Law and Disorder

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Issue no. 514 June 2012 LE5

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Politics of the fourth estate

The Alexandrian walls that heard it all

Vaccine research institute may have to put its foot in its mouth

Shifting battlefields between Brothers and regime

The next battle takes place in dirty alleyways and isolated villages, and in the field of ideas

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2 News Briefs

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14 June 2012

Protecting the pollsFor God’s sake

Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi held a meeting on Monday with the deputy head of the military council, Sami Anan, and Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri to discuss procedures to secure the presidential runoff election. The meeting discussed the procedures needed to guaran-tee the success, fairness and transparency of the voting process. Stressing democratic principles, Tantawi called on all citizens to take part in the election, adding that the Egyptian people can secure the elections in cooperation with the police and the armed forces as part of their national responsibility.■

Clashes broke out Saturday be-tween Muslim and Coptic students at Assiut University’s women’s dorms after a Coptic student reportedly proselytized Christian-ity to Muslim students, leaving 12 students and supervisors injured. A Coptic law student had distribut-ed religious leaflets and booklets in university dorms with her friend, an engineering student, a security source said. The booklets they handed out were titled “The Lord Invites You” and “Salvation Ship.” The law student also encouraged them to convert to Christianity. The students and supervisors who were injured were trying to resolve the dispute, the source said. Some Muslim students said they had reported the Coptic students’ actions to building management, but that the management failed to stop them.■

A Cairo polling station during the presidential election last month

Sabbahi: The Brothers besmirchFormer presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabbahi complained Monday that the Muslim Brother-hood and its presidential candi-date, Mohamed Morsy, organized a defamation campaign against him. During a meeting with head of the Tunisian Ennahda Party, Rachid Ghannouchi, at the headquarters of his presidential campaign, Sabbahi confirmed that he is not backing Morsy or Ahmed Shafiq in the runoff election on 16 and 17 June. Sabbahi lauded the Tunisian revolution and the En-nahda Party for not monopolizing power after the revolution. Ghan-nouchi asserted the importance of nationalist-Islamic cooperation in Egypt. He also confirmed that Egypt and Tunisia both need col-laborative rule in which no party monopolizes power.■

Hamdeen Sabbahi

No get out-of-jail-free card

Zyad Elelaimy

Abdel Meguid Mahmoud

Military prosecutors requested that the Justice Ministry lift MP Zyad Elelaimy’s parliamen-tary immunity, state-run news agency MENA reported Tuesday. Elelaimy, of the Social Demo-cratic Party, was the subject of a complaint signed by 732 people that accused him of attempting to overthrow the government. The MP gained the ire of many after he quoted an Egyptian proverb, “He couldn’t beat the donkey so he beat the saddle,” and said that Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi was the donkey. An Arabic language scholar said in March that the phrase in context did not insult Tantawi.■

Not the Egypt they had in mind

Back to basics

Shock treatment

This time with a lawyer This land is our land

Doctors used a defibrillator twice on Hosni Mubarak when they could not find a pulse Monday, the latest health crisis for the ousted president since he was sentenced to life and moved to a prison hospital nine days ago, security officials said. The officials said Muba-

rak, 84, was slipping in and out of consciousness and was being fed liq-uids intravenously. Mubarak also lost consciousness several times Sunday and officials have said he is suffering from high blood pressure, depression and breathing difficulties.■

Cases that would have been tried by the State Security Emergency Court under the Emergency Law should now be referred to felony and mis-demeanor courts, Public Prosecutor Abdel Meguid Mahmoud said on Monday. On 31 May, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces ended the state of emergency that had been in force for the past 31 years. Mahmoud also ordered an end to the use of the exceptional authorities allowed under the Emergency Law, such as detention, monitoring telephone lines and record-ing private conversations.■

The Aswan General Prosecution on Monday opened an investigation Sun-day into violent clashes in the Naqra Valley in the town of Nasr al-Nuba in Aswan, in which 12 people were killed and three were wounded in a dispute over a plot of land. Three families bear-ing firearms were involved in the fight-ing. Security forces stepped up their presence in and around the village and a curfew was imposed to prevent new violence. Fighting over which tribe owned a piece of land near the Hikma village in Aswan Governorate erupted Saturday evening, sources said.■

Egyptian border guards arrested 70 people on Monday who were attempting to enter Egypt from Libya over the desert border south of Salloum crossing. A military patrol arrested 60 Sudanese citizens, four Bangladeshis and six Egyptians and referred them to the Salloum military prosecution. Lieutenant Colonel

Reda Mostafa al-Ezazy, head of the military prosecution, ordered them detained for eight days pending investigations. The suspects would be referred to Matrouh Military Court, where they would be tried for attempting to enter the country illegally and for entering a military-only zone without a license.■

The Salafi-oriented Asala Party has threatened to mobilize Islamists to protest if the new constitution violates Sharia law. The party insists the new constitution state that Sharia is the sole source of legislation, not merely “prin-

ciples” of Sharia as the “main” source. The party held a closed meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party Sunday to agree on the public figures they would nominate to the Constituent Assembly.■

Salloum crossing at the Egypt-Libya border

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Many believe the SCAF’s heavy pressure on political forces to agree on the composition of the assembly was part of its plan to move the transition along and ensure a ‘safe exit’

Civil state means a lot of things to a lot of different people, and this notion provides the SCAF with something like what the Turkish military used to have as protector of the civil state

Too many chefsConstituent Assembly has 100 authors, even more constitutional visions

By Abdel-Rahman Hussein

fter days of to-and-fro meet-ings, the new Constituent Assembly was finally elected Tuesday in a joint parliamen-

tary session. The formation reflects a divide between secular and Islamist groups that played out in the with-drawal of some political forces, an act similar to the previous failed attempt to convene the 100-member assem-bly.

Twenty Muslim Brotherhood fig-ures were elected to the assembly, in-cluding Essam al-Erian, Mohamed al-Beltagy and Sobhi Saleh of the group’s Freedom and Justice Party, among others. Of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Guidance Bureau, Abdel Rahman al-Barr, Mohamed Ali Bishr and Mah-moud Ghozlan were elected to the assembly.

The Salafi Nour Party’s Nader Bak-kar and other party members were elected, securing 10 seats in the as-sembly. Islamist legal thinker and for-mer presidential candidate Mohamed Selim al-Awa, former Grand Mufti Nasr Farid Wasel and Wasat Party head Abul Ela Mady, a former mem-ber of the Muslim Brotherhood, have also been chosen. Salafi sheikhs Shaa-ban Darwish and Mohamed Hassan and head of the Salafi Dawah Yasser Borhamy were also named to the as-sembly.

Non-Islamist members include eight seats for the liberal Wafd Party, April 6 Youth Movement founder Ahmed Maher, actor Ashraf Abdel Ghaffour, Nubian activist Manal al-Tibi and poet Farouk Gweida. Ghad al-Thawra Party head Ayman Nour and former presidential candidate Amr Moussa will also serve on the as-sembly, as well as eight Copts.

The new formation prompted criti-cism for reproducing the same flaws of its predecessor. Liberal MP Amr Hamzawy, who pulled out of the as-sembly, told Al-Masry Al-Youm on Tuesday that the new formation re-peats the same mistakes as the old

one, which had been suspended by a court ruling.

“The new criteria have marginalized many,” Hamzawy said. “This marathon has not written harmony between Is-lamists and secularists.”

This marked the second time secu-lar forces announced their decision to withdraw. In March, the Islamist-dominated Parliament appointed a Constituent Assembly with half of its members coming from within Parlia-ment. In protest, most non-Islamist political forces withdrew. An admin-istrative court order dissolved the as-sembly in early April.

Ahead of this formation, disagree-ments erupted against the backdrop of what seems to be a crucial interest for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to finalize the terms of its pow-er handover to a civilian authority, with the presidential runoff slated for 16 and 17 June between the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsy and Ahmed Shafiq, the last prime minis-ter under deposed President Hosni Mubarak.

The disagreementsUnder pressure from the SCAF, po-litical forces announced last week that they had overcome their disagree-ments over the assembly’s makeup, deciding to divide seats equally be-tween Islamists and non-Islamists, sig-naling a victory for secular and liberal forces after the initial formation had an Islamist majority.

But the issue became obfuscating when the dominant Islamist parties in Parliament agreed to have the seats reserved for Al-Azhar and the Islamist

Wasat Party be considered part of the civil bloc, increasing the religious bloc to constitute 57 percent of the assem-bly. As a result of this impasse, some liberal and leftist parties announced their withdrawal from the Constituent Assembly. On Monday, they said they would cede their places for artists, writers, Copts, Nubians and women.

“We did the same last time and we were supported by other forces like Al-Azhar. We’ll see if they do the same this time,” said Bassem Kamel of the Social Democratic Party, which with-drew Monday.

“[Islamist forces] have the majority now and they will vote for who they like. We will not play a part in this pro-cess anymore,” said Kamel.

The Supreme Constitutional Court announced also on Tuesday it was pulling out from the assembly due to the lack of a consensus among politi-cal forces over its formation, accord-ing to Maher Samy, the court’s vice president. The court’s withdrawal came two days before its decision on the constitutionality of the Parliamen-tary Elections Law, which could lead to the dissolution of Parliament and consequently challenge the legitimacy of the assembly.

Islamists denounced the with-drawals, accusing secular parties of obstructing the constitution-writing process and reneging on a previous agreement.

“They’re the ones who didn’t honor the terms of the agreement, not us, and then they accused us of doing so,” said Saleh, who is also the deputy head of the People’s Assembly Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee.

“When the negotiations started, it began with our initiative and ended with theirs. We wanted the assembly to reflect what people chose in elec-tions and they disagreed. Liberals are not 50 percent of the population, we all know that. Yet we agreed,” he added.

The SCAF push for consensusYet while the initial withdrawal of many disparate forces threatened the consensus aspect of the first assembly, this time there seems to be no desire of the rest of political forces to with-draw, possibly because of the pressure being placed on the process by the SCAF.

For one, the Wafd Party has been acting as a broker in the process. Party member Margaret Azer was sus-pended by party chairman al-Sayed al-Badawy, alongside other party members, for deciding to refrain from voting in the Constituent Assembly in objection of its formation.

“I think the Wafd did withdraw this time because it is the main civil fac-tion in the agreement with the Broth-erhood. Badawy, along with Nour and Sultan, cherry-picked the non-Islamist names,” Azer said.

The SCAF had stated that if politi-cal forces failed to reach an agreement on the Constituent Assembly’s com-position, the generals would issue a supplement to the Constitutional Declaration.

A mid-ranking army officer who spoke on condition of anonymity told Egypt Independent that superior offi-cers have said the SCAF will not leave power until it has secured its interests in the next constitution. This may be the decisive factor that frames how the next constitution will be drafted.

Though the military would not be heavily represented on the Constitu-ent Assembly, its sole representative would have an important role to play. Many believe the SCAF’s heavy pres-sure on political forces to agree on the composition of the assembly was part of its plan to move the transition along and ensure a “safe exit” for the generals.

According to Michael Wahid Han-na, a fellow at the Century Founda-tion in New York, the SCAF’s idea of a safe exit entails four key features: retaining immunity from prosecution, continuing to shield the military bud-get from oversight, preserving of the army’s vast business empire and play-ing a role in national security decision making.

“The SCAF doesn’t trust civilians and definitely doesn’t trust the po-litical class, and it thinks the Muslim Brotherhood’s overreach gives it a platform to position itself as the bal-ance. So the SCAF will generally cloak its actions under the pretext of nation-al interest but, of course, part of that is to serve its interests,” Hanna said.

The Islamist-secular divide divide is seen by many as a convenient condi-tion for the SCAF.

“Civil state means a lot of things to a lot of different people, and this notion provides the SCAF with something like what the Turkish military used to have as protector of the civil state,” Hanna said. “But if you take it to its logical conclusion, it sounds like an invitation to a coup.”■

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The announcement of the new Constituent Assembly

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Shafiq during one of his campaign conferences

When the NDP was winning elections and doling out favors, local operatives around the country were cogs in the machine

We use [social media] to send certain messages, attack other candidates and leakinformation that can’t be said in the form of an official statement

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Tried and trueShafiq campaign takes a few pages from the NDP handbook

By Rana Khazbak and Mohamed Elmeshad

hen Hosni Mubarak was presi-dent, Kamel Ahmed would sit in a furnished garage next to a busy intersection in Cairo’s Manial neighborhood, discussing cam-

paign strategies with others working for Fathy Gleed, a former candidate for Mubarak’s Na-tional Democratic Party.

Ahmed, a 55-year-old warehouse guard, used the election season to supplement his income. Now, after the uprising, he is doing the same with the campaign of presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq, the ousted leader’s last prime minister.

“Hey, brother! I’m coming by tonight to dis-tribute some Shafiq posters. Gather some men to help me,” Ahmed said to a group of neigh-bors and friends at a Manial café. “We’re pay-ing the same prices as before.”

Mubarak’s party was dissolved by a court or-der in April 2011, two months after Mubarak was driven from office by nationwide protests. Since then, Gleed’s small army of campaigners laid low and stayed out of politics. But the ga-rage, Gleed’s headquarters, buzzes with activ-ity these days. Ahmed can again count on this extra income from working just like “before.”

Shafiq secured 24 percent of the votes in the first round of the presidential election on 23 and 24 May, about 300,000 fewer votes than the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsy. Shafiq won in many of the Brotherhood’s strongholds across the country, such as the Nile Delta governorate of Sharqiya, Morsy’s birthplace. This dealt a blow to the 84-year-old Islamic group, especially considering its land-slide victory in the parliamentary elections last year.

Much of Shafiq’s success can be attributed to the revival of tactics of the formerly ruling party, including patronage networks and the mobilization of state institutions. Many pre-vious NDP members and MPs have already mobilized their own local networks to reach people in the same way they did when the party was in full-force.

“Now we’re able to work out in the open again,” said Ahmed.

When the NDP was winning elections and doling out favors, local operatives around the country were cogs in the machine. They re-ceived funding from the party and affiliated businessmen to run their local electoral races, or to campaign for another party candidate in exchange for political favors. After the revo-lution-induced hiatus, “the money is flowing again,” said Ahmed.

“All our old pals are out campaigning for Shafiq as well,” he added.

Besides Gleed, Ahmed is a part of the inner circle of another of the area’s businessmen, former NDP parliamentarian Magdy Allam. He claims Allam has also mobilized his men to

go back to work for Shafiq. Allam is currently wanted on numerous corruption charges and is reportedly in hiding in Lebanon.

Manial residents say the past elections brought back campaigners they used to know as NDP “money men” whose sole purpose during elections was to buy votes.

“One woman in our neighborhood comes by to distribute money on behalf of Shahinaz al-Naggar. This year she said that there will be a lot of money for people to vote for Shafiq,” said Saneyya Gamal, a grocer in the area. Nag-gar is a former MP and the wife of former NDP Secretary General Ahmed Ezz, who now faces corruption charges.

Raafat Khaled, a scrap metal salesman from the nearby district of Khalifa, took up some extra work with Naggar’s clique to campaign for Shafiq.

“During every election, I go to a few people who I know get a lot of money to campaign and see if I can get some extra work,” said Khaled. This year, he went to a man he describes as “Shahinaz’s leader in the area.”

“There’s more money this year than before. The ‘leader’ said they’re spending at least LE10 million for Moqattam and Khalifa neigh-borhoods alone,” he said. Both districts have a combined population of about 260,000, ac-cording to Cairo Governorate records.

Mahmoud Ibrahim, a media strategist work-ing with the Shafiq campaign and a former NDP member, told Egypt Independent that even if there are people paying for votes, they are doing it independently and not following orders from the official campaign.

Instead, the official campaign relied on win-ning over key community leaders in the Delta villages.

“We approached community leaders who have a big impact on people’s opinions, includ-

ing village chiefs and former MPs who have a huge backing — not just former party MPs, but also independent ones,” said Ibrahim, who owns Egypt Campaigns, a company that offers elections consultancy and training.

Shafiq has been criticized by the Brother-hood and other pro-revolution groups for reproducing the old regime by exploiting the same networks and tools used by the former president’s party. The presidential candidate has confidently admitted more than once on television that Mubarak is his role model.

Another former NDP member, Moataz Mo-hamed Mahmoud, secretary general of the Freedom Party and a former NDP secretary in Qena, told Egypt Independent that his party is officially endorsing Shafiq in the second round of the presidential election against the domi-nation of the Brotherhood.

“It’s very logical that former NDP members support Shafiq in the elections after Morsy threatened to crush them and anyone associ-ated with the old regime once he takes power. It’s a normal reaction to organize and back Shafiq out of fear of Morsy,” said Mahmoud. However, Mahmoud claimed that the former ruling party is now gone, and these people are simply Egyptian citizens supporting the candi-date who will “protect their interests.”

“We will do everything in our means to mo-bilize voters for Shafiq through our MPs and members across the governorates,” he said.

Elections monitors held that widespread fraud comparable to that of the Mubarak-era elections did not occur during the first round of voting, but the Carter Center, an interna-tional election monitoring group, criticized the lack of access it received to the final aggre-gation of national results, saying it undermined the overall transparency of the process.

