Egyptian press: We're next

Do we find ourselves between a hard place and the deep blue sea? Fatemah Farag sees where we lie

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The news -- front page Al-Wafd on 11 March -- is that President Hosni Mubarak will "delay" (read 'not go on') his annual visit to the US, that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has "postponed" her visit to Egypt and the pages of the local press are carpeted thick in fact and rumour regarding the continued deterioration in US/Egyptian relations. The problem is, however, that the American role in pressuring for "reform" in Egypt -- both perceived and real -- is dictating the terms of democratic debate within.

On the front page of Al-Akhbar on 11 March, Editor-in-Chief Galal Dweidar gives vent to his frustration at the actions of the American administration. In his column, "Yes to democracy, no to dependency", Dweidar points out that "we have said dozens of times that there is no one in the whole land of Egypt who is against the United States or the American people. But for sure there are those who are against the unbalanced policy of animosity adopted by the Bush administration against the nations and peoples of this region."

Reflecting the sentiments expressed by Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmed Abul-Gheit to The Washington Post, Dweidar goes on to say that it is not among the goals or ambitions of our people to have a democracy "based on murder, devastation and instability such as that forced on Iraq by the American occupation".

In the same issue of Al-Akhbar, Ahmed Hassan suggests that the US does not have the right to make itself a global human rights watchdog. "That would be like a prostitute who smears herself in filth at night while spending the day giving lectures on morality."

In an open letter to George W Bush, board chief Ibrahim Seada takes up two long pages in Al- Akhbar the next day to reiterate much of the grievances this part of the world has against the policies of the Bush administration (lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the current occupation of Iraq, etc.) as a backdrop to point out that "we in Egypt have many reservations over the developments that have overtaken the bilateral relationship between us and the United States."

Seada is particularly concerned with the "media war" the US has launched against Egypt. "What is amusing, Mr President, is that the sharp criticism published by the European press about yourself and US policy is much greater than that published by the Egyptian press, and yet we have never heard of a member of Congress or the American administration who would claim that they [the European press] are mere mouthpieces of their governments or Al-Zarqawi and Al-Qaeda sympathisers."

But there is a reason why the US is aggressively pressuring the Egyptian regime it has for so long supported according to Adel Hamouda in Sawt Al- Umma on 14 March. The objective of the pressure, says Hamouda, is "direct and indirect American control over countries that will comprise its empire, so it [the US] can swallow resources and markets. [Towards this end] it bakes leaders like a margarita pizza and boils them like spaghetti bolognaise."

And our turn is next. "All indications are that Egypt is the country now urgently required in the American house of obedience," affirms Hamouda, who goes as far as to suggest that after the US role in Lebanon, we could expect a scenario in which the Americans are involved in the assassination of a religious figure in order to instigate sectarian strife.

Is Hamouda's scenario credible? Maybe not, but then there is the money the US is doling out to specific NGOs, the announcement of which has raised more than an eyebrow in the press. Picking up on the relevance of this action, Mustafa Bakri in Al-Osbou on 14 March said he "smells the smoke as the fire comes closer [to Egypt]". Bakri says the US picked up on the Al-Ghad Party Chairman Ayman Nour's arrest to declare its "war against Egypt". And reflecting Dweidar's more official sentiments, he adds, "We all want democracy and we all refuse oppression but not within the terms of reference of the American agenda nor via their dirty money which aims at manipulating the pressure that exists on the Egyptian street."

Bakri suggests that in confronting American attempts at hegemony President Mubarak has only one choice -- to achieve real democracy in Egypt, thus ending the era of the one-party, one-man system.

And while the constitutional reform announced by the president was perceived by many as having made the necessary initial moves in the right direction, the opposition is screaming that the amendment of one article is simply not enough. Salah Eissa in Al-Wafd on 12 March said the hopes everyone had pinned on the president's initiative have been dashed. According to Eissa, the committee responsible for drafting the guidelines for nomination are doing a job that will ensure that "political parties will be required to participate with [the NDP] in a charade which ends in the success of the [NDP] candidate with a majority of 99.99 per cent. And I am sure that none of the political parties will participate in acting out this dreadful scenario."

In Al-Arabi on 13 March Abdel-Halim Qandil agrees with Eissa, adding that the measures suggested by the committee do not offer serious potential for nomination. "The funny thing is that they talk to us about using the French Constitution as a guideline... [but] in France there is complete freedom... and in Egypt there is oppression. In France there is no Safwat El-Sherif or Kamal El-Shazli or the empire of fear called 'state security' nor the violation of basic rights of citizens... nor is there a bi-presidential system for father and son, nor a media monopolised by the state."

But according to the editorial of October magazine on 12 March those who are critical of the nomination guidelines do not take into account the importance of the presidential role. The problem, according to the magazine, is that "lower-level [politicians] and beginners now have a loud voice. And they do not know -- or maybe they do -- that they are not speaking in the best national interest but in the interest, unfortunately, of foreign agencies who aim to wreak havoc."

And so we come full circle, back to the US role in local reform. But writer Osama Anwar Okasha in Al-Wafd on 13 March says that while those who call on us to refrain from requesting too much reform too fast -- "those who speak with increased urgency every day about foreign funding of presidential candidates" -- do nothing but ruin the first steps taken towards democracy.