Who, and with whom?
Balancing acts, returning businessmen and burgeoning deficits ... all featured in the Egyptian press this week, writes Aziza Sami
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Clockwise from top left: Al-Ahali's Raouf shows PM Atef Ebeid with the Sharm El-Sheikh file marked "Terrorism" yet wondering "What have we got to do with terrorism? Is this just because we destroyed the lives of 65 million Egyptians?"; Mustafa Hussein in Al-Akhbar shows Egypt as a bride in a white dresss stained by the press law; Saadeddin in Al-Ahram shows an Iraqi dreaming of liberty only to be zipped up by US occupying forces; An-Nahar's cartoonist sees the roadmap as a hand grenade waiting to explode
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The local scene appeared quite bleak as seen through the Egyptian press this week. A medley of topics made itself apparent, from education to businessmen's loans and a government budget that is coming under attack in both the national and the independent press. There was much talk of "democracy" as well, with little to vouch for it on the ground. The daily opposition newspaper Al-Wafd on 10 June, interviewing Islamist thinker Abdel-Wahab El-Messiri and former Housing Minister Hasaballah Al-Kafrawi summarised for readers the crux of their wisdom that "[Egypt] needs a Social Contract, under which officials will be subject to the law." Such talk, although justifiable within the current Egyptian context, does border on the ludicrous, coming some 400 years after Locke.
The balancing act in which the Egyptian government is currently engaged -- between US pressures, a public opinion sympathetic to the Palestinians, and the mediating role that it is undertaking between Abu Mazen and the Palestinian factions on the implementation of the roadmap -- was also apparent. On 11 June, the national daily Al- Ahram published an exclusive interview with Hamas's leader Abdul-Aziz Al-Rantisi, conducted by the newspaper's Gaza correspondent Mohamed Mustafa.
In the interview, conducted days before he was wounded in a missile attack by the Israeli army, Al-Rantisi criticised Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas [Abu Mazen] for his "total lack of political acumen" and for having "given up too much" to the Israelis at the Aqaba Summit. "We accept a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, and even less," said Al-Rantisi, "but Palestine's borders are also from the Mediterranean to the river [Jordan]." Not mincing his words, he added that, "we are facing an enemy which does not accept our existence, just as we, as a jihadist organisation, do not accept its existence."
These unequivocal statements were responded to on 13 June by Al-Ahram's Editor-in- Chief Ibrahim Nafie, who wrote that "it is enough that Abu Mazen has withstood Israeli pressures to disarm the Palestinian resistance groups, or ban their activities. Hamas interpreted Abu Mazen's statements at Aqaba in a manner that does not serve the Palestinian people, nor promote their image in the world."
By contrast, Makram Mohamed Ahmed, editor-in-chief of the weekly national magazine Al-Musawwar, on 13 June put pressure on the Palestinian prime minister. "I believe that Abu Mazen went too far in his statements at Aqaba when he condemned resistance acts as terrorism," he wrote. Ahmed censored both the Palestinian prime minister and Hamas "for boycotting the dialogue which started [between them] at Gaza ten days ago, and which had started to produce dividends". The statements by the two editors-in-chief came as an Egyptian delegation prepared to head to Gaza, as was announced in the national dailies on 15 June, in order to negotiate a "cease-fire" between the Palestinian factions and Israel.
On the domestic front, the campaign launched by the national daily Akhbar Al-Yom two weeks ago against the minister of education was still reverberating this week. Responding to what he described as "illusory articles" and "sweeping judgements", Egypt's dean of educationalists Hamed Ammar wrote two articles in the opposition press.
"An objective estimation of Egypt's national educational system is in order," he admonished in the weekly newspaper Al-Ahali, issued by the left-wing Tagammu Party on 11 June. Ammar said that while the very real problems beleaguering Egypt's educational system must be tackled and re-appraised, this should be done without losing sight of the tangible achievements which had been attained so far in combating illiteracy, educating girls and establishing a number of specialised technological education centres through joint programmes such as the Mubarak-Kohl project.
Ammar, who is a respected thinker with a socialist outlook, wrote on the same topic in the weekly newspaper Al-Arabi, organ of the Nasserist Party, on 15 June, this time responding to what he described as the "exaggerated accusations" against Minister of Education Hussein Kamel Bahaaeddin, which had featured in the article written by Akhbar Al-Yom's Editor-in-Chief Ibrahim Se'da.