The Carter Center was also prevented from

assessing pre-election phases, including voter registration and campaigning, due to restric-tions imposed by the electoral authorities.

Shafiq’s military background has led many to accuse the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, the police and the state bureaucracy of backing him. Lawyers for former candidate Hamdeen Sabbahi, a Nasserist who came in third place, filed a complaint with the Presidential Elec-tions Commission that 117,000 police and military conscripts voted, despite being legally prohibited from voting.

According to a former government official who was involved in preparing the voters’ lists during the parliamentary elections, the SCAF refused to remove the names of army and police conscripts from the voter lists due to “national security” concerns. This means the conscripts could have potentially voted, the former government official said.

It would be very difficult to prove so because neither their national IDs nor the voter lists in-dicate who are conscripts, the source said.

Shafiq’s official campaign, which was launched on 1 May, just three weeks before elections, adopts other strategies to persuade people. Ibrahim calls it “psychological war.” Besides the official campaign website and so-cial media accounts, Ibrahim also manages all the unofficial Facebook and Twitter pages that support Shafiq through coordinating with their administrators, he told Egypt Independent.

“We use those to send certain messages, at-tack other candidates and leak information that can’t be said in the form of an official statement,” he said. Ibrahim was a member of the NDP media secretariat and had assisted the party’s former secretary, Ali Eddin Helal, with the electronic committees where young party members were assigned to use the Inter-net and mainstream media to defame opposi-tion forces and youth movements before the revolution.

Dozens of unofficial pro-Shafiq Facebook pages have emerged in recent months, provid-ing platforms for smearing the Muslim Broth-erhood. One page, “Yes to Ahmed Shafiq for president of Egypt,” features videos of pundits accusing the Brotherhood of forming armed militias. Another page, “The campaign to vote for Ahmed Shafiq,” features a video of a wom-an claiming that Morsy hit her son with a car.

Shafiq has propagated an image of himself as a strongman who would put security and stability at the top of his priorities. According to Ibrahim, the campaign capitalized on the chaos of the repeated clashes between police and military forces and protesters over the past year. Clashes between protesters and military officers in Abbasseya that started in late April left 12 dead and many injured.

“The Abbaseya clashes definitely served our interest,” Ibrahim said. “Egyptians are craving political stability and economic prosperity, and this is what Shafiq promises.”■

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Warning shotsSome Muslim Brothers fear Shafiq’s attacks are just a beginning

For the old regime, it is a matter of survival. The [retaliation] will not be restricted to the Brothers

Before the revolution, all forces used to condemn what was being done to the Brothers. But now there will be less solidarity

By Noha El-Hennawyresidential campaigns are often ugly, divisive affairs with bitter rivals slinging accusations, sometimes

veering into the territory of out-right dishonesty.

But as the fight over Egypt’s pres-idency heats up between the Mus-lim Brotherhood’s nominee and Hosni Mubarak’s last prime min-ister, the country’s largest Islamist group stands accused of more than just dishonesty or incompetence. The Brotherhood is being bom-barded with accusations of killing protesters and instilling chaos dur-ing the 25 January revolution.

Some see that as an unnerv-ing harbinger of what could be to come.

Brotherhood candidate Mo-hamed Morsy and Mubarak-era Civil Aviation Minister Ahmed Shafiq are set to compete in the runoff election scheduled for 16 and 17 June.

Although Shafiq is not officially backed by Egypt’s military rulers, he is widely viewed as the facade of the generals and the deeply en-trenched and highly influential se-curity apparatus. Meanwhile, the retired air force general’s campaign draws heavily on the old networks of Mubarak’s disbanded National Democratic Party.

In recent days, both candidates have exchanged a glut of accusa-tions. While Morsy has constant-ly emphasized Shafiq’s ties with Mubarak’s “corrupt” regime and his animosity to the revolution, Shafiq accuses the Brotherhood of seeking to take Egypt backward by establishing a religious state.

But Shafiq’s attacks haven’t stopped there.

In a television interview last week, Shafiq accused the Muslim Brotherhood of being implicated in the killing of protesters in the notorious “Battle of the Camel” that took place during the 18-day uprising that culminated in Muba-rak’s ouster. Eleven people died

when pro-Mubarak thugs, some of them riding on horses and camels, attacked Tahrir Square with rocks, Molotov cocktails, machetes and melee weapons.

Since the revolution, the Broth-erhood has always taken pride in the role played by its members in defending the square during the Battle of the Camel. Many revolu-tionary figures and politicians had given Brotherhood youth credit for being a central part of the bat-tle, which marked the last nail in the coffin of Mubarak’s rule. Mean-while, Shafiq was prime minister during the battle and is currently under investigation for his alleged role in it.

Two low-profile lawyers had re-portedly filed a complaint with the general prosecutor against the Brotherhood, accusing the group of burning police stations and opening prisons during the revolu-tion. Media outlets long criticized as mouthpieces of the old regime have been reiterating these allega-tions. However, most observers have stated over the past year that they believe the Interior Ministry was responsible for the release of prisoners as a tactic to stir up trou-ble during the protests.

The allegations, which are remi-niscent of smear campaigns rou-tinely launched by state media and the security apparatus, raise ques-tions over whether the Brothers are faced with mere negative cam-paigning that only seeks to improve Shafiq’s chances and will eventual-ly cease with the conclusion of the poll, or a potential crackdown on Egypt’s largest political organiza-tion that looms on the horizon.

For the Brothers, it is more than a mere campaigning tactic.

“If we perceive it only as a part of negative campaigning, we will be missing the larger picture,” Amr Darrag, a leader of the Freedom and Justice Party, told Egypt Indepen-dent. Darrag said he believes the discourse emanating from Shafiq’s campaign and its sympathizers is a reproduction of old regime and sig-

nals that, if Shafiq wins, retaliation against the Brotherhood and revo-lutionary forces will be in store.

“For the old regime, it is a matter of survival,” said Darrag. “The [re-taliation] will not be restricted to the Brothers.”

Darrag said the old regime’s stal-warts might be immersed in faking legal evidence against the Broth-ers.

“Cases might be made up the same way they were in the past,” he said, in reference to Mubarak’s times.

Under the ousted president, the Brotherhood was officially banned but tolerated. While the group was allowed to run for student unions, professional syndicates’ boards and Parliament, it was barred from forming a political party. Mubarak’s police orchestrated periodic waves of arrests that targeted the group’s leadership.

Upon their historic grab of 88 of the People’s Assembly’s 444 seats in 2005, the Brotherhood had to live with a ruthless stint of the regime’s oppressive policies. More than 30 of the group’s lead-ers were rounded up and referred to a military tribunal in late 2006 on charges of conspiring to oust the regime. A smear campaign was waged against them by state media, which accused them of fomenting

violence, training militias and con-spiring to oust the regime.

If Shafiq were to launch a simi-lar crackdown, the Brotherhood would not be intimidated, accord-ing to Darrag, who is a member of the FJP High Board.

“We will try to protect ourselves with legal tools,” Darrag said.

But a renewal of Mubarak-style persecution may not be conceiv-able, even if Shafiq wins.

“[A crackdown on the Brother-hood] is very hard to imagine, be-cause things have changed and the balance of power would not allow for harsh measures,” said Abdallah al-Sinnawy, a columnist.

Since Mubarak’s fall in Febru-ary 2011, the Brothers’ status has changed significantly. Today, they have an officially recognized po-litical party that holds more than 40 percent of seats in Parliament. Throughout the past 15 months, the Brotherhood stood as the most crucial civilian political player.

For Sinnawy, the ongoing verbal war might be an attempt by the old establishment to “pressure the Brothers and to set a ceiling for their ambitions to control all cru-cial positions in the state.”

In recent months, the Brothers have antagonized secular and revo-lutionary forces by seeking to tight-en their grip over Parliament and the would-be assembly tasked with writing the constitution, as well as eyeing the presidency after reneg-ing on promises to the contrary. Meanwhile, Brotherhood-military relations have been strained for several months due to the generals’ reluctance to allow the FJP to form the Cabinet.

Unlike Sinnawy, Sameh al-Barqy, a former Brotherhood youth lead-er, did not rule out the possibility that Mubarak’s repressive policies could be renewed if Shafiq be-comes president.

“There is nothing to prevent that,” said Barqy. To prove his point, he referenced 1954, when the Free Officers regime cracked down on the Brothers after a nearly two-year

honeymoon. “Nobody imagined that any-

thing could happen to the Muslim Brotherhood, given the remark-able weight [it] had on the street,” said Barqy.

Barqy, the co-founder of the would-be Egyptian Current Par-ty, which is mostly composed of young, reformist ex-Brothers, argued that the “deep state” — which, according to his definition, consists of the military, the secu-rity apparatus and remnants of the NDP — might find the Brother-hood easy prey.

“What makes it easier for [the deep state] to [attack the Brothers] is the fact that they had already dis-tanced themselves from all forces,” he said. “Before the revolution, all forces used to condemn what was being done to the Brothers. But now there will be less solidarity.”

“The Brothers were just watch-ing when other forces were being attacked,” he said, pointing to sev-eral occasions over the past year when the Brotherhood leadership declined to side with non-Islamist protesters who were violently at-tacked by the police and the armed forces. To add insult to injury, the group’s media had accused some revolutionary forces of seeking to spread chaos and undermine the state.

For some pundits, a crackdown on Islamists might be the recipe for a civil war along Algerian lines. A bloody Islamist insurgency tried to undermine military rule in Algeria throughout the 1990s after a mili-tary coup annulled legislative elec-tions that were expected to bring the first democratically elected Is-lamist government to power.

Barqy ruled out that the Broth-ers would follow in the footsteps of their Algerian counterparts.

“The Brothers will not be dragged to the use of violence. I am sure about that,” he said.

“All existing generations that constitute the body of the Muslim Brotherhood were raised to resent violence,” he added.■

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Battle of the Camel

Khairat al-Shater Ahmed Shafiq

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Ahmed Fahmy said he would solicit the help of security bodies to investigate the reputations and financial positions of applicants for the chief editor posts

By Omar Halawa

n the run-up to the presidential election, Parliament has moved toward setting criteria for appointing the leaders of state-run news-papers, which will control a main conduit of

Egyptian’s knowledge about the incoming presi-dent and the Islamist-dominated Parliament.

But the outcome of this selection process is believed to be political, according to observers who say the old regime’s practice of making state media subservient to a ruling authority is still present.

Salah Eissa, assistant secretary general of the Supreme Press Council, said the Shura Council , the upper house of Parliamen, is forming a com-mittee to set the selection criteria for state-run newspapers’ chief editors. The majority of its members will be from the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, which dominates the Shura Council.

“My reading of the scene is that the criteria will not only be professional but political. The Free-dom and Justice paper has recently published several stories and articles that talk about purging press institutions of liberals and leftists,” he said.

The emergence of the Brotherhood’s influence into the press would be a novelty in an arena tra-ditionally reserved for either leftist and liberal journalists or pro-regime journalists.

A long-standing historyThe legacy of the ruling party’s control over state media dates back to Gamal Abdel Nasser’s presi-dency, when his Arab Socialist Union handpicked the state media’s leaders after they were national-

remained Al-Ahram’s chairman for 21 years.In 2005, several prominent chief editors were

dismissed and replaced with others who ardent-ly defended the policies of the ruling National Democratic Party. State security is said to have intervened in the choice of these institutions’ leaders to guarantee unwavering loyalty to the regime.

After the breakout of the revolution, former Prime Minister Essam Sharaf replaced 18 top of-ficials at state-run press institutions. The chang-es, approved by the ruling military council, were understood to be temporary until Parliament was elected. All figures considered to be pro-Mubarak were replaced, including chief editors Osama Saraya of Al-Ahram, Momtaz al-Qutt of Akhbar al-Youm and Abdallah Kamal of Rose al-Youssef.

Brotherhood takes the batonIf current discussions among concerned institu-tions are any indicator, those papers will have new leaders once again.

Seven members of the Journalists Syn-dicate walked out of a meeting Sunday with Shura Council MPs who convened to set the appoint-ment criteria. Protest-ing members said the criteria were being set by people outside the profession.

The Shura Coun-cil, which owns eight state-run press institutions, according to a 1979 constitutional amendment, has the power to ap-point the chief editors of the 55 publications is-sued by these institutions. The same amendment made the Shura Council speaker the head of the Supreme Press Council. This amended legislation stayed in the Constitutional Declaration issued by the ruling military council in March 2011.

Under the old regime, this legislation assured the NDP control over state press. Fraudulent par-liamentary elections guaranteed the party most of the seats. But in the freer elections this year, the FJP secured a plurality of seats in Parliament, prompting fears that its control over state media is looming.

Eissa said the Brothers are disgruntled by criti-cism of their performance by state media.

“But they don’t have many professional journal-ists to fill those posts. In the end, they will choose from among the choices available,” he said.

According to Suleiman Gouda, the chief edi-tor of the liberal Wafd Party’s daily, FJP member and Shura Council Speaker Ahmed Fahmy said he would solicit the help of security bodies to in-

ized in 1960. Under former President Anwar Sadat, the Cabinet made appointments after con-sulting with the president. A 1979 amendment gave the Shura Council that power.

A common feature of chief editors throughout this legacy is their close relation with the presi-dent. Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, a close advis-er to Nasser and Sadat and a prominent journal-ist, remained the chief editor of Al-Ahram for 17 years from 1957 through 1974. But his differenc-es with Sadat on some issues cost him his post.

After Hosni Mubarak assumed power in 1981, Law 96/1996, known as the Journalism Author-ity Law, was issued. It set the term of a chief edi-tor at three years and that of a chairperson at four, though several kept their positions longer. Ibra-him Nafie, known for his pro-Mubarak affinities,

Pressing issuesState-owned papers’ management is up for grabs

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Ivestigate the reputations and financial position s of applicants for the chief editor posts, a sign that methods of the former regime are still at play.

“Controlling state-run papers means control-ling the biggest media tool for the state,” Gouda added, explaining that the Brotherhood will have a vested interest in this type of control, especially if Ahmed Shafiq, presidential candidate and Mubarak’s former prime minister, wins the race.

Eissa said FJP leaders are reluctant to discuss the future of press institutions or methods to sep-arate them or their editorial policies from their owners, as is the case in most countries.

“In the past, the Supreme Press Council’s affili-ation with the Shura Council caused state-owned papers to be followers of the regime. Today, the situation could get more dangerous: These pa-pers will be subservient to the party that rises to power every number of years,” said Eissa.

FJP Shura Council member Seddiq Abdel Maqsoud has rejected accusations that his party is seeking to monopolize state-run papers.

“Over three months, we have been holding meetings attended by members from the Jour-nalists Syndicate, chief editors of state newspa-pers and representatives from the Supreme Press Council. Most of them have agreed to those stan-dards after lengthy discussions,” he added, saying

all current controver-sies are “fabricated.”

Abdel Maqsoud also said individuals and institutions have been given the chance to provide nominations without the interfer-ence of the FJP.

Beyond politicsMany of these institu-tions also face financial hurdles. Fahmy had re-ceived reports from the

Central Auditing Organization and other bodies monitoring public funds that detailed financial corruption within state-run press institutions, where debts are estimated at LE10 billion.

Some of these institutions have recently seen wide-scale protests by employees over low pay and leadership policies. Abdel Azim Hammad, the former chairman of Al-Ahram who was ap-pointed after the revolution, resigned after pro-

tests by reporters who objected to some staff-ing changes.

“The entire future of state-run papers will be at stake if all of the conditions are not re-viewed,” Gouda said.

Yasser al-Zayat, chief editor of state-run magazine Al-Ezaa wal Television, said the first step should be to transfer press in-stitutions’ ownership

to the people. An alternative would be to issue a law allowing the general assemblies of state-run papers to elect their boards, which would appoint chief editors.

Eissa said reforming press institutions requires one of three solutions: to privatize them and keep a certain stake to the state, to transform them into holding companies or to establish a transparent mechanism allowing employees to own half of the institution they work for.

“The solutions are known, but political will to enforce one of them is what we need,” he said.■

Abdallah Kamal

Osama Saraya

Momtaz al-Qutt

7News14 June 2012

But while revolutionaries are willing to engage with official channels when it serves their interests, they are also happy to undermine and reject them completely. It is a revolution, after all

Down with the next presidentCan anyone claim true legitimacy during a revolution?

By Heba Afify

ens of thousands took to Tahrir Square last week to protest the outcome of the trial of former President

Hosni Mubarak and the failure to disqualify Ahmed Shafiq, his last prime minister, from the presiden-tial election. Once again, the square was full of angry protesters — and bold proposals for radical change.

Some began to call for a “presi-dential council” that would place Hamdeen Sabbahi and Abdel Mo-neim Abouel Fotouh, respectively the third- and fourth-place winners in the first round of the presidential election and generally considered the revolution’s candidates, at the helm of the state while political forces worked on writing a new con-stitution.

This plan would have established a new transition road map that revo-lutionaries preferred from the begin-ning. It never fell into place. But the fact that people were calling for it illustrates how revolutionary forces view the law and state institutions.

