What presidents say
While the Egyptian press lauded President Mubarak's address given at the Cairo Book Fair, on the American president's State of the Union address it came out swinging, writes Aziza Sami
Click to view caption |
|
In the upcoming Eid Al-Adha in which sheep are slaughtered, this imminent victim had this to say to its Arab owner: "This is your chance to be a hero." By Nasser Al-Jaafari in Jordan's Al-Arab Al-Youm;
Mustafa Hussein in Al-Akhbar: "Today we've been married for 25 years. The statute of limitations has expired.";
"They're writing that they will solve the economic crisis. But do we have an economy to have a crisis?" Amr Okasha in Egypt's Al-Wafd.
|
A perusal of the week's press leaves one with a sense that recent campaigns -- the call for political reform, the attacks against monopoly, etc -- manifest in opinion columns as well as parliamentary interrogations over the past weeks, had caught President Hosni Mubarak's attention. On 21 January both the national and opposition press highlighted, be it verbatim or as a synopsis, the president's speech given to some 50 intellectuals and public figures at the annual Cairo Book Fair. Implicit in the manner in which the papers covered the event was that the president was addressing what have become pressing public concerns. The widely circulated and popular national daily Al-Akhbar, which initiated what has now become an ongoing campaign against monopoly of the domestic steel market, highlighted the president's statements that "the competition law will be presented to parliament at the earliest possible opportunity."
On a typically more conservative note Al-Ahram quoted the president's statement that "political reform has priority but it is important to choose the right moment. No protection will be given to those who break the rules, and all businessmen are equal (before the law)." The left-wing opposition weekly Al-Ahali gave prominence to the president's statements on human rights: "We help civil society," the president said, "but we also do not want this civil society to be working for anyone outside the country."
The independent weekly Al- Osbou's Editor-in-Chief Mustafa Bakri gave a personalised version of the president's speech and was careful to write on 26 January that the president's attitude with journalists present was "casual and as usual spontaneous and friendly, addressing several of them by name before the formal meeting started." It is noteworthy that this comes from the editor of a newspaper that has become notorious for its often virulent campaigns against various figures, the most recent of which was directed against the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar and prominent businessman Ahmed Ezz. This week, Al-Osbou chose as the source of a new and searing offensive, Arab American academic Ma'moun Fandi who, the paper alleged, had mentioned Al-Osbou by name while speaking last July to a Congressional committee on the role of the Arabic press in fuelling militant and terrorist tendencies. Its style, virulent and rather demagogic, one where the words "traitor" and "America's clients" are used in excess, Al-Osbou represents the rather extreme case of what has, nevertheless, become a real, ongoing debate within the Egyptian press over the role of so-called liberals who herald the US as a champion of democracy but who, allege their critics, are simply supporting the political interests of the US within the region.
The question of human rights -- now no longer the sole province of the opposition press -- also made the headlines this week when Al-Ahram on 20 January published that the Shura Council had approved the formation of the National Council for Human Rights, headed by former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros- Ghali, with prominent lawyer Ahmed Kamal Abul-Magd as his deputy.
This step undertaken by the government has so far elicited more or less ambivalent reactions bordering on an appreciation that the step has been taken at all, and a lingering suspicion that it is a mere cosmetic ploy meant to appease critics and an international community for whom human rights has become an issue of paramount importance. Interestingly, on the same day Al-Ahram published an article by veteran diplomat Mohamed No'man Galal on "The Arab Charter of Human Rights". Although he was careful not to single out any Arab government by name, Galal aptly pointed out that "the Arab Charter of Human Rights, soon to be issued by the Arab League after 20 years of deliberations, still falls short of international developments in this domain because of the constraints, reservations and innate lack of conviction on the part of Arab governments when it comes to the very principle itself of human rights."
The opposition daily Al-Wafd issued by the Wafd Party was, like all the other newspapers, quite laudatory of the president's speech. However, on 21 January it published an unequivocal article by veteran columnist Gamal Badawi in which he queried, "What about internal policy?" After a preamble of praise in which he writes that "the president's foreign policy was successful and pragmatic in that it took into account the new realities of a uni-polar world ruled by the US," Badawi goes on to ask, "But what about internal policy? After two decades of President Mubarak's rule, whose merits are undeniably many, the common man still strives to find a loaf of bread fit for human consumption, medicine he can afford, and a seat on public transport. With its unstable and adventurous economic policies, and an environment where a person with influence can make the price of a ton of steel shoot up to LE3,000, the state has failed to give psychological security to the majority of Egyptians. The language of monopoly has prevailed and in its face, the government stands helpless."
In large part, the national press over the past week highlighted domestic or regional news. On 22 January, however, Al-Ahram and Al- Akhbar both in their banners underscored that "President George Bush ignored the Palestinian problem in his State of the Union address." Both quoted Palestinian Minister Sa'eb Erekat as saying, "This means that the Americans will abandon the peace process altogether in 2004."
The Egyptian press was not alone in this regard, however, as this obvious lapse also made headlines in the international press that day. Al- Ahram's editorial on 24 January was devoted to this topic, and was preceded on 22 January by an article written by Al-Akhbar's Editor-in- Chief Galal Dowidar. In typically fiery style, Dowidar wrote, "The American president's speech came as a huge disappointment to the peoples of the world, especially in the Middle East. All blame for terrorism was laid at the feet of despotic Arab governments with no mention made of Israel. In the vein of a broken record, his speech revolved around the same redundant themes: terrorism, US security and spreading democracy the American way. Under the influence of the extreme right and the Zionist lobby, President Bush appears to have lost all hold on rationality and logic."