Businessman Mustafa El-Beleidi featured in almost every publication this week. Akhbar Al-Yom on 14 June, together with Al-Arabi, published interviews with El-Beleidi who has just returned to Cairo "to settle his bank debts" after a three-year sojourn abroad. He had originally fled the country following his indictment for defaulting on loans.
The two papers, which predictably concentrated on the more sensational aspects of El- Beleidi's personal life, quoted him as saying that he had come back "in response to the government's admonishment to businessmen to settle their debts with the banks", as Akhbar Al-Yom expressed it. However, the ambivalence which still appears to beleaguer the relationship between the private sector and the state, and the lack of clarity as to how troubled businesses are actually being dealt with -- through police measures and litigation? Through debt rescheduling? -- again resurfaced. On 14 June, the economic daily Al-Aalam Al-Yom reported that the businessman was afflicted with a "health crisis" because the Banque du Caire had announced that it had refused to settle his debts.
Contradicting El-Beleidi's statements to the press, Al-Ahram on 15 June quoted the Prosecutor-General Maher Abdel-Wahed as saying that the businessman had been "arrested as soon as he had arrived at Cairo Airport".
"Despite the indictments issued against El-Beleidi," Abdel-Wahed said, "he will be acquitted if he re-pays his debts to the banks. This applies to any businessman. Whoever does not re-pay, will be subject to trial." Bearing in mind the conciliatory aspects of this "carrot-and-stick" approach, it can be said that a rapprochement with whatever private sector still exists in the country might seem logical, given that the cash-strapped government has already said that it is this sector that must undertake the funding of over 70 per cent of projects. On this note, the government's budget and its LE42 billion deficit were again the butt of strong attacks this week. These came from all directions and in every single paper, protesting against "the budget of horrific figures", as the independent weekly Al-Osbou' had it on 16 June.
Al-Akhbar's satirist Ahmed Ragab on 9 June wrote that "this totally bankrupt government, which has nationalised just about everything, recently undertook new measures to sequester a mobile phone, and the sum of LE2,450 -- one day's earnings from a street beggar. Philanthropists who bestowed this money on the beggar will receive a letter of thanks from the minister of finance, with prayers that God bless them and their families and preserve them till judgement day."
The independent and opposition papers were equally vociferous this week. Al-Arabi came down hard on Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, its banner quoting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's description of him as "a featherless chick". Another banner accused Palestinian Minister of the Interior Mohamed Dahlan as "betraying Hamas's leadership".
As always, the paper seemed to revel in the fact that it still appears to be the only opposition paper with the temerity to break "taboos" and address what other publications would consider the very sensitive issue of the "succession" in Egypt. In a large banner, Al-Arabi posed the question of what exactly is "the constitutional status of the president's son?" The paper wrote that independent MP Adel Eid had submitted a question to parliament demanding clarification on "what the status of the president's son is, when he undertakes political and economic negotiations with US decision-makers on countless trips undertaken with 'high-level' delegations visiting Washington".
Al-Osbou' turned its guns against US Ambassador to Egypt David Welch, saying that he had "expressed great relief" at the imprisonment of the paper's Editor-in- Chief Mustafa Bakry on charges of defaming the head of the Justice Party. Citing "Israeli Foreign Ministry sources", Al-Osbou' wrote that the cause of the ambassador's relief was the final ending of "the highly inflammatory role played by Bakry against US and Israeli policies".
Adel Hammouda, editor-in-chief of the independent weekly newspaper Sout El- Umma, on 16 June relentlessly continued his campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood's Supreme Guide Ma'moun El-Hodeibi. The latter has recently been vocal in his denunciations of Israeli attacks on Palestinian territories, and led a demonstration after Friday prayers at Al-Azhar Mosque last week. Following in the anti-Brotherhood campaign was the weekly Rose El-Youssef, the magazine on 14 June publishing an article in which it said that militant elements were overwhelming the organisation, which it predicted would soon seek power through a coup d'état.
The Brotherhood was the ally of the government some weeks ago, when the Anglo- American war on Iraq was at its height, and it was "activists" of a Nasserist and leftist orientation who were being intimidated and arrested.
Looking on, it is hard to know who is allied with whom.