No force in Egypt has the author-ity to impose its will with complete legal and popular backing — le-gitimacy is illusive at best. But while revolutionaries are willing to engage with official channels when it serves their interests, they are also happy to undermine and reject them com-pletely. It is a revolution, after all.

State institutions intactFollowing Mubarak’s resignation, the deconstruction of the old re-gime, essential to any revolution, was largely halted. State institutions, from the Interior Ministry to the ju-diciary to the state media, were left intact.

“In Egypt we found ourselves in a period of revolution ruled by the anti-revolutionary forces, the re-gime itself that the people revolted against,” says political analyst Abdel Halim Qandil.

While revolutionary groups were occasionally invited to work with the state, formal channels were, for the most part, unwelcoming and working against their interests. Revolutionaries protested the fact that the transitional period is ruled by Mubarak-appointed generals and the legal system that he manipulated to protect his regime.

Revolutionary demands included issuing a new law to ensure judicial independence, excluding prominent figures from Mubarak’s regime from politics, and forming special courts to prosecute the old regime far from the protection of their allies and ap-pointees in the courts.

Qandil believes that the legal sys-tem’s failure to embrace the revolu-tion diminishes its authority. As a result, revolutionary forces have felt entitled to continue their protests against the state, holding countless demonstrations, sit-ins and other protests.

Revolutionaries have also justi-fied their continued protests on the grounds that these unreformed state institutions are themselves on shaky legal foundations.

In his resignation speech, Mubarak passed his powers to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Many see this as the starting point of the constitutional confusion that lasts until today.

The SCAF originally announced it would hand over power in six months, a period that has tripled in length, adding to the sense that the council of generals lack legitimacy.

“The problem is that [the SCAF] keeps referring to a legitimacy that was never there in the first place,” says Ghada Shahbandar, a promi-nent activist, responding to accu-sations that revolutionary forces lack legitimacy. “Constitutional legitimacy dissolved the day that Mubarak gave power to the military council.”

Dubious legal basis The only constitutional basis since the fall of Mubarak is the Consti-tutional Declaration issued by the SCAF following its approval in a referendum last March. The amend-ments were ostensibly intended to help reinstate the 1971 Constitu-tion, which the council suspended immediately after taking power.

The 63-article Constitutional Declaration is short on specifics, riddled with loopholes and at times contradictory about the designation of powers. Both Parliament and the presidential elections are, at the time of publishing, awaiting court rulings that could lead to their invalidation and a repeat of elections.

Debates over the formation of the assembly tasked with writing

the next constitution have put off the drafting process. A court order dissolved the first attempt to create an assembly on a technical, but po-litically convenient, point in April. A new assembly was elected late Tues-day night, but some parties have al-ready withdrew. If the elections go forward, the new president will be elected with no idea what his consti-tutional powers are.

The lack of a constitution means that the rule of law does not exist in Egypt, says Qandil. Instead, he be-lieves, there are only political games, which the strongest actors win.

The constant feuds and power contests between judicial, executive and legislative authorities prove that even the most basic roles of the gov-ernment are ambiguous.

Recently, the SCAF threatened to issue a new constitutional dec-laration, which Parliament viewed as a violation of its mandate. The judiciary and Parliament have also exchanged threats and undermined each other after some MPs criticized the ruling in the Mubarak case.

This conflict between authori-ties, and ambiguity regarding where one’s power ends and the other’s be-gins, undermines all of them, Mo-stafa al-Naggar, an Adl Party MP, wrote in a recent column titled “The conflict of powers and destruction of the nation.”

“The danger in this situation is that it could cause the simple citizen to lose faith in everything around him and lose faith in all these authorities, seeing them engaged in a battle that doesn’t produce any good for him or change the misery of his life,” Nag-gar wrote.

Amid this legal and executive mess, almost everyone has been able to become part of the formal system — except the revolutionaries.

“At first, there was a debate about whether to pursue revolutionary or constitutional legitimacy, but we decided to follow the constitutional path because we were aiming for a state ruled by laws. Even though it was going to be slower, we wanted to give a new model,” says Islam Lotfy, a member of the 25 January Revolu-tionary Youth Coalition whose bid for Parliament on Revolution Con-tinues coalition was unsuccessful.

Lotfy, who is also a founding member of the pro-revolution Egyptian Current Party, says that as a result of SCAF mismanagement and the fragmentation of the politi-cal forces, the revolution stayed out-side the formal framework.

The revolution has minimal repre-sentation in Parliament, and none of the candidates who were considered revolutionary made it to the second round of presidential election. On the legal front, the revolutionary forces have been disappointed to see most of the police officers ac-cused of killing protesters acquitted, including six top Interior Ministry officials who were on trial alongside Mubarak.

The revolutionaries have not only been excluded from the formal insti-tutions; they have also found them used against them.

Tarek al-Khouly, an activist with the April 6 Youth Movement, says that the SCAF, which took power and won popularity due to the revo-lution, started to use the flawed laws of the old regime to contain those demanding change, delegitimizing all the actions of the revolutionaries and turning public opinion against them by claiming that they jeopar-dize stability and security. As a consequence, thousands of protesters remain in military pris-ons after having been arrested in protests and sit-ins tried in military courts.

Search for legitimacy continuesAs the ‘transition’ nears completion with the conclusion of presidential election and the writing of a new constitution, some revolutionar-ies say they will continue to chal-lenge the state and push for their demands.

Some are pushing for a boycott of the presidential election, hoping that low turnout will undermine the next president’s legitimacy. Others continue to push for the “presiden-tial council,” however unlikely it seems now. Many say that regardless of who the next president is, they have already positioned themselves in the opposition, raising the slogan “Down with the next president.”

In a note on Facebook, Amr Eissa, an artist who was arrested by the military in March 2011, articulates the view of those who refuse to give up their revolutionary aspirations to the authority of the state.

“To those of you worrying about ballots and refusing the return of the revolutionary legitimacy and the right of the [Tahrir] Square to self-determination: We have paid in blood to earn our legitimacy,” he writes. “What have you offered for us to ignore that blood?”

Qandil says that as the myriad flaws of the current system are ex-posed, the public, now critical of those going against the legal and electoral path and accusing them of causing instability, might come around.

“Because there are no institutions expected to last, the idea of revolting against already unstable institutions is more accepted,” he says.

Amr el-Shobaki, an independent liberal MP, dismisses suggestions of overruling the law with ideas like revolutionary courts as “revolution-ary adolescence.” In a recent op-ed, he warned that this path could turn on the revolutionaries when the same illegal actions are taken against them by the new state.

“They’re forgetting that there’s a special legal and judicial system that organized democratic transforma-tions in most of the world in the last 40 years,” he writes.

Other revolutionaries are aspiring for just that, pushing state mecha-nisms in the direction of the revolu-tion through street tools.

A small group of activists has been on hunger strike at a sit-in before the People’s Assembly since last Wednesday, demanding the exclu-sion of Shafiq from the race based on the Political Isolation Law — which has been passed but not applied on him — serious investigations of the killing of protesters and the release of all detained protesters.■

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Thousands of Salafis rampaged through parts of Tunis on Tuesday, in protest of an art exhibition they say in-sults Muslims. Protesters threw rocks and petrol bombs at police stations, a court house and the offices of secular parties. In response to the unrest, Tunisia’s interior and defense minis-tries declared a night time curfew in the capital and seven other suburbs and cities on Tuesday. The attacks are considered some of the worst since President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was deposed last year.■

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Israelarrests, deports

US keeps Guantanamo going

On Monday, Israel began rounding up African migrants and asylum seekers, send-ing them to detention camps in anticipation of massive deportations. Most are from South Sudan. The arrests are part of the Israeli government’s “emergency plan” to deal with what Israel says is a threat to the Jewish character of the state. There are an estimated 60,000 African migrants in Israel, many of them children and families. “I’m not acting out of hatred of strangers but love of my people and to rescue the homeland,” said Interior Minister Eli Yishai. Interior ministry forces raided some migrants’ homes in the middle of the night. On Sunday, some 500 Sudanese men held a protest in Tel Aviv, chanting, “We are refugees, not criminals.”■

The US Supreme Court declined on Mon-day to review the rights of prisoners held for 10 years at the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison camp. Four years ago, the court said that detainees who face no charges have a right to appeal their imprisonment, but lower courts have rejected the appeals. The rejected appeals included two detain-ees from Yemen who won their cases at the trial court level only to have their hopes for release dashed by the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. US President Barack Obama signed an order to close Guantanamo on 22 January 2009, his second day in office. There are 169 detainees in Guantanamo.■

A Bahraini juvenile court released Ali Hassan on Monday. Hassan, an 11-year-old Shia boy, was arrested on 14 May for “taking part in a public assembly disturbing security.” He was blocking a road outside the capital Manama with garbage containers and pieces of wood, according to pros-ecutors. The prosecutor said Hassan was allowed to take his final exams while in the juvenile detention facil-ity. Bahrainis have broadly protested since March 2011, demanding more rights and an end to the monarchy there. Hassan’s trial will resume on 20 June.■

Bahrainreleases 11-year-old

Salafis erupt in Tunisia

Escape from Haffeh

Rebels say they are struggling to smuggle residents out of the western Syrian town of Haffeh, which is under sustained military assault by tanks and helicopters. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in the UK, believes 29 civilians, 23 rebels and 68 soldiers have been killed in the fighting around Haffeh since 5 June. The city of Homs, which has been the epicenter of the uprising

against Bashar al-Assad’s government, is also under heavy assault, with large numbers of ci-vilian casualties reported. During fights with rebels, Syrian forces have tortured children and used them as human shields, according to the UN’s Office of the Special Representa-tive of the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict. Rebel forces were also accused of using children on the front lines.■

Yemeni military oustsIslamists in the SouthAfter days of fighting and airstrikes by the Yemeni army in Southern Yemen, the country’s army retook two towns in Yemen formerly controlled by Al-Qaeda-linked militants, according to military officials. Residents and aid agencies say a month-old offensive on the Southern portion of the country has cut off supplies of food and medicine. Ye-men’s military is attempting to retake several towns in the province from Islamists who seized them over a year ago during mass protests against then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh that split the military into warring factions.■

Ali Abdullah Saleh

Demonstrators protest in Syria

9World14 June 2012

Arms have proliferated in Libya

By Umar Khan

RIPOLI — When the Tripoli International Air-port was seized by the Awfeya brigade on 3 June,

the blitz interrupted a transition that continues to be punctuated by spo-radic outbreaks of violence and po-litical divisions that remain in Libya ahead of elections for the National Congress.

The militia from the western Lib-yan town of Tarhouna stormed the airport to protest the mysterious disappearance of militia leader Abu Ajeila al-Habishi from the capital in early June. Habishi had established his battalion to fight the spillovers of the old regime following the revo-lution. The standoff was resolved within hours after interior ministry forces arrived, but the damage was already done.

“Tarhouna did well to move on, and now the people who actually fought against [former President Muammar] Qadhafi from the first day made a mistake that will haunt the city for few months,” says Wa-leed Hassan, a candidate from Tar-houna for the 200-member National Congress election, set to take place in three weeks.

Besides alarming already skepti-cal investors about the situation in Libya, the attack raised many ques-tions regarding the ability of the transitional authorities to handle the pre-election period, given lingering security challenges exacerbated by a hindered reconciliation process.

Given that it took eight months of bloodshed to bring Libya out of dic-tatorship, it was always expected that the transition would not be smooth. Seven months after the announce-ment of liberation, Libya is set to vote for the National Congress. Al-most 2.7 million registered to vote, amounting to 80 percent of eligible voters.

For many Libyans the elections promise stability, but many challeng-es lie face the transition before they

begin voting. Politicians consider reconciliation a critical challenge before the poll, and especially before the constitution is drafted.

Recent efforts to bridge the gap between the revolutionaries and supporters of the former regime by Muslim Brotherhood member Sheikh Ali al-Sallabi, who was asked to arbitrate by Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the head of the National Transitional Council, have met strong criticism. Sallabi reportedly conversed with pro-Qadhafi tribal confederations in Cairo last May, including Qadhafi’s cousin Ahmed Qadhaf al-Dam.

Nevertheless, there’s a widespread belief that reconstruction and se-curity problems can only be solved through reconciliation.

“Reconciliation is very impor-tant to move forward,” says Hassan. “People don’t understand how some use the loyalist label to exploit others for their personal interest.”

Closely tied to the reconciliation question is security, which remains a struggle on all levels, with the airport characterizing for this challenge.

According to a senior interior ministry source, the alert level has been raised to deal with any kind of threat. Based on intelligence reports, all cars with large trunks, and ambulances in particular, will be closely monitored to foil any at-

Abdel Hakim Belhadj

tempt to destabilize the country.Increasing weapons proliferation

epitomizes the lingering instabil-ity, and interim authorities have a limited mandate to solve the prob-lem. In this vein, many believe the elected National Congress will be the one entity in a position to solve the problem of armament. For now, the interim authorities believe that the national police alone cannot be fully responsible for providing secu-rity and that the armed forces should have a stake.

Another issue is the lack of any governing structure, which means a lot of work for the transitional coun-cil as they have to not only manage the country until the elections take place, but work out the governing process to manage the country with temporary laws.

The authorities issued dozens of temporary laws to cope with differ-ent challenges. The decisions issued by the transition council have been met with severe criticism on many occasions. For one, a law grant-ing immunity from prosecution to members of the former regime working in favor of the revolution was criticized on the basis that it promotes “selective justice,” as hu-man rights watchdogs labeled it.

Nevertheless, many see tomor-row’s Libya in the elections.

Abdel Hakim Belhadj, the former head of the military council of Trip-oli, thinks that the elections will be the turning point.

“After all the sacrifices, the feeling of going to elections is nothing less of an achievement. We know the future of Libya is important to all of us, and that is why we have to think above personal interests,” he says.

“The National Congress will solve many outstanding issues of the coun-try, and this is why all parties are pre-paring for the electoral campaign to inform the people of their message. It is the only way to succeed in the elections,” he adds.

Leaders of different political par-ties are already working on their electoral campaigns. Decentraliza-tion and federalism top the agenda, although no political party has spo-ken in favor of federalism. In fact, few leaders have openly criticized it.

However, outside of party leader-ship, these calls for federalism have resonated in eastern Libya, where the revolution first erupted. Federal-ism is vehemently rejected by people elsewhere in the country who fear that it will threaten Libya’s geograph-ical integrity. At an anti-federalism rally in Tripoli in March, protesters carried a sign that read “Betraying the martyrs’ blood,” referring to the scores who gave their lives for a free and united Libya. The issue has been divisive for public opinion.

But for some, undoing the legacy of Qadhafi is a challenge that tran-scends the electoral divisions.

For Hadi Harrari, the minister of local government, the political cul-ture during the time of Qadhafi is the main threat for the future of Libya.

“There is no infrastructure in Lib-ya. Corruption is an epidemic and it starts from the very bottom. The people have no faith in the system,” he says.

“We need a perfect local gover-nance law to start the development as soon as possible, but after 42 years of tyranny, we also need a little bit of patience.”■

Politicians consider reconciliation a critical challenge before the poll, and especially before the constitution is drafted

A long and winding roadLibya’s elections are preceded by a bundle of transitional challenges

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10 Economy14 June 2012

ing the first half of 2011/12.If growth rates fail to meet the prediction, the

deficit might once again teeter around “unsafe levels” above 10 percent, Kandil said. Higher levels will mean more debt. Egypt is already in a bind, spending around one-quarter of the budget, or LE133 billion, on debt servicing.

The majority of spending increases in the new budget come in the form of pay and com-pensation to state employees, increasing 23 percent to LE136 billion. Kandil and others believe the government should have focused more spending on government investments and human capital rather than succumbing to “short-term placation of higher pay.”

Spending cuts come through de-creased spending on controversial fuel subsidies from LE90 billion to LE70 bil-lion. Energy subsi-dies have long been criticized in Egypt for going directly to the coffers of energy-intensive industries and also for being inefficiently distrib-uted. Saeed said the decrease is meant to address both of those criticisms.

Hanaa Kheir Eddin an economics profes-sor at Cairo University believes that this is a positive step, but that the government can do more.

“The government should eliminate all ener-gy subsidies that do not go to those who need it. Energy-intensive industries mostly export, and so foreign markets benefit from subsidies more than we do, and these companies do not need the subsidies,” said Kheir Eddin, who is also a fellow at the Economic Research Fo-rum and has conducted extensive research on Egypt energy subsidies. By her own estimates, only about 20 percent of energy subsidies in previous budgets went to needy households.

Some of the subsidies will be redirected to fund basic commodities with few additions to note with regard to education and health-care improvement. The Doctors Syndicate threatened a total strike last week, claiming the Finance Ministry went back on an agree-ment to increase healthcare to spending from 4.7 percent to 7 percent of the budget. In its statement, the syndicate said it was shocked by the allocation, especially after finding out that allocations for defense, the police and the

Unaccounted forFinance Ministry submits budget to Parliament, whose role is unclear

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The government should have proposed this budget back in April in order to give the People’s Assembly time to review and amend it

By Mohamed Elmeshad

he 2012/13 fiscal year budget will be the first after the 25 January revolu-tion that will need to be implement-ed by an elected People’s Assembly.

