – is more dangerous for the country than terrorism’s bullets and explosive devices. If society's discontent starts to reach the boiling point then political equations are likely to be completely overturned.
No one has the right to gamble with the country’s future.
Mubarak and his sons were just handed three- and four-year sentences on embezzlement charges. To understand the case, and get a detailed example of how the ruling family routinely stole from the public coffers, read this excellent piece of investigative journalism by Hossam Bahgat. Sifting through the court documents and talking to a whistle-blowing investigator, Bahgat reconstructs a decades-old scam that also involves the ubiquitous Arab Contractors company and the current prime minister, Ibrahim Mehleb.
Egyptian citizens have unknowingly paid millions of pounds for refurbishments, furnishings, appliances, utilities bills and maintenance of the two offices that Gamal and Alaa Mubarak used to conduct their profitable investment business on al-Saada Street in Roxy, Heliopolis. Alaa’s wife Heidi charged the state for every last expense in the renovation of a new villa in the posh Golf Area on Qattamiya Heights in New Cairo. When Gamal and his wife Khadiga had their first daughter in 2010, the Arab Contractors company paid the bill to design, build and furnish a separate wing for the newborn in the Uruba Palace in Heliopolis.
At some point, first lady Suzanne Mubarak wanted to have a private office in the new, glamorous City Stars Intercontinental hotel and mall – Egyptian citizens paid for its interior design and every piece of furniture. When Mubarak’s 12-year-old grandson Mohamed died in a tragic playground accident in 2009, Arab Contractors used the telecom towers budget to fraudulently cover the costs of building a new private mausoleum. Many of the receipts describe expenses on the five villas that Mubarak and his sons privately owned in the el-Sheikh Red Sea resort and on a 25-feddan farm jointly owned by Gamal and Alaa on the road from Cairo to Ismailia.
Other expenses covered by the state budget include an elevator to the roof of Alaa and Heidi’s Qattamya villa “to be able to adjust and maintain the satellite dishes on the roof,” a Jacuzzi pool in the Heliopolis residence, and a giant tent and candles for a party in one of the Sharm el-Sheikh villas.
Bel Trew and Osama Diab, writing for FP on the potential exoneration of former spook, Sinai magnate and Mubarak moneyman Hussein Salem:
But for the first time since Mubarak was toppled, Salem's fortunes -- and that of other Mubarak-era businessmen -- may be shifting for the better. Since Egypt's generals ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi last July, Salem said he has been ecstatic and is planning his return to Cairo, his lawyer Tarek Abdel-Aziz told FP. The billionaire Mubarak confidant phoned in to a popular television program in January to offer a deal to the new military-backed government: Cancel my convictions and I'll give Egypt millions.
Egyptian officials publicly welcomed the offer.
"Mr. Hussein Salem and other noble businessmen ... your initiative is really appreciated," said Hany Salah, a cabinet spokesman, during the phone-in on local channel CBC. "Anyone who proposes a noble and good offer, then the least we can do is listen to him for the best of our beloved country."