The budget, which is set to go into effect when the fiscal year begins on 1 July, is slightly more ambitious than the previous year’s on social spending, though the plans for its implemen-tation remain somewhat ambiguous and Par-liament’s role in the process seems minimal.

In an address to Parliament in early June, Fi-nance Minister Momtaz al-Saeed expressed a desire to both contribute to economic stabil-ity by reducing wasteful public spending and restructure subsidies and public pay structures in a way that benefits the working class.

The new budget aims to increase spending by roughly 12 percent over last year’s, a tiny increase in real terms as inflation has averaged about 10 percent over the past year.

While cutting some subsidies and increas-ing spending, especially in state employees’ compensation, the government is maintain-ing a similar overall spending structure. Not much has changed in terms of spending on education and health or tax structures.

The new budget projects a deficit of around LE135 billion or 7.8 percent of the GDP, a LE15 billion decrease from last year’s deficit of 9.8 percent. Saeed is planning for higher returns from taxes and non-tax income, both of which depend on the economy’s perfor-mance.

The Finance Ministry predicts 4 to 4.5 per-

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People’s Assembly’s Budget and Planning Committee in session

cent GDP growth this fiscal year, an area where many economists see this budget’s pitfall.

“In 2011/12, we’ll see GDP growth of less than 1.8 percent [the same as 2010/11]. This maybe an overestimation ... the deficit may be higher than expected,” said Magda Kandil, executive director of the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies.

The Finance Ministry is ostensibly basing its growth predictions on a strong third-quarter performance of the Egyptian economy, which saw 5.2 percent GDP growth in comparison to shrinking by 4.3 percent during the same period last year and a stagnant economy dur-

presidency increased.“It seems like Parliament has no real prob-

lems with the policy of the budget and thinks that the problem was only corruption,” said Amr Adly, a political economy expert and re-searcher with the Egyptian Initiative for Per-sonal Rights. Adly said he believes the entire structure of the budget needs an overhaul if it is to truly address issues of social justice on a grand scale, but sees this as a long-term fight that this transitional government, and perhaps the current Parliament, might not have the stomach for.

Parliament wanting to play its roleKandil blames the shortcomings of this bud-get on the lack of communication between Parliament and the Cabinet of Ministers.

However, as Parliament is only able to final-ly get a first look at the budget on 1 June, the legislature, which is full of first-time MPs with little experience reviewing national budgets, had very little time to fully study it.

“The government should have proposed this budget back in April in order to give the People’s Assembly time to review and amend it,” Adly said.

Saad al-Husseini, a Freedom and Justice Party MP and chair-man of the People’s Assembly’s Budget and Planning Com-mittee, expressed his anger at the late arrival of the budget proposal, saying, “I don’t know if they want us to boil it or study it.”

MPs essentially had a month to approve

or reject the proposal. “There is no way new MPs would be able to

fully process such a complicated and thorough document in such a short period of time,” said Adly.

The deputy chairman of the committee, FJP MP Ashraf Badr Eddin, said the committee has set aside 60 sessions to discuss the budget. This is unlikely before the new fiscal year be-gins, forcing the government to continue op-erating under the 2011/12 budget.

In this scenario, the People’s Assembly has up to three months to approve a new budget, at the end of which the government would use the previous year’s budget for the rest of the year.■

Momtaz al-Saeed

Saad al-Husseini

11Economy Briefs14 June 2012

Demonstrators call for justice for those who killed protesters during the revolution

EFG Hermes stands its ground OCI makes loss, stays ambitious

Giving Islamic banks a boost

A joint venture between Egyptian investment bank EFG Hermes and Qatar’s QInvest, approved by EFG shareholders on 2 June, is legally binding and can only be reversed through legal action, EFG said on Tuesday.

PlanetIB, an investment bank owned by Egyptian and Gulf Arab investors, has put forward an unwanted buy-out o�er to EFG. �is came a�er EFG announced plans to folds its main investment banking operation into a joint venture with the Qatari state-owned investment group.

“Backing out of the QInvest deal would amount to a break of contract,” EFG said.

EFG has seen its market value fall sharply since the revolu-tion began. �e bank was recently cast further into the shadows when its two co-chief executives, Hassan Heikal and Yasser al-Mallawany, were charged with insider trading along-side Hosni Mubarak’s sons, Gamal and Alaa.

Despite its recent troubles, analysts told the Financial Times last week that EFG Hermes is a well-run business with exten-sive expertise in its region.■

�e Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party is proposing changes to the banking law to increase Islamic banks’ market share from 5 to 35 per-cent, a parliamentary lawmaker told Reuters.

Ahmed al-Naggar, a member of the FJP’s economic commi�ee, said the proposal envisages a new Islamic banking section being

added to the law, which cur-rently has no speci�c regulations covering Islamic banks. �e dra� amendments have been present-ed to Parliament, but no dates have been scheduled to discuss them, Naggar said.

Islamic �nance obeys religious principles such as the ban on the payment of interest and pure monetary speculation.■

Salem extradition suspended

Balance of payments woes

�e Spanish Constitutional Court has sus-pended the extradition of fugitive businessman Hussein Salem until his request for asylum is answered. �e court obliged Salem to go to the police station every morning and prove that he is staying at his home in Madrid. A Spanish national court had or-dered the handover of Salem on the grounds that he exploited his Spanish nationality to evade extradition.

Salem was arrested in Madrid in June 2011 on corruption charges. He was ac-cused of giving former President Hosni Mubarak and his two sons, Alaa and Gamal, luxury villas valued at 5 million euros in Sharm el-Sheikh for free, in return for Mubarak granting him more than 2 million square meters of land in the same area.

�e Cairo Criminal Court acqui�ed the defen-dants on 2 June, saying the sales occurred more than 10 years ago, which is beyond the statute of limitations for non-state employees to be prosecuted on corruption charges.■

In the �rst nine months of the �nancial year 2011/12, Egypt’s balance of payments went deeper into the red with a de�cit of US$11.2 bil-lion, compared to $5.5 billion a year earlier, due to low tourism and investment �gures.

Egypt’s economy and sources of foreign currency have been af-fected by political un-rest since the toppling of former President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.

�e current account de�cit widened to $6.4 billion for the nine-month period from July 2011 to March 2012, from $4.7 billion in the

same period a year earlier, according to Central Bank �gures obtained by Reuters.

Egypt’s �nancial year begins on 1 July.Foreign direct investment fell to $218 million

in the same period, compared to $2.1 billion a year earlier. FDI contributed signi�cantly to Egypt’s growth prior to Mubarak’s downfall.

Tourism receipts dropped to $7.1 billion from $8.7 billion a year earlier.■

Egypt’s largest company by market value, Orascom Con-struction Industries, has reported a 54 percent first-quarter net loss on Monday while securing a US$100 million loan to help it expand in the region.

OCI, owned by billionaire businessman Nassef Sawiris, says the loss is due to the sale of a stake in US grain mer-chant Gavilon, lower sales volumes and a drop in prices in the company’s fertilizer business. Net profit fell to $94 mil-lion from $206.3 million in the same period a year earlier.

The company is in the process of splitting its construc-tion and fertilizer businesses into two new companies. It expects improved earnings for the rest of the year with resurgent fertilizer prices in late March, coupled with increases in production from new fertilizer plants.

Meanwhile, OCI has secured a loan from the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation, to be used for existing and new projects. The IFC says this reflects its confidence in Egypt’s private sector.■

Finance Ministry pays martyrs’ families

Families of those who died in the 25 January revolution, and the injured, have been re-ceiving compensation, the Finance Ministry said in a statement released on Monday.

Between Wednesday and Sunday last week, the ministry gave out 1,531 checks worth a total of LE32 million to 458 families that represent 59 percent of martyrs’ fami-

lies, it said.Each family is entitled to a total of

LE100,000 in compensation, according to Law 16 of 2012. A total of LE30,000 has already been spent on families, and now the remaining LE70,000 is being distributed. �e families are asked to pick up checks from the ministry’s Cairo headquarters.■

EBRD seeks civil society feedback

A note on inflation and interest rates

�e European Bank for Reconstruc-tion and Development will meet with Egyptian civil society organizations on Monday ahead of the bank’s plan to invest in the Egyptian private sec-tor beginning in September through a LE1 billion Euro Special Fund cre-ated for the Southern Eastern Medi-terranean region, which also includes Morocco, Tunisia and Jordan.

�e purpose of the meetings is to solicit feedback from civil society on a dra� plan that would serve as a basis for preparing country assess-ments and operational priorities. �e feedback will be summarized and, alongside input from the government and business, considered by EBRD’s senior management and discussed by its board of directors in July.

�e meetings will cover democracy, the human rights and civil society operating environment, macroeco-nomic and business climate, social and environmental issues, and EBRD’s operational priorities in the respective countries.■

Egypt’s in�ationary pressures may be easing, but this is unlikely to cause the Central Bank of Egypt to cut interest rates as pressure on the pound remains high, said research consultancy Capital Economics in a statement Monday.

“�e fall in Egyptian in�ation to a seven-month low in May is good news, but does not provide su�cient grounds for the central bank to cut its benchmark interest rate on �ursday,” it said.

Urban consumer price in�ation, the most closely watched indicator of prices, eased to 8.3 percent in May from 8.8 percent in April. It is expected to average 8 percent over the next two years.

Capital Economics a�ributes the decline to the weak economy dampen-ing underlying price pressures and last year’s spike in global commodity prices unwinding. Egypt’s balance of payments position remains precarious and, though liquid foreign reserves have fallen, they are also subject to seasonal spikes. Foreign investors are also not returning to Egypt for the time being. Capital Eco-nomics expects the pound to depreciate to between LE6 and LE7 per dollar in the coming months.■

Hassan Heikal Nassef Sawiris

Hussein SalemHosni Mubarak

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A parliamentary session

12 Focus File14 June 2012

Milestones in Egyptian courts’ history1867: One of Egypt’s most notable politicians and reformers,

Nubar Pasha (1825–1899), proposes a revolutionary idea to Khe-dive Ismail: the establishment of the “Mixed Court.” �e court was founded in 1875 to deal with disputes between Egyptians and foreigners as well as disputes between foreigners of di�erent na-tionalities.

1883: One year a�er the British occupation, Egyptians establish a court that deals with disputes between Egyptians themselves. Many of the rulings of Native Courts indicate how Egyptian judg-es struggle to keep their independence from the ruling authorities and the occupation.

Farouk Sultan – The outgoing chairman By Sharif Abdel Kouddous

Farouk Sultan hails from a military background as he served in military courts and earned the title of lieutenant colonel before he moved to civilian courts. In 2009, he was appointed by toppled President Hosni Mubarak as head of the Supreme Constitutional Court. His appointment sparked controversy given his lack of experience in constitutional law and his reputation as a regime loyal-ist. Before heading the court, Sultan was at the helm of the South Cairo Court since 2006, a primary court much further down Egypt’s judicial hierarchy. He was also serving as the head of the commission supervising elections at pro-fessional syndicates, where he was embroiled in disputes with syndicate mem-bers and accused of hampering election procedures. Mubarak’s justice minister, Mamdouh Marie, promoted Sultan to deputy minister for specialized courts in what was perceived as a reward from the regime for his handling of syndicate elections. Sultan also currently heads the Presidential Elections Commission, as per the Constitutional Declaration issued by the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.■

Jury is outExperts disagree on how well-advised it is to take political battles to court

By Ahmed Zaki OsmanFollowing a popular uprising that pushed former President Hosni Mubarak from the presidency and his National Demo-cratic Party from Parliament, many of the crucial decisions determining Egypt’s transition lie with the Supreme Consti-tutional Court, which sits at the top of the only branch of the government that survived the revolution largely intact.

So by merit of its continuity and capacity as an arbitrator, the judiciary shall determine the fate of its two fellow branch-es of state, the executive and the legislative. Two days before the highly polarized runo� vote, the court examines the con-stitutionality of a law challenging the right of Ahmed Sha�q, Mubarak’s last prime minister, to seek the presidency. �e court is also ruling on the constitutionality of the electoral law regulating the parliamentary poll staged last winter that ushered in an Islamist-dominated parliament.

�e rulings could plunge the country into a new phase of political turmoil and delay the transfer of power from mili-tary rulers to elected authorities. At the same time, the rul-ings could be a boon for revolutionary forces disillusioned with a presidential election that could bring a former regime �gure into the presidency, and an Islamist-dominated Par-liament that has yet pass meaningful legisla-tion.

In the mix of it all, experts disagree on the central role the court will and should play be-yond the e�ect of the upcoming rulings.Some say that it is crucial to challenge the authorities through the court, be they the ruling military regime or Parliament. Others raise concerns about the dangers of bringing activism from streets to the courts, the Su-preme Constitutional Court in particular.

Taking it to court�e court was established in 1969 as the body tasked with ruling on the constitutionality of speci�c legislation for the �rst time in Egyptian legal history. Some judges and legal experts see the birth of the court in the con-text of late President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s a�empt to in�u-ence the judiciary by centralizing it and weakening the Court of Cassation.

Nasser’s move to establish the court follows a widely known incident in the history of the judiciary, dubbed “the Judges’ Massacre,” when scores of judges and prosecutors were �red. But for others, the Supreme Constitutional Court represents a core political development for Egypt, which had lacked a judicial entity to review the constitutionality of laws.

For Ahmed Seif al-Islam Hamad, a 61-year-old human rights lawyer, the urgent question is how the present court will have great in�uence over the whole political process.

Hamad advocated seeking a political refuge at the consti-tutional court, saying that in the last two decades, this court has been at the forefront of political activism in the country for various reasons.

“It was a kind of surprise when anti-regime politicians and human rights activists discovered that they can stand before the court to challenge the legitimacy of the regime. Cases of political misconduct and human rights abuses were brought to the court, and the rulings were generally not in favor of the regime,” he said.

“�e court has been issuing rulings that support various freedoms targeted by the former regime of Hosni Mubarak. It also opened avenues for contention when politics were stag-nant and Mubarak had a full grip over the country,” Hamad added.

Tamer Mostafa, a researcher on Egypt’s legal system, wrote that in pursuing its “progressive political agenda,” the court “provided institutional openings for political activists to chal-lenge the state in ways that fundamentally transformed pat-terns of interaction between the state and social forces.”

When the gavel strikesOccasionally at the end of these institutional avenues are rulings protecting press freedoms, freedom of assembly, the

right for individuals to form NGOs without government interference, and the right to fair trial.

“Without a doubt, over the 40 years, the court’s rulings have had some of the deepest impacts on how politics is practiced in this country,” Hamad said.

Most of these rulings pushed the regime either to repeal laws ruled unconstitutional or to issue new laws.

“Take, for example, the court ruling in 2000 about judicial supervision of the elec-tions. See what happened a�er 11 years?” Hamad asks.

In 2000, the court ruled that the law regu-lating the parliamentary election was uncon-stitutional because it gave bodies outside of the judiciary the task of supervising the elec-

tions. �e ruling said the law contradicted Article 88 of the 1971 Constitution, which entrusted the judiciary with the task of supervising the elections, forcing the Mubarak regime to submit to full judicial supervision over the polls.

“At that time, people and opposition �gures hailed the rul-ings, which they rightly thought would deter election fraud, a widespread practice for decades. In fact, the impact was big-ger than having clean elections,” said Hamad.

In the �rst parliamentary elections a�er the ruling, the Muslim Brotherhood, then banned but tolerated, gained 17 seats. Later, in the 2005 elections, they rocked the political scene by winning 88 seats, or 20 percent of Parliament, de-spite electoral irregularities. �ese irregularities pushed doz-ens of judges to step forward against the regime for the �rst time, saying that the regime was making serious e�orts to rig the elections in favor of regime stalwarts.

“So the 2000 ruling led to relatively fair elections in 2005 and the emergence of a movement calling for the indepen-dence of the judiciary,” said Hamad.

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Farouk Sultan

The court provided institutional openings for political activists to challenge the state in ways that transformed patterns of interaction between the state and social forces

13Focus File14 June 2012

Milestones in Egyptian courts’ history1931: A new development in the Egyptian judicial system is in-

troduced with the establishment of the Court of Cassation. �e court is tasked with unifying the application of laws through vari-ous courts. �e court will go on to play a major role in advocating political freedoms through its rulings.

1946: �e State Council is established, charged with ruling on disputes that involve any administrative body in the country.

1969: �e Supreme Constitutional Court is established as “the Supreme Court” in order to have a single judicial body with the ju-risdiction to review the constitutionality of laws and regulations.■

Jury is outExperts disagree on how well-advised it is to take political battles to court

�e regime responded by eliminating the full judicial su-pervision in a notorious set of changes to the Constitution in 2007. �e product was the 2010 parliamentary elections, swept by Mubarak’s now-dissolved National Democratic Party. �e election was described as the most fraudulent poll ever and as one of the triggers to the mass protests that un-seated Mubarak only three months later.

Nabil Abdel Fa�ah, vice president of Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, sees taking street ba�les to the court as a viable option in the current moment.

“�e conditions [today] forced the pro-democracy activ-ists to go to the Supreme Constitutional Court. Take into account that Islamist legislatures are using Parliament to im-pose certain policies that seek to change the face of the state. Street politics are important to counter that [legislation] but the court is important as well,” he said.

He said there are some positive signs that the court is unin-�uenced by any of the forces close to the former regime. An example is the new head of the court.

Late last month, the court’s general assembly agreed to ap-point Maher al-Beheiry, 69, as the new chief judge of the court, succeeding the controver-sial Farouk Sultan, whose term ends on 30 June.

“�is is the �rst time for the court to elect one of its judges to be the chairman. Previ-ously Mubarak was the one who appointed the chairman of the court,” said Hamad.

Beheiry joined the court in 1991, which makes him the most senior judge on the court, currently made up of 19 judges. He served on the court longer than Sultan, who joined in 2009.

Abdel Fa�ah added that Beheiry is more familiar than anyone else with the court and its rulings, especially under the leadership of Judge Awad Almor. Almor, who headed the court from 1991 to 1998, issued several ver-dicts challenging the Mubarak regime.

For legal scholars, Almor’s verdicts were not only impor-tant because they de�ed the government but because his court’s judicial opinions showed deep knowledge, as well as the determination to establish judicial traditions that advo-cate democratic values. His successor, Waley Eddin Galal, followed suit by issuing verdicts stressing democratic values and human rights.

Angered by the rising in�uence of the bench, Mubarak’s re-gime a�empted to curb it by appointing its chief judges from outside the court. Mubarak appointed Judge Fathy Naguib, a former president of the Court of Cassation, as the head of the court in 2001. He then appointed Mamdouh Marie, the former president of Cairo Court of Appeals and a pro-regime �gure, as the head of the court in 2003. Marie was also the head of the Presidential Elections Commission that super-vised the �rst multi-candidate presidential election in 2005, which gave Mubarak a landslide victory. Marie was appointed justice minister in 2006.

�e case can’t be made for everythingBut for Ahmed Abdel Hafeez, a notable lawyer and political activist, pro-democracy forces have to stop using the court as a space for political ba�les.

“Petitioning the court to rule on political issues re�ects the absence of a balance of power between political forces and the regime. You are weak, so you go to the Supreme Consti-tutional Court or any other court. �is might be justi�able before the ousting of Mubarak but now we shouldn’t seek the court in political issues,” said Abdel Hafeez.

He gave one example of how petitioning the judiciary could deliver a blow to political forces. Presidential candidate Ham-deen Sabbahi, who came in a close third in the �rst round of the presidential elections, requested the administrative courts disqualify Sha�q and also to mount a legal challenge to the validity of the elections.

“Sabbahi le� campaigning in the street to cast doubts over the elections and chose the easiest way, which is going to the court. He knows that the court at best will give a ruling that might complicate the political scene but eventually the deci-

sion is in the hands of the Presidential Elec-tions Commission,” he said.

�e commission’s rulings are shielded from any judicial appeal. Economic policy is an-other risky avenue for reformists to a�empt to change via legal ba�les.

“Look at all the laws issued in the socialist era. �e court has been in favor of the free market economy. It supports measures taken by the government, hence furthering the legitimacy of its economic policies,” Abdel Hafeez said.

Judge Youssef Auf saw more systematic risks that could implicate the court in reform ba�les in the political system and the judi-ciary itself. Islamists fear the court, thinking that it threatens their interests, which pushed a pair of MPs from the Nour Party to dra� a

law reshaping the bench, said Auf. �e dra� law in question strips the court of its main pur-

pose, ruling on the constitutionality of legislation. �e dra� law suggests that the court does not have the right to rule on the constitutionality of legislation that secures the approval of three-quarters of Parliament. �e court responded by holding an emergency meeting to reject the legislation, de-scribing it as an insult to the court.

“�is is so dangerous because it didn’t only weaken the court but also opened new doors for interference in the judi-cial a�airs,” said Auf.

�is trend jeopardizes the political forces’ strategy of uti-lizing the court’s neutrality, or at least the popular concep-tion of the court’s impartiality and legitimacy. �e window for reform within the court may be closing as political forces within Parliament, not to mention the incoming president, may move to shi� political ba�les to the nature of the court itself.■

Maher al-Beheiry — The incoming chairman By Ahmed Zaki Osman

Unlike many top judicial �gures in the country who are described as either old regime loyalists or dissidents, Maher al-Beheiry is a senior judge who has es-caped classi�cation on political terms.

Born in 1943, Beheiry spent a signi�cant portion of his professional life on the Supreme Constitutional Court. Before joining the court in September 1991, he was promoted to vice president of the Court of Cassation. A month later he was transferred to the constitutional court. Beheiry started his career at the court in the same year that Judge Awad Almor was appointed as the chairman of it, a post he held until 1998 through which he challenged the Mubarak regime repeatedly.

Currently, Beheiry is the longest-serving judge in the court. Since 2000, Be-heiry’s name has surfaced frequently as member of the panel of judges oversee-ing important cases regarding freedom of association and opinion.

Beheiry is also the judge who ruled last April that the court had no right to review a dra� amendment to a political rights law that would isolate regime �g-ures unless it was already being enforced.■ Maher al-Beheiry

Petitioning the court to rule on political issues reflects the absence of abalance of power between political forces and the regime

14 Opinion14 June 2012

Is Egypt’s judiciary leading the counter-revolution? By Salem Mostafa Kameland Mara Revkin

fter waiting for more than a year and a half for the verdict in Hosni Muba-rak’s trial, Egyptians are now frus-trated with the outcome.

In a decision widely viewed as political and issued at a particularly volatile moment in the electoral process, Judge Ahmed Refaat sentenced the former president and former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly to 25 years in prison, falling short of the prosecution’s demand for the death penalty.

Adding insult to injury, the judge acquitted both of Mubarak’s sons, Gamal and Alaa, of corruption charges, as well as six of Adly’s deputies who were charged with killing pro-testers, citing insufficient evidence. But be-yond the anger at the accused officials, the rulings have sparked outrage at the perceived politicization of the judiciary, believed to be acting in the interests of the former regime and the ruling military council.

Egyptians outraged by the lenient sentenc-ing and outright exoneration of former re-gime officials returned to Tahrir Square in the thousands last week. Prominent revolution-ary figures including former presidential can-didates Khaled Ali, Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh and Hamdeen Sabbahi have publicly condemned the verdicts and demanded a re-trial. Protesters have gone further, calling for “revolutionary trials” and executions. Public anger has turned on the judiciary, viewed as a guardian of the status quo and an apologist for the crimes of the former regime.

Many members of the judiciary now seem to view themselves as the last pillars of sta-bility in an increasingly turbulent political environment, as the Supreme Constitutional Court reviews two high-stakes legal challeng-es that could upend the electoral process and dissolve Parliament itself. Sabbahi, Abouel Fotouh and Brotherhood presidential candi-date Mohamed Morsy are demanding the im-plementation of the Political Isolation Law, already passed by the Islamist-dominated Parliament, which would bar former regime figures, presumably including presidential

candidate Ahmed Shafiq, from running for office.

The law has been put on hold as the Su-preme Constitutional Court reviews it. The court’s decision is scheduled for Thursday. If deemed constitutional, the law would likely require the disqualification of Shafiq, send-ing the electoral process back to square one.

Meanwhile, Parliament itself is challenged by the legal claim that the Parliamentary Elections Law is unconstitutional. Lawyers say the law gave candidates that were running on party lists an unfair advantage over their independent counterparts in the parliamen-tary elections. On 6 May, the Supreme Con-stitutional Court announced that it would delay its final ruling for one month, meaning that a decision is due any day now. If the elec-toral law were found to be unconstitutional, the ruling military council or newly elected president would have the right dissolve Par-liament and call for new elections.

Parliament, perhaps reacting to the legal challenge to its legitimacy, has gone on the offensive against the judiciary. On 4 May, it changed its agenda to discuss the trial of Mubarak and Interior Ministry officials. MPs launched scathing attacks on the judiciary, accusing judges of caving to pressure and in-terference from the executive branch. Wasat Party MP Essam Sultan went so far as to ac-cuse the interim government of hiding and destroying evidence related to Mubarak’s case.

The independence of the judiciary has been further called into question by a criminal in-vestigation of Abdel Moez Ibrahim, a power-ful judge who not only heads the Cairo Court of Appeals but also chaired the committee overseeing the parliamentary elections. He is currently a member of the Presidential Elec-tions Commission.

Ibrahim is viewed as a longtime pawn of the Mubarak regime, responsible for assigning judges to the cases of prominent opposition activists and dissidents such as Ayman Nour and Saad Eddin Ibrahim. He is now accused

of interfering in the work of other judges and lifting the travel ban on foreign defendants in the NGO funding trial, reportedly at the re-quest of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

Although the investigation has reportedly concluded, its outcome has remained shroud-ed in secrecy, prompting suspicions that the executive branch and judiciary are cooperat-ing to suppress the findings of a probe that would reflect poorly on both. The case is yet another example of the extent to which the activities and interests of the judiciary and executive are undemocratically intertwined.

The judiciary is not the only body under pressure from the executive branch. People’s Assembly Speaker Saad al-Katatny has also accused the interim government of pressur-ing Parliament to renew the Emergency Law, which expired last week. However, Katatny insists that Parliament would not renew the law out of respect for the Egyptian people.

Some MPs, frustrated by the Mubarak ver-dict and the broader issue of executive in-terference in the judiciary, are considering joining protests in Tahrir Square. However, others refuse to take their grievances to the street, saying they will seek legal recourse through the system by establishing a new parliamentary committee to explore issues of injustice.

Just as the first Day of Rage was sparked by outrage at an institutional culture of impunity that allowed police officers to get away with murder, protesters are again calling for mass demonstrations in Tahrir Square to demand justice and accountability for state-perpetrat-ed crimes. The level of anger at the judiciary indicates that Egypt still has a long way to go before the rule of law, one of the central ob-jectives of the revolution, is achieved. ■

Salem Mostafa Kamel

is an Egyptian attorney based in Cairo. Mara Revkin is the editor of EgyptSource.

This article was originally published on the Atlantic Council’s blog, EgyptSource.

Public anger has turned on the judiciary, viewed as a guardian of the status quo and an apologist for the crimes of the former regime

The next battle will take longer than 18 days By Issandr El Amrani

deaths, not that they had ordered them (and consequently let off all of the other security chiefs involved).

In the meantime, Mohamed Morsy of the Freedom and Justice Party (and, much more importantly, the Brotherhood candidate) is having something of a makeover. Having been dubbed by the Brotherhood’s supreme guide as a new Abu Bakr, the first caliph after the death of Prophet Mohamed, he is now trying to rally those who did not vote for him by saying he is the candidate of the revolution. This is certainly more credible than Shafiq being the candidate of the revolution, but one may ask where Morsy and his Brothers were last year, when they re-mained largely silent as more protesters were killed in the Mohamed Mahmoud Street and Cabinet clashes. The Brotherhood was largely happy to work with the ruling military council and other politically conservative forces.

At stake over this back-and-forth — the po-litical attacks, the outright lies, the wooing of the majority of the electorate that voted nei-ther for Shafiq nor Morsy — is the privilege to define what the revolution was. The word has been cheapened in the last year, in more than one way, and means different things to different people now. The counter-revolutionary estab-lishment Shafiq represents wants the revolu-tion to end with the overthrow of Mubarak. The Brotherhood sees the revolution’s goal as implementing its “Renaissance Project.” With-out a doubt, there are many different versions

The next battle might not be won in public squares, but in courts, in Parliament, in activism that takes place in dirty alleyways and isolated villages, and in the field of ideas and civil society, with humility and perseverance

olitical discourse in Egypt at the best of times can be strange and full of empty talk, or kalam fadi. But some of the statements recently made by presiden-

tial candidate Ahmed Shafiq and the media that support him are rather odd. Several days ago, we were treated by Shafiq presenting himself as the candidate of the revolution who would usher Egypt into a bright future, while his rival repre-sented “a return to the dark ages” and chaos. He continued to present the Muslim Brotherhood as not just a group of religious fanatics that would take individual freedoms back decades — that attack is fairly standard — but as having been a part of the old regime. The irony appears to have been lost on the man who served the Hosni Mubarak regime for many years and was appointed as prime minister in the last days of his presidency. Shafiq now presents himself as the candidate of “national reconciliation.”

A few days later, Al-Dostour — the once-feisty newspaper run by the courageous journalist Ibrahim Eissa until its owner, Wafd Party leader Al-Sayed al-Badawy, kicked him out — joined in the Brotherhood-bashing. The real murder-ers of the more than 853 protesters killed dur-ing the 2011 uprising, it said, were not security forces but Brotherhood death squads. That cer-tainly seems to answer the question of who was actually responsible for the murders, since the court that sentenced Mubarak and ex-Interior Minister Habib al-Adly to prison for 25 years only found that they had failed to prevent the

P

A

of the revolution and many attempts to subvert it.

This may be unpopular to say, but a good part of the blame for the lack of a clear idea of what the revolution is lies with the revolutionaries themselves. Some seem to be content with con-stant attempts to recreate the mood of those magical 18 days in Tahrir Square, but any re-cent visit to the square tells another story. The revolution was not the occupation of the square itself, but the act of taking it and routing secu-rity forces in order to do so. If you’re allowed to retake the square anyway, if it becomes a dedi-cated protest zone like the steps of the Journal-ists Syndicate once were, it’s hardly a transgres-sive measure anymore.

The revolutionaries also failed to define what it was they wanted from this revolution, and to sell this idea to the wider population that, most of the time, is not interested in protests and marches. To recapture the imagination of the population, to take their rivals off-balance once again, the revolutionaries have to strike where it’s least expected, and in a manner that is nov-el. The next battle might not be won in public squares, but in courts, in Parliament, in activ-ism that takes place in dirty alleyways and iso-lated villages, and in the field of ideas and civil society, with humility and perseverance. And it’s going to take a lot longer than 18 days.■

Issandr El Amrani is a writer on Middle Eastern affairs. He blogs at www.arabist.net.

15Opinion14 June 2012

The church, the regime and the revolution By Magdi Guirguis

bership to his disciples in order to ensure their loy-alty. Eventually, the Holy Synod was instrumental for the pope’s imposition of his authoritarian views and policies.

More importantly, Shenouda expanded the Holy Synod’s mandate at the expense of another Coptic lay institution, the Millet Council. �e Millet Council is considered the o�cial repre-sentative body of the Copts before the state and has the right to oversee the church’s non-religious dealings, supervise the clergy and overlook all administrative and �nancial a�airs related to the churches and the monasteries. According to the church’s laws, the members of the Millet Council have to be elected by the Coptic community, but Shenouda trespassed this and began appointing the council’s constituents. �e Millet Council, accordingly submi�ed to the pope who gradually became the sole representative of Copts.

While implementing his new policies, Shen-

The fruits of the solid relationship between the church and the regime were disastrous for ordinary Copts

t’s not a surprise that the Coptic Orthodox Church has endorsed Ahmed Sha�q’s nom-ination for the presidency. �e church in fact has a solid and clear opposition the 25

January revolution, present since its very onset.But in order to understand the church’s oppo-

sition to the revolution and its endorsement of Sha�q, we have to go back to tracing the relation-ship between Hosni Mubarak’s regime and Pope Shenouda III. I argue that Shenouda has trans-formed the church’s structure and policies in a manner that granted him monopoly over decision making and full power over Coptic a�airs. In do-ing so, he forged a pronounced alliance with the regime that led to safeguarding the privileges of the church — not the Copts — in return for en-dorsing Mubarak’s rule wholeheartedly.

A�er Shenouda’s fallout with former President Anwar Sadat, the la�er decided to remove the pope from his position, and delegated his respon-sibilities to a papal commi�ee. While in exile, the papal commi�ee handled the a�airs of the church with li�le consultation with Shenouda. In reac-tion to being sidelined, Shenouda reshaped his thinking and overhauled the church’s policies a�er Mubarak decided to give him his position back in January 1985.

Shenouda’s comeback policies aimed at con-centrating all the church’s power in the pope’s hands only. In his a�empt to monopolize power, Shehouda reshaped two important institutions.

He �rst expanded the authorities of the Holy Synod. �e Holy Synod is the supreme ecclesiastical institution, and its membership is con�ned to bishops and abbots. �e main aim of the new bylaws issued by Shenouda in 1985 was to expand the Holy Synod’s power while limiting the authority of all other Cop-tic groups. On the other hand, the pope, as the head of the Holy Synod, monopolized decision making. According to Article 15 of the bylaws, “the Holy Synod cannot hold any meeting without the presence of the pope, as long as he is alive.” Article 54 stipulates that the pope is the sole representative of the church with the full power to run church a�airs and represent it before the state and other agencies. Additionally, Shen-ouda con�ned the Holy Synod’s mem-

The conscientious objectors By Adel Iskandar

n August 1966, at the height of the Vietnam War and with the United States embroiled in a deep and lengthy con�ict, a young �ghter with considerable renown and popu-

larity across the world became persona non grata for refusing to take part in his “national duty” and go to the front lines. Muhammad Ali was a rising star in the boxing world when the dra� called him to join the troops in Southeast Asia, but he broke with protocol when he declared that war is against the teaching of the Quran, and put himself on a legal and moral collision course with the state and the public. In doing so, he joined the ranks of a growing number of young men and women who took a stance against the war. In a state where their refrain was deemed illegal, they were pub-licly known as conscientious objectors.

Today, the Egyptian electorate faces a struggle not unlike that of the young boxer. With the ma-jority not falling into the categories of Muslim Brotherhood supporters or former regime sym-pathizers, choosing between Ahmed Sha�q and Mohamed Morsy in the second round has turned into a moral mine�eld. �e un�a�ering outcomes of a complete monopoly by the Brotherhood of all but one branch of government versus the re-constitution of Hosni Mubarak’s old guard have catapulted a third and increasingly popular third option onto the scene — the boyco� option.

Not unlike conscientious objectors, the boyco� camp has been subjected to perhaps the most vi-cious a�ack from both sides of the election spec-trum as they are described in the same vernacular as those who reneged on the military dra�. As is the case with all election boyco� campaigns, observers are always met with fervent accusa-

tory defamation, from claims of disloyalty and lack of patriotism to dishonoring one’s country. In the case of revolutionary Egypt, intentionally not voting or voiding one’s vote is seen at best as a deplorable act akin to leading the country into a dark abyss, and at worst desecrating the memory of the revolution’s martyrs.

Not seeing one’s candidate in the runo� is rarely justi�able grounds for a boyco�. And in the case of the runo� between Sha�q and Morsy, this isn’t the thrust of the argument for Egypt’s boyco�ers. Instead it is a deep-seated conviction that the anomaly is not in the choices but in the structure of the system. What was built on a mistake can only be erroneous. In the end, this is an election devoid of legal legitimacy from conception to execution. Nevertheless, the Egyptian electorate has been forced to sleepwalk their way through the voting process as if walking the plank toward outcomes already ve�ed by the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

In the end, we should not expect that either Sha�q or Morsy would create a cataclysmic change in the way politics in Egypt will function. �e fear, concern, worry and absolute paranoia are palpable. Suspicions that Sha�q will prove to be a more diabolical dictator than his predecessor and use violence gratuitously or that Morsy will turn Egypt into Afghanistan, are quite ungrounded. Both candidates are more likely to pragmatically oppose the continuation of revolutionary action and support a status quo that a�rms stability at all costs.

However, for all intents and purposes, the elec-tion boyco� doesn’t need a campaign to gather support. Egyptians have already been observing

it. From the constitutional amendments vote in March 2011 to the presidential election in June 2012, the voter turnout across the country has steadily dropped despite the greater visibility of the campaigns and the rising stakes. Although the boyco� in Egypt won’t achieve remarkable success, such as Jamaica’s in 1983 when the voter turnout was a laughable 2.7 percent (which kept the incumbent party in power for several years), elections under military rule have already lost their stamina.

We must come to terms with a new reality: that revolutionary Egypt is simply ungovernable. �e country is no longer what Mubarak touted as a “nation of institutions.” With institutional failure came self-government — Egyptians o�en say “al-balad mashya belbaraka” (blessings are what keep the country going). �e state has choked on both its incompetence and the revolution, and Egyptians have taken it upon themselves to reconstitute their own state outside of power. �e best example of this is that the seven-month dis-appearance of the police force in Egypt did not result in a complete collapse of the public order. Whether Egyptians go to the polls or avoid them in the coming days is not a testament to their en-thrallment with the process or their faith in the system, but rather a performance that does not hide their displeasure with those they elect. A word of advice for Egypt’s next “elected” presi-dent: Whether or not we dip our �ngers in the dye, we are all conscientious objectors.■

Adel Iskandar is a media scholar and lecturer

at Georgetown University

The Egyptian electorate has been forced to sleepwalk their way through the voting process as if walking the plank toward outcomes already vetted by the ruling SCAF

I

I

the council’s constituents. �e Millet Council, accordingly submi�ed to the pope who gradually became the sole representative of Copts.

While implementing his new policies, Shen-

dorsing Mubarak’s rule wholeheartedly. A�er Shenouda’s fallout with former President

Anwar Sadat, the la�er decided to remove the pope from his position, and delegated his respon-sibilities to a papal commi�ee. While in exile, the papal commi�ee handled the a�airs of the church with li�le consultation with Shenouda. In reac-tion to being sidelined, Shenouda reshaped his thinking and overhauled the church’s policies a�er Mubarak decided to give him his position back in

Shenouda’s comeback policies aimed at con-centrating all the church’s power in the pope’s hands only. In his a�empt to monopolize power, Shehouda reshaped two important

He �rst expanded the authorities of the Holy Synod. �e Holy Synod is the supreme ecclesiastical institution, and its membership is con�ned to bishops and abbots. �e main aim of the new bylaws issued by Shenouda in 1985 was to expand the Holy Synod’s power while limiting the authority of all other Cop-tic groups. On the other hand, the pope, as the head of the Holy Synod, monopolized decision making. According to Article 15 of the bylaws, “the Holy Synod cannot hold any meeting without the presence of the pope, as long as he is alive.” Article 54 stipulates that the pope is the sole representative of the church with the full power to run church a�airs and represent it before the state and other agencies. Additionally, Shen-ouda con�ned the Holy Synod’s mem-

ouda also began to build a solid relationship with Mubarak’s regime. In June 1987, the Holy Synod issued a decree to encourage Copts to register their names in the voting lists, in preparation for electing Mubarak and his party. Since 1993, the Holy Synod began to religiously endorse the re-election of Mubarak for the presidency. In ad-dition, the pope began to openly guide Copts to elect members of the National Democratic Party to show his allegiance to the regime. �e pope even expressed his support for Gamal Mubarak as his father’s successor.

�e fruits of the solid relationship between the church and the regime were disastrous for ordi-nary Copts. �e public, particularly the Muslim majority, began to perceive the church as one of the regime’s corrupt institutions. �is perception led many to falsely believe that the “riches” of the church are directed at supporting the Cop-tic community, fueling envy among non-Coptic Egyptians. �is, accordingly, intensi�ed sectar-ian tension since Copts were being perceived as a privileged group, living in the abode of the re-

gime.�e “riches” of the church were instead

paying for bribes for permission to build elaborate churches. At the same time, the church seemed to be uninterested

in the real problems of ordinary Copts, since it in fact only represented the cler-

gy and the elite’s interests. �e bishops under Shenouda have gained unprecedented power, since they controlled all �nancial and admin-istrative a�airs through dominating the Mil-let Council. �ey additionally have bene�ted

greatly from their relationship with the regime. It is not a surprise then that the church would

oppose the revolution that toppled Mubarak and rush to support Sha�q for the presidency.

Even a�er Shenouda’s death, the church leaders would never give up their privileges or care about a revo-lution that calls for freedom and so-

cial justice — ideals that are quite the antithesis of the church’s hierarchy.■

Magdi Guirguis teaches at the Department of Arab and

Islamic Civilizations at the American University in Cairo

16 Environment14 June 2012

By Hazem Zohny

nfectious diseases don’t care about politics or elections,” says Ahmed Abdel Hady, a farmer from Tabluha in the Nile Delta

governorate of Monu�ya. Abdel Hady is referring to the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease that started in Egypt �ve months ago, an almost forgo�en but still very pressing cri-sis that has been overshadowed by Egypt’s electoral hysteria.

Since its detection, the disease has infected between 70,000 and 100,000 ca�le, killing more than 10,000 of them. �e inability to as-certain the exact number infected says it all. Managing the outbreak has been, to put it mildly, far from exemplary. Worse, the vaccination program currently underway to protect the rest of Egypt’s 6 million cows and water bu�alo is already riddled with delay and controversy.

Foot-and-mouth disease is noto-rious for the high fevers it induces in cloven-hoofed animals, form-ing blisters inside the mouth and hooves. Highly infectious, it is trans-mi�ed by the saliva of sick animals but can live outside a host for long periods, spreading easily through contaminated clothes, hay and even the hands of livestock inspectors. However, eating infected meat rarely a�ects humans, as stomach acid can normally destroy the picornavirus behind the disease.

Due to the novelty of this par-ticular strain, SAT2, livestock in the region have not acquired resistance to it. SAT2 is normally limited to sub-Saharan Africa and has not been reported in Egypt for at least 50 years. A speci�c vaccine to match it has had to be mass produced from scratch. But since identifying the requirements for the vaccine, Egypt’s Veterinary Serum and Vac-cines Research Institute, which the government tasked with producing the vaccine, has only made 300,000 units. �ese were dispersed to vari-ous governorates starting 19 April and have since run out.

�e number is too small to curb

the disease’s spread. Abdel Hady, the Monu�ya farmer, has managed to vaccinate much of his livestock, though not without hounding government o�cials. Many of his neighboring farmers have not been so lucky, he says.

Just how lucky he is, however, re-mains unclear. According to Markos Tibbo, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s Near East animal protection and health o�cer, several emergency shortcuts have been taken in the production and testing of the vaccine, poten-tially rendering it ine�ective, if not dangerous.

In assessing the acceptability of a vaccine, the organization requires documentation to validate the claim that production followed protocol and that vaccine batches passed quality control testing.

�e requirements for such assur-ances are set up by the World Or-ganization for Animal Health fol-lowing international agreed upon standards. One of those standards is sending the vaccine to be tested for quality control — such as sterility, safety and potency — at a desig-nated independent reference labo-ratory such as the World Reference Laboratory at the UK’s Institute for Animal Health. Instead, the vaccine

was released a�er being tested for sterility and safety locally without undergoing remaining tests.

As such, the FAO has not been able to approve the vaccine.

“It may be perfectly good,” says Tibbo, “but we just need to make sure of that through scienti�c and supporting data.”

While the FAO has not ap-proved the vaccine, it has helped train government sta� in data col-lection, which will be crucial in determining the vaccine’s e�cacy as well as ensuring its correct use. �ere is concern that, in a climate of intensi�ed mismanagement, the possibility of immunizing already infected ca�le is high. �is can ex-acerbate the clinical symptoms of the disease, increasing mortality rates. More seriously, if the vaccine turns out to be ine�ective, it may seriously compromise farmers’ trust in the government and further complicate the future possibility of controlling the spread of the virus.

Currently, it remains too early to tell if the vaccine is e�ective. �e number of infected ca�le was sig-ni�cantly dropping even before the vaccine was ready, a natural drop in the cycle of an outbreak. But with-out proper immunization on a mass scale, there is a real risk that the

spread of the disease will pick up again in the coming winter.

“We will stop this from happen-ing,” says Sayed Zeidan, deputy di-rector for production at the Veteri-nary Serum and Vaccines Research Institute. Zeidan blames the delay in the vaccine’s production on com-plications in the import of newborn calf serum, a central component in the vaccine.

“�is issue has now been re-solved,” Zeidan says. On top of the 300,000 units previously produced, the institute has manufactured a fur-ther 400,000 units this week. “We intend to have made a total of 2.2 million units by the end of June — as stipulated in our contract.”

According to Zeidan, the institute complied with international proto-cols set up by the World Organiza-tion for Animal Health.

“But you have to remember this was an emergency situation. We fol-lowed the minimum requirements to at least be certain it would be safe and e�ective,” Zeidan says.

Just how safe and e�ective it is re-mains to be seen. In the meantime, serious concern over the spread of the disease to neighboring countries remains a priority for the FAO. �e same strain of the virus was found in the Gaza Strip in April, which almost certainly spread there via ca�le smuggled from Egypt in tun-nels. Libya and Bahrain have also reported the SAT2 strain, though genetic analyses show the virus af-fecting ca�le in Egypt is of a di�er-ent lineage.

To that extent, the origin of the disease in Egypt remains a mystery. According to Tibbo, while a simi-lar strain was reported in 2007 in Sudan, the only way it could have come to Egypt is through the quar-antine system in Aswan. But the virus was never reported in Upper Egypt and has spread mostly in the Delta region to the north. While this particular strain of the virus ap-pears to share lineages with a virus in Chad and Niger, the way it made its way to the heart of the Nile Delta is currently a mystery.■

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Inspecting a cow suspected of having foot-and-mouth disease

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Going viral Foot-and-mouth vaccination plan riddled with delay and controversy

There is a real risk that the spread of the disease will pick up again in the coming winter

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17Science & Technology14 June 2012

Slimmer is better?HP unveils new products but leaves Middle East strategy flimsy

MacBook Pro design elements.The least conspicuous products were the

point of sale solutions, or checkout sys-tems. However, the little-frequented prod-uct booth turned out to be a favorite of the entire product show, defying expectations that one could not be excited by point of sale solutions.

The big guy of the booth was the RP7 retail system, an all-in-one point of sale system. At first sight, the device looks as bulky and unfriendly as any other point of sale device, and HP could dave done a much better job with the external de-sign. The machine was ruggedized and made more durable. HP also integrated a number of other design features, such as incorporating a detachable credit card

reader, and turning the product into a movable, swirling system where the screen can be moved, tilted or detached to become an in-store display. The other device completing the in-store solutions showcase was a handheld, dockable point of sale, which could be used as a regular store point of sale, if necessary.

The summit is hoped to indirectly unveil the new face of a company that sees itself more in tune with corporate partners and with its clients.

Resounding is HP’s absence are solutions for mobility. Executive Vice President Todd Bradley said that HP was “working closely with Microsoft on a tablet” — far from an industry secret at this point, but attendees were not to get any insights into

the company’s tablet strategy. The fact remains that while the tablet market is growing and appears far from saturation, surprisingly given their weak processing power that barely surpasses that of smart-phones, HP will have to come up with a very exciting product to carve a niche where a few products have established their dominance and that of their respec-tive operating systems. Will a Windows-powered HP tablet be capable of rivaling the iPad and Samsung Galaxy tablets? That remains to be seen, but gut feelings say no.

I was curious to know what HP had regarding the Middle East. The answer: zilch. When a Saudi blogger asked Direc-tor of Design Stacy Wolf, he answered by speaking about Brazil. When Egypt In-dependent asked Senior Vice President James Mouton, he spoke about the great work the company does in China.

Sadly, despite the wealth of talent in both technology and design available in the re-gion, the Middle East is little more than an exciting market to sell premium products. That there is more to the Middle East than the Gulf may have escaped them. Wolf as-serts that consumer surveys were being conducted in “at least one country in the region.” At least they realize that the Mid-dle East is a group of various countries, un-like Africa, which Whitman once referred to as “a country.” I can only hope this was a tongue slip and not a company strategic perspective.■

Will a Windows-powered HP tablet be capableof rivaling the iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tablets?

By Mohamed El Dahshan

ewlett-Packard’s massive product show and launch in Shanghai, China, named the “Global Influ-encer Summit,” gathered about

600 media and technology professionals and stood for both a massive product show, with HP showcasing over 80 new products the company is launching in 2012. At the same time, it functioned as a giant con-ference for media and industry figures to interact with the HP leadership that was all-ears and all-smiles.

Only a handful of the products was par-ticularly interesting. The t410 (AiO) All-in-One Smart Zero Client has the poten-tial of setting a new industry standard. It is a client (computer terminal) connected to a server that does the computing. It fea-tures a very exciting innovation that con-nects the system by a single wire for both data and power.

The HP Envy Spectre XT takes a while to become excited about, but CEO Meg Whitman declared it “the must have ul-trabook.” Whitman’s characterization is fair; it’s a sexy piece of technology. At 14.5 millimeters thick, it features an all-metallic design, a 13-inch screen and a full solid-state drive that massively improves response time and shortens the boot time, a feature in which PCs have lagged behind Apple products. That said, one can’t help but think that the Spectre XT has some

H

18 Culture14 June 2012

By Ola El-Saket

ooks of every genre colored the library of novelist Alaa El Deeb, but what immedi-ately caught my attention as I

walked into his study was the framed photograph of one of the revolution’s young martyrs, smiling placidly, and a candle with the words “25 January” embossed on it.

The 73-year-old called us from the first days of the revolution, asking for first-hand updates from Tahrir Square and about how the protesters were doing. The sincerity of his tone always struck me; it was as if he knew each and every one of them. He would en-thusiastically discuss developments on the ground and celebrate the small victories protesters accomplished ev-ery day, with the concern of a farmer for his seedling; he’s been waiting to see this for a long time.

Like Abdel Khaleq al-Messeiry, the protagonist of his 1978 novella “Lemon Flowers” who found new hope in his young nephew, Tareq, Deeb was comforting himself with the outbreak of street protests after many years of disappointment.

He is betting on the youth of the middle class to break the silence and revolt. This was his undisclosed dream, reflected in the first volume of his complete works, recently published by the General Egyptian Book Organization. The collection included his six novellas: “Cairo” (1964), “Lemon Flowers,” “Children without Tears” (1989), “A Moon on Marshland” (1993), “Eyes of Violet” (1999), and “Rosy Days” (2002).

Having experienced the 1952 rev-olution as a young man, Deeb sees some similarities with the January revolution. He prefers, however, to highlight the differences.

“The 1952 revolution came after long national movements demand-ing liberation from colonialism,” Deeb tells Egypt Independent. “The writing of the 1936 Constitution was a cornerstone. Then there were the workers and student movements of 1946. So we had a broad range of people engaged with [Egyptian] politics.”

With the January revolution, things are very different. “The land was bare,” and even those who present

Critic’s pickBahr Abu Greisha’s ‘Rahhal’

By Ali Abdel MohsenWhether you want to dance the drunken night away, or wallow in solitary self-pity, Bahr Abu Greisha is your man. I don’t know much about the singer, but I know enough to strongly rec-ommend him to anyone with a working ear or two and a heart capable of being broken.

Abu Greisha, like his first name suggests, sings the songs of a man lost at sea, or, in this case, a swirling whirlpool of confusion, de-spair and mind-altering loneliness. Occasion-

ally, he’ll wash up on the shores of some island sanctuary, find love and sing something effort-lessly beautiful about it. But, like all true po-ets, he’ll quickly work his way to heartbreak, if only to have a reason to throw himself back into the sea while wailing something so de-pressing that you’ll race him to do the same.

Nowhere is this tragic trajectory laid out more clearly — and rewardingly — than on his album “Rahhal” (“Wanderer”) and its title track, a 17-minute odyssey into the mind of a wandering soul. It is a journey through a world

deserted after the loss of a lover.Abu Greisha sings of endless nights and

the ghosts that haunt them, and of swim-ming against the current and drowning. He sings of misery and woe, but also of those rare moments that give us the strength to push through. It never sounds bitter or resentful; even at his most melancholy, the defiance in his voice is a buoy bobbing on dark waters, a solid shoulder to cry on in a melting mess of a world.■

themselves as opposition had served the regime for years.

Protesters kept demanding and ex-pecting change from those who did not want it to happen, and demands for ideological and cultural changes that entailed communicating with people who had not taken part in the street protests were lost in the middle, argues Deeb.

“[Former President Gamal Abdel] Nasser, on the other hand, was clever enough to promote the 1952 revo-lution’s ‘philosophy,’ although there was no real philosophy. He cleverly tied the act of revolting to an intel-lectual process.”

He describes what happened dur-ing the 18 days as a “miracle,” and one that was unexplainable.

“So we celebrated it, along with

the West as a ‘unique, laughing and peaceful revolution,’ instead of think-ing of ways to develop our moves, tools and goals,” he says.

The rebels need to re-present their own ideas and philosophy. The val-ues of the revolution were, unfor-tunately, killed over the past few months by the ruling military coun-cil and others who benefit from the existing regime. People’s demands were described as “narrow,” “oppor-tunistic” and reflective of “special in-terest groups,” while revolutionaries labeled those who were not imme-diately aligned with the street move-ment as the “Party of the Couch.”

“Instead, we need to defend these people’s rights,” he says.

The protesters need to create a new, strong rhetoric, says Deeb,

comparing that process to working on a long text or novel, when a writer carefully combines ideas to build a solid framework that many people can engage with.

“Social media networks reach nei-ther the older generations nor the poor. We need to find new ways to communicate and understand each other. Instead, we are being divided even further,” Deeb says.

Deeb has been following the many posts and tweets since the revolution started last year. He was so proud, he says.

“They seemed to be creating their own new rhetoric,” he says. But, he adds, the results of the parliamentary elections proved everyone wrong.

B

Bahr Abu Greisha

Alaa El Deeb

Mag

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The fractured stylesof Facebook posts and tweets are more dangerous to the revolution than its own enemies

Nasser, on the other hand, was clever enough to promote the 1952 revolution’s ‘philosophy,’ although there was no real philosophy

Lucid changeNovelist Alaa El Deeb reflects on two revolutions

“The short, fractured styles of Face-book posts and tweets are more dan-gerous to the revolution than its own enemies. ... Discussions of ideologies and values become fragmented; they appear suddenly in the form of Face-book statuses and disappear with the same speed. The ideas die quickly because they are isolated, addressing a few people who might already be aligned with these ideas — people you already know — whereas mass media and cultural platforms reach a wide range of people,” explains Deeb.

Many corrupt intellectuals and analysts have declared themselves spokesmen of the revolution in the media, Deeb says, characterizing them as “those who left the streets and went to work for satellite chan-nels.” He advises the revolutionaries to find their place in the media to express and promote their ideolo-gies while continuing to work on the ground through political and social awareness campaigns.

When it comes to developing a platform on which to express those ideologies, Deeb maintains many of his socialist beliefs. He opposes sug-gestions of privatizing the media and cultural sphere.

“This vision only thinks of the state as a corrupt structure. The state can also face the downsides of free-mar-ket mechanisms and provide cultural services to poor people, if it aligns itself with the poor,” he says.

Plus, he says, what the revolution demanded was purging the media of corrupt officials and redirecting the resources to serve the people rather than a particular regime, not just limiting the state’s role to a fi-nancier.

The new novel he is working on, “Angels’ Hunter,” maintains a level of pessimism — it tells the story of three old, middle-class, leftist friends, two of whom become opportunistic and ally against the third to hunt him down. But Deeb remains optimistic about the revolution.

“My protagonist represents me and my time, so we share the same fate,” he says.

But he thinks the revolutionaries will have a different fate.

“They’ll be able to get their rights in their own way,” he says.■

19Culture14 June 2012

Revenge of the cop Stereotypes as a marketable theme in ‘Al-Maslaha’ By Ahmed Zaki Osman

few minutes before “Al-Maslaha” (The Goods) ends, Hamza, the idealistic narcotics officer, unex-pectedly turns around and shoots

the Bedouin Suleiman in cold blood after the drug dealer’s surrender, avenging his young brother’s death.

Perhaps this is the most intriguing scene in “Al-Maslaha,” currently show-ing in movie theaters across the country. Throughout the film, the filmmakers try hard to portray a clash between the “good” policemen and the “criminal” Bedouins. But the “good cop” eventually cannot pre-vent himself from killing an unarmed man, although even then he is cast as a bad apple — his colleagues report his violation and he is put on trial.

Written for the screen by Wael Abd-Al-lah and directed by Sandra Nashaat, two well-known figures in Egyptian commer-cial cinema, the thriller has earned more than LE20 million in less than three weeks despite political unrest surrounding the presidential election and Hosni Mubarak’s trial.

But despite its commercial success, the film is a stark example of misrepresenta-tion, especially of marginalized communi-ties. For the most part, “Al-Maslaha” offers no more than naïve generalizations and stereotypes about Sinai Bedouins as drug dealers and ruthless killers, while the po-lice forces are being represented as righ-teous citizens. Counter-narratives of how police collectively punish the Bedouins are ignored. Screening a harsh reality“Al-Maslaha” is based on a true story and was shot before the revolution began when mass protests against police brutality broke out in January and February last year. The film tells the story of police major Hamza (Ahmed al-Sakka), who lost his younger brother, also a police officer, at the hands of Suleiman — the brother of the wealthy and influential Bedouin drug dealer Sa-leem (Ahmed Ezz). Suleiman drives his luxurious car with his Bedouin girlfriend, Shadia (Zeina), before coming to a check-point. Afraid the police would arrest him and seize the marijuana in his possession, he fires gunshots in the air and accidently hits Hamza’s brother with his car.

After a court convicts Suleiman of mur-der and sentences him to the death penalty, Saleem manages to free his younger broth-er by attacking the police car transporting him to prison, and hides him in a remote underground shelter in the peninsula.

Throughout the rest of the film, Hamza, geared with top-of-the-line communica-tions equipment, tries to track down Sulei-man to avenge his brother’s death. He is also trying to capture Saleem as he brings

ouins’ relations with the state through his drug trafficking.

But relations between the Bedouins and the police have been deteriorating signifi-cantly over the past decade due to arbi-trary detention and torture of Bedouins after the Sinai terrorist attacks of 2004, 2005 and 2006, rather than the ongoing drug trade. The police crackdown on the Bedouins sparked outrage among activists and intellectuals in Cairo at the time.

In this context, “Al-Maslaha” comes as one more manifestation of the police nar-rative in relation to the conditions in Si-nai, and the images promoted in the film are exhausted. For decades now, Sinai has been dealt with as a periphery, often ig-nored by Egypt’s centralized government except when it comes to tourism revenue. And since the deposal of Mubarak last year, the peninsula has been highlighted in local debates as the best example of chaos and lawlessness. Headlines have prolifer-ated about kidnapped tourists, attacked police checkpoints, a massive weapon trade and blown-up gas pipelines. Even-tually, it is the Bedouins who take all the blame.

Last May, Abdel Moneim Said, a pro-Mubarak political expert, criticized presi-dential hopefuls who promised to develop Sinai and empower its people. He wrote in his daily column in the state’s flagship newspaper, Al-Ahram, that what mat-tered was not developing the peninsula, but rather countering the lawlessness and threat of “extremists” there.

“Sinai is being colonized again,” he wrote. By whom, may we ask?■

Hamza, played by Ahmed al-Sakka, heads the narcotics team tasked with tracking down Bedouin drug dealers

For the most part, “‘Al-Maslaha’ offers no more than naïve generalizations and stereotypes about Sinai Bedouins

A

A dash of culture

Bahaa Taher Khaled Youssef

■ Culture Minister Mohamed Sa-ber Arab nominated �ve �gures to People’s Assembly Speaker Saad al-Katatny to be included in the formation of the commit-tee that will write Egypt’s new constitution. �e nominees are: novelists Bahaa Taher and Gamal al-Ghitany, political theorist al-Sayed Yassin, National Culture Center Board Head Inas Abdel Dayem and Ain Shams Univer-

sity English literature professor Laila Galal Rizk.

Despite the nominations, many cultural �gures expressed their disapproval with the over-all formation of the commi�ee as “the Islamic majority [in Parlia-ment] excluded members of the Writers Union and artistic syn-dicates,” said Taher, adding that they want to replace intellectuals with religious preachers.

�e Egyptian Creativity Front issued a statement condemning the marginalization of cultural workers from the commi�ee. Filmmaker and front member Khaled Youssef said he handed Katatny the statement, which described the commi�ee’s for-mation as “constitutionalizing political despotism in the name of religion.”■

the goods into the country — 20 tons of drugs smuggled in from Lebanon.

Good cop, bad BedouinHamza and Saleem’s conflict is portrayed in a rather simplistic good-versus-evil lens.

The police officer is shown as a good man, devoted to his job and country to the extent that he misses his younger brother’s wedding for an operation in Sinai. He lives in his upper-middle class flat in Cairo with his devoted veiled wife (Hanan Turk), and also looks after his widowed mother. His late father is a policeman, emphasizing — if only unintentionally — how positions in the military, police force, judiciary and academia continue to be passed on from father to son.

On the other hand, Saleem, the Bedouin drug dealer, lives in a luxurious villa in Si-nai. He is bad-tempered, lustful for women and aggressive to them. He is repeatedly shown mistreating his old housekeeper. One scene shows Abu Fayyad (Salah Ab-dallah), Saleem’s right-hand man, brutally punishing a Bedouin informant by enclos-ing the man in a cage with a hungry lion.

Bedouins are shown living in relative poverty but are rarely given a voice in the movie. They try to beat up Hamza when he shows up in their village asking about Shadia and tells them he is a police officer. But Saleem steps in to save him.

No one seems to stand up for Saleem or object to his drug trade, at least not on any ethical grounds. An elderly tribe leader is the only one who refuses to attend Saleem’s wedding, blaming him for ruining the Bed-

Ahmed Ezz starring as Saleem

20 Life & Society14 June 2012

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Meet Egypt IndependentThrough a potluck, we engaged in some culinary introductions

“Like most foods, it has been adopt-ed and made ‘Egyptian,’” Shawky said. “But its origins are Turkish.”

Copy editor Sara Edmunds brought her version of her family’s sweet pota-to casserole, using melted marshmal-lows and baked with walnuts instead of pecans.

“This dish is from Tennessee,” Ed-munds said. “It’s sweet and has brown sugar.”

Reporter Heba Afify, whose moth-er has often brought us cake for our morning meetings, walked in with not one but two dishes: kofta with red sauce in one large clay cooking pot and baked rice, roz moamar, in the other. Both dishes came from her fam-ily’s home in southern Egypt.

“I also brought aged cheese, ‘gibna adeema,’” said Afify. “We eat the cheese with the kofta at home, but I don’t expect you all to do the same — it’s a bit strange!”

News editor Max Strasser made a large bowl of matzo ball soup. The matzo balls are made with grain.

“It’s very native to New York,” ex-plained Strasser. “It’s been adopted by the delis there and is served almost everywhere.”

Copy editor Jahd Khalil, who is half-Lebanese and half-Nebraskan, opted for a Nebraska T-shirt and a Lebanese mix of hummus and figs.

Lindsey Parietti, another copy edi-tor, concocted a caprese salad with buffalo mozzarella and watercress in-stead of basil.

Potluck visitor and fellow journalist Liam Stack brought a salad native to his life in Cairo.

“It’s a mixture of things I found at the local vegetable vendor,” Stack said. “I make salads like this all the time.”

As for myself, I tracked down a local dish from Daqahlia, from where my father hails, and came up with fiteer mishaltit, baked dough with butter. The dough can be eaten with molas-ses, honey or salty cheese and, accord-ing to the baker, is actually native to Monufiya.

“The only thing you can find in Mansoura [the capital of Daqahlia] is pretty girls,” said Abdel Rahman, who baked the fiteer. “You could bring those to your potluck.”■

We found out the similarities between the Iowa dish and a popular food in Darfur in the Sudan

We eat the cheese with the kofta at home, but I don’t expect you all to do the same

Sarah Carr opted to bring a lentil salad from her native world of the Internet

I’m not Italian but my last name is and I love tiramisu

Louise Sarant, the environment edi-tor, grew up in Morocco and made her famous Moroccan tajine with chicken and cinnamon — a steaming pot with spices that enveloped the room when opened.

Many members of the Egyptian staff could trace their roots back to Turkey. Culture editor Mai Elwakil opted for a chicken béchamel.

“It has Turkish roots,” Elwakil ex-plained, “and so does my family.”

Writer Amany Aly Shawky also tapped into her Turkish roots with a plate of shish kebab.

By Nevine El Shabrawyhe Egypt Independent staff gathered Sunday with a quest: to get to know each other better through our di-

verse culinary roots.Charged with cooking food that

had local relevance to each individu-al, reporters, freelancers, editors and copy editors mused over their mul-tiple heritages. From the Midwestern US to Italy and Iraq to Vietnam, the staff came up with an eclectic meal of salads, appetizers, main dishes and desserts that were collectively devoured.

Culture writer Helen Stuhr-Rom-mereim brought ground beef and buns for “loose-meat sandwiches,” an Iowan specialty. Managing editor Lina Attalah pointed out the similarities between the Iowa dish and a popular food in Darfur in the Sudan.

Reporter Mohamed Elmeshad rep-resented Sohag with weika, an okra soup with a tomato sauce. Writer Sar-ah Elmeshad sent along Delta-style “yellow koshary,” a traditional pasta dish cooked with yellow lentils and topped with “mizalil” eggs, which are boiled and then fried.

Heading back across the world to the US, reporter Maggie Hyde brought west Texas chili with beans, onions and a tomato base.

Photographer Virginie Nguyen cooked Vietnamese rice with peas and carrots, saying she made it vegetarian by omitting the chicken and keeping only the eggs.

Reporter Sarah Carr was left with little to eat as a vegan, but opted to bring a lentil salad from what she said was her native world of “the Internet.”

“I adapted the recipe and changed it to my liking, adding tomatoes and onions and lots of garlic,” Carr ex-plained.

Freelancer Marcus Benigno made us tiramisu. He replaced the mascar-pone cheese with cream cheese, but brought all the flavors together with rum.

“I’m not Italian but my last name is,” Benigno said, “and I love tiramisu.”

Social media guru Nadia Ahmed spent hours soaking chickpeas and boiling meat for her Iraqi temman queema, a meat, chickpea and tomato dish with the consistency of dhal.

“It’s a traditional dish for pilgrims,” she said. “You can buy the chickpeas presoaked in a can, but it doesn’t pro-duce the same taste.”

Reporter Nadine Marroushi brought green olives and manaeesh, flatbread topped with spices, with zaa-tar, a blend of herbs, from her native Palestine.

Copy editor Lindsay Carroll brought a crock pot of Pennsylvania Dutch chicken corn soup, a recipe that is traditional in her hometown.

Reporter Ali Abdel Mohsen hur-ried in with two dishes indicative of two native cultures of his own — an Omani grilled chicken dish from his time in Oman and a Dutch potato casserole from his years in the Neth-erlands.

“This is the first and hopefully last time I cook,” Abdel Mohsen said. “I ruined too many things in the pro-cess.”

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Egypt Independent’s team meet over some delicious food

21Life & Society14 June 2012

Bad blood

By Nadine Ibrahim

small suction cup is placed on the skin and a vacuum is created, draw-ing the blood close to the surface. The cup is removed and with a small

razor blade, tiny incisions are made. The cup is replaced, the suction is applied and the blood begins to ooze out — dark, clotted and “filled with toxins,” according to Dr. Magda Amir, an expert in the practice and study of hijama, or cupping therapy.

As we meet, I notice the characteristic red-tinted circles on her upper neck.

“Hijama relieves my migraine headaches instantly,” she notes.

Hijama, a form of alternative medicine, is part of a larger debate on the scientific legiti-macy of healing outside of Western medicine. The practice is said to predate Islam and has roots in ancient Chinese medicinal culture. Modern communities supporting the prac-tice are substantial and diverse, even span-ning some countries in Europe.

Although many communities advocate for the treatment because of its alleged positive health effects, among Muslim populations and Arab countries, hijama is also popular because of its religious undertones and spiri-tual associations. The Prophet Mohamed was documented to have highly praised both pre-ventative and curative hijama in the Hadith, the deeds and sayings of the Prophet.

After receiving her PhD in biochemistry, Amir sought a degree in homeopathy from the London International College in Egypt. From there, she began to immerse herself in the study of healing by hijama.

“I began studying acupuncture, but then I read about the Prophet’s recommendation about hijama. When I compare it with other techniques such as aromatherapy and herbal treatment, hijama is so fast. When you think about it, instead of dealing with the disease or [treating] the cause of the disease, you are just getting rid of the cause itself,” Amir

says, referring to the removal of toxin-filled blood.

Preventative hijama, as prescribed by the Prophet, is done on the 17th, 19th and 21st of every lunar calendar month.

“Our body is affected by the moon, just as the tides are,” she elaborates. “Because of the lunar magnetic field, when the moon is full [on the 15th day], all the toxins in our cells are accumulated beneath the surface of the skin.”

Applying hijama in three even intervals after the full moon “detoxifies the body monthly,” she says. Experts on hijama and acupuncture agree it is an “energy” medicine: It clears the body’s meridians of blockages to allow one’s “vital energy” to flow.

According to doctors and medical experts in Egypt, hijama is not considered a superior treatment for disease.

“Doctors never believe me,” Amir says about the medical response to her personal success stories.

For pathologists and surgeons alike, hijama is not an independent treatment that often crosses their mind, except when patients approach them with the idea or come with complications.

Dr. Mohsen Khalil, a general surgeon in a small private clinic, describes a situation in which an elderly man had hijama performed on a diabetic foot, a condition caused by untreated diabetes, in which the foot has a severe infection and possible ulcers. The pro-cedure’s small incisions became gangrenous

and the area had to be amputated.However, Dr. Ali Ramadan, the physiother-

apist for the Egyptian Olympic team, believes that alternative medicine — hijama included — is not meant to be a replacement.

“Alternative medicine is not meant to be used instead of normal Western medicine, that is impossible. It must be used alongside it,” he explains.

His practice near Ramses Square, open for more than 30 years, provides hijama and acu-puncture treatments for patients who have exhausted every avenue of Western medicine and still cannot find relief from their condi-tions.

The legality of hijama is contested around the world because of the difficulties involved in regulation. In Saudi Arabia, an Islamic state in which hijama is increasingly popular because of its religious connections, the pro-cess was made illegal in 2006 because of poor hygienic practice and a lack of scientific em-pirical evidence supporting its application.

Amir says she once owned an alternative medicine clinic that also practiced hijama with huge success, but that the Egyptian government closed down her clinic, along with others, 10 years ago. But Ramadan does not hide his practice. He explains that doc-tors and medical colleges are currently con-ducting research on hijama to present their findings to the Health Ministry. After about 20 more research studies, Ramadan says, the ministry may permit the practice. For now, the ministry only grants approval for doctors

conducting this research, as long as the pa-tient is fully informed.

Amir no longer practices, but she does use hijama on herself and advises others on the best techniques.

“This spot is very effective for treating in-somnia and depression,” she explains while demonstrating the process on the skin in between her left thumb and forefinger. The short and quick incisions look as if the sani-tized razor blade is not even breaking the skin, but as she puts the suction cup back on the area, I see the blood slowly pour out.

“You won’t believe me, I know, but hijama even helps relieve us from magic,” Amir ex-claims, preempting my reaction. “Because we know that magic is shaitan [the devil] and he runs in our blood, sometimes patients will come in and they don’t know what they have. Doctors fail to heal them. When we apply the hijama, some of them go into a brief coma, and it is as if they are going through another state.

“Later on, they improve. And since shaitan runs in our blood, when we get rid of clotted, ugly blood, they feel very light,” she says.

Despite the stigma and the fuzzy politics of hijama, studies have shown that it may be effective in reducing levels of LDL, bad cho-lesterol that leads to cardiovascular disease and other health problems. A 2008 study published in the American Journal of Chi-nese Medicine suggests that hijama is highly effective in treating the severity and frequen-cy of tension and migraine headaches, con-ditions that Western medicine has difficulty treating.

“What we need is more education,” Dr. Ramadan stresses. He hopes that present-ing a body of positive research to the Health Ministry will be enough to bring hijama out of its stigma. Amir agrees that hijama and acupuncture should be widely available, and believes that people don’t understand that having all medical options, even if not main-stream, is important.■

Nad

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A Applying hijama in three even intervals after the full moon ‘detoxifies the body monthly’

You won’t believe me,I know, but hijama even helps relieve usfrom magic

A look at thecontroversialIslamic healing techniqueof blood-letting

Re-cupping after making small incisions with a blade causes sticky blood to ooze out

22 Travel14 June 2012

stories told on the surface. Spitfire earned its name after a World War II British fighter plane; a picture of the fighter plane hangs on the wall next to a sign that reads, “It is pro-hibited to serve alcohol until drunkenness.” It is perhaps one of the oldest and longest-standing bars in Egypt. It was opened in 1883 by a Greek man, Dominus Kharalam-bo. Kharalambo adopted and raised 11-year-old Hassan al-Sayed Osman and his brother Fouad, who managed the bar.

Today, Fouad’s sons, Ali and Gamal, con-tinue running the bar. They are intrinsic parts of the Spitfire experience; usually you’ll find one of them sitting on a wooden stool by the entrance as a lazy cat entwines its tail around his legs, or standing next to the Stella table-cloths, his eyes perusing the smoke-filled den.

Ali’s name is called out continuously over the 1970s rock music played throughout the night. He’ll lean in and crack a joke with a poker face, or roll his eyes at the group of hip, young Egyptians with piercings and Emo haircuts — they usually order one beer each and sip them surreptitiously throughout the night. Ali will eventually get fed up and try to get them to leave. He doesn’t want Spitfire to become trendy; it already has its large fol-lowing of dedicated patrons.

“We have students, intellectuals, activists, travelers, professors and foreigners, and ev-ery consul from every country has been to Spitfire,” he beams. “Every consul, except for the Egyptian consul. I wish he would, even if just to order a Pepsi. It’s not a democracy if we don’t get the Egyptian consul to visit.”

Drinks are cheap here; a beer costs LE14, a shot of gin around LE20. There is no menu, save an obscure and faded sign on the wall hidden by dangling decorations. If you ask for one, be prepared for one of Ali’s barely disgusted looks of disapproval. This is a basic baladi bar with basic drinks — wine, beer, lo-cal and imported spirits and sodas are sold. Don’t ask for a pina colada; you might be extradited.

A plate of peanuts is served on red carpet-

like tablecloths. The floor is covered in Span-ish-style winding ceramics. This is the bar that sailors and hard drinkers once frequent-ed. It’s the stuff of urban legends, a place for “bad people of ill repute” and nights of drunken debauchery. It was smelly, crowded and comfortingly anonymous in its poorly lit, poorly ventilated space. Today, that glam-orous image of hedonism is no longer there, but the clientele cling to this memory and identity like the faded stickers on the mir-rors.

“When you’re a stranger in a country like Egypt, and you see a bar that’s like your hometown with familiar music and stick-ers in your language, you’ll lose 40 percent of your homesickness,” says Ali. “Just like I would if I went to an café in Turkey and saw Al-Limby, or heard Om Kalthoum — I’d feel almost home, all that’s missing is my family.”

Ali is clearly the talker of the two; he trades friendly banter with the patrons and shows me the tattered newspaper articles about Spitfire that he’s kept in an envelope behind the antique cash register that carries a vin-tage “Toz” sticker and two veiled women’s faces. Spitfire has been featured in Spiegel, BBC, Al-Ahram and a Swedish newspaper, according to Ali. By pure osmosis, Ali and Gamal speak traces of four languages: Greek, German, Italian and French, as many Alexan-drians did back in the day.

As Deep Purple plays out over the sound system, all male patrons’ eyes are fixated on the tiny TV screen showing the football match while the few young women roll their eyes. Amid the heated banter about the up-coming presidential election, Ali remains nonchalant. Neither politics nor the talk of the Islamist parties fazes him.

“We have no trouble in our area [with the Islamists], we have good relations with our neighbors,” he says. “Most of our patrons are foreigners anyway, so we’re safe.”

Fireworks burst close by, a little too close to the bar, but the patrons barely flinch. When asked if he’d ever consider selling the bar, Ali is visibly insulted. This is a family business, after all, and he shakes off the notion of mon-ey as if it’s poor taste.

“We’re not concerned with money,” he says, shrugging. “If we were, we’d have sold that painting of the French emperor.” He points at a large oil painting above our heads. “That’s been around for 100 years, you know.”

There’s a strange comfort to Spitfire and the quiet that falls on the Manshiya market square late at night. The streets are empty, the alleyways are dark and there’s a fresh breeze that reminds you of what Alexandria once was and what it could be today. Just as many seek refuge in the baladi bars of downtown Cairo for an alternative space free of judg-ment, Spitfire gives a home to the strangers too, both locals and foreigners alike.■

Spitfire; 7 Old Borsa St., off Saad Zaghloul Street, Manshiya, Alexandria;

03-380-6503; 6 pm–12 am

Drinks at SpitfireIn one of Alexandria’s oldest bars, echoes of an eclectic past

Spitfire ispregnant with history and heavy with an atmosphere of former hedonism, now considerably placated

By Soraya Morayef

nce the metropolitan capital of the Mediterranean, today Alexandria has shed most of its former skin. Spitfire is one of the city’s oldest

bars, and one out of a handful of hidden wa-tering holes frequented by an eclectic crowd of students, artists, old-school Alexandrians, Cairene tourists and foreigners searching for a quiet, welcoming and laid-back space. Simi-lar to downtown Cairo bars such as Cap d’Or and Café Riche, Spitfire is pregnant with his-tory and heavy with an atmosphere of former hedonism, now considerably placated.

Inconspicuously located on a street cor-ner facing a crowded market square by the Manshiya Telecom Egypt office, Spitfire’s faded brick entrance is obscured by the flashing lights and loud music of the clothing store next door, where plastic legs modeling Chinese-made jeans form a protective bar-rier. You’ll only see it if you’re looking for its subtle signage, and Spitfire’s managers and longtime patrons prefer keeping it that way.

The narrow interior of Spitfire feels crowd-ed even when few people are inside — the layers of posters, stickers, postcards and oth-er paraphernalia from all around the world cover every wall, mirror and frame. Bright, festive decorations hang from the ceiling, and above the bar on the right side, a neon blue Stella sign flashes between a sign in Pol-ish and a Swedish flag.

A faded cover of a 1950s edition of Life

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Spitfire’s walls of stories

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magazine hangs next to a cascade of interna-tional money notes from different decades, a clown mask and baseball caps. It seems that everyone from everywhere has come and left their mark somewhere in Spitfire. There are scribbles of love on the wall next to a doodle of a sad panda in black-felt pen, and a credit card is wedged firmly into a picture frame next to countless passport photos and busi-ness cards.

Spitfire’s interior dictates its atmosphere of cultured chaos through the imprint of its decades of patrons: First-timers will have a hard time taking their eyes off the many little

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23Listings14 June 2012

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Masar turns 4To celebrate its fourth anniver-sary, the gallery is presenting a selection of the best paintings and sculptures it has exhibited since its opening. “Gallery Col-lection” includes works by artists Georges Bahgory, Leile Ezzat and Taha Hussein.

“Gallery Collection” runs until 21 JulyAl-Masar Gallery157 B 26 July St., Zamalek, Cairo+20227368537 +201000670705www.almasargallery.com

100 Live Electronic Music Festival, 2008

‘Summer Collective Exhibition’�e summer exhibition draws together various modern and contemporary Egyptian artists, in-cluding Nermine Hammam, E�at Naghi and Katherine Bakhoum.

“Summer Collective” runs until 31 JulySafar Khan Art Gallery6 Brazil St., Zamalek, Cairo+20227353314, +201110070707www.safarkhan.com

Summer Collective Exhibition at Safar Khan

The Holy Family in EgyptPicasso Gallery is o�ering a group exhibition that includes the works of artists Georges Bahgory, Susan Amer, Nathan Doss and Reda Abdel Rahman.

“�e Holy Family in Egypt” runs until 3 JulyPicasso Gallery30 Hassan Assem St., Zamalek, Cairo+20227367544www.picassoartgallery-egypt.com

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Monodrama weekat Al-Gezeira�e week-long festival will close with two short performances: “Maymoon and Sha�qa” and “�e Bus.” �e performance will be followed by a discussion.

14 June, 7 pmAl-Gezeira Art Center1 Al-Marsafy St., Zamalek, Cairo+20227373298

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100 Live Electronic Music Festival 2012�e festival returns, showcas-ing some of the best talents in experimental electronic music. �is year, the artistic duo Wet Robot & Bosaina, Kareem Lotfy and Ramsi Lehner perform from Egypt, as well as artists from Lebanon, Tunisia, France, UK and the Netherlands.

14–15 June, doors open at 6:30 pmRawabet �eater3 Hussein al-Ma’amar St., o� Mah-moud Basiony Street, Downtown, Cairowww.100copies.com/100live2012

“�e Missing Pieces” exhibition at Mashrabia gallery

Teatro Eskendria opens with Dina El WedidiFor its opening, the non-govern-mental new cultural center, mu-sic studio and cafe opens with a concert by Dina El Wedidi and her band. �e Egyptian experimental singer, guitarist and songwriter has performed in Egypt, France and Yemen.

14 June, 9 pmTeatro Eskendria25 Fouad St., Downtown, Alex-andria+2033901339www.teatroalex.org

Masterpieces of Kurosawa

‘Serpico’ by Sydney Lumet

�e Japan Foundation in Cairo is hosting a �lm festival on the works of leading Japanese direc-tor Akira Kurosawa (1910–1998). A series of lectures by critics Essam Zakaria and Magda Morris will follow the screenings every �ursday.

14, 21 and 28 June, 6 pm�e Japan Foundation Cairo O�ceCairo Centre Building, ��h �oor106 Qasr al-Aini St., Garden City, Cairowww.jfcairo.org

Akira Kurosawa

Film

�e 1973 �lm “Serpico,” directed by Sydney Lumet, will be screened on the Artellewa roo�op as part of a summer �lm series themed around police cor-ruption in cinema. �e �lm tells the true story of a New York City whistleblower police o�cer.

18 June, 7 pmArtellewa10 Mohamed Ali al-Eseary St., Ard al-Lewa, Giza+201288107770artellewa.com

Storm Band and Anis Dridi concert

Music from the Occupied Golan Heights

The Alexandrian rock and Oriental band will perform live with the young singer Anis Dridi at Jesuits Cultural Center.

15 June, 7 pm Jesuits Cultural Center298 Port Said St., Beside Farah Studio, Cleopatra, Alexandria

Mus

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Last chance to see ‘The Missing Pieces’“�e Missing Pieces” is an instal-lation of projected images that take as a screen a collection of cardboard boxes rather than a �at surface. Artist Karim Bakry uses the installation as a way to present familiar imagery in a fractured and altered form.

“�e Missing Pieces” runs until 18 JuneMashrabia Gallery8 Champollion St., Downtown, Cairo+201001704554www.mashrabiagallery.org

Tout Ard (Strawberries) is a “mountain reggae” band from the Majdal Shams village in the Occupied Golan Heights/Pal-estine. �e band sings in Arabic and mixes classical Arabic motifs with funky African inspired reg-gae/ska grooves.

14 June, 8:30 pmAl-Genaina �eaterAzhar Park, Salah Salem Road, Darassa, Cairo02-362-5057www.mawred.org/en/el-genai-na-theatre

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Issue no.514 June 2012

24

ريلى؟! [Rillee] exclamation, singularTranslation: Really?! An English word pronounced by a non-

native speaker acting in a xenophobic ad-vertisement.

In Context: A foreigner, actually a spy, will seamlessly find his way to your table at a coffee shop and act like a tourist. When you start spewing national secrets such as “It’s crowded outside,” he will suddenly focus with a diabolical yet satisfied look of deep thought.

In a fleeting moment, he will forget his

Mossad training, and it will escape him, unknowingly, in an ecstatic moment of re-alization: “Rillee?!”

Immediately stop talking to him and call the General Intellligence Services.

Examples: There’s poverty in Egypt … Rillee?!The bleeding man in front of you is

bleeding … Rillee?!Ana habaitkom AWY … Rillee?!My toenails need clipping … Rillee?!Rillee?! I need to text everything you

said back to headquarters.

WORD ON THE STREET

Printed by Al-Masry Media Corp