Newsreel

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Wafd reform

THE WAFD Party held its second annual conference on Friday, launching what it called a new reform programme for the future of Egypt, reports Gamal Essam El-Din.

Leaders of the liberal-oriented party said they were in the process of preparing a new platform, taking into consideration the latest political and economic developments in Egypt and the outside world.

Addressing the second annual conference of the party on 28 November, leader of the Wafd Party Mahmoud Abaza said the new platform should be completed before the end of next year and ahead of parliamentary elections in late 2010.

The agenda of the Wafd conference focussed on the impact of the global financial crisis, drawing up a new reform programme up to 2050, and reviewing the Wafd's position on the newly-announced privatisation programme.

Abaza said the Wafd stands for liberalism, national unity, social justice and equality among all citizens regardless of colour, sex or religion. His deputy Fouad Badrawi boasted that the Wafd was able to win 250 seats in this year's municipal elections (out of 52,000 contested seats). Badrawi said the Wafd forged a "democratic alliance" with three main opposition parties: the leftist Tagammu, the Nasserists, and the liberal United Front. The alliance, explained Badrawi, calls for drafting a new constitution for Egypt, speeding up democratisation and political reform, and coordinating on the 2010 parliamentary elections.

Mounir Fakhri Abdel-Nour, Wafd's secretary-general and a Coptic businessman, argued that 10 measures should be adopted to soften the global credit crunch on Egypt, the most important being the elimination of a sales tax on a number of industries and imported equipment to reduce costs of production. Other measures include encouraging banks to fund small and medium-scale industries, and adopting a more flexible inter-bank interest rate. Abdel-Nour said the Wafd Party had reservations about the newly announced privatisation programme which aims to give Egyptians over the age of 21 coupons that can be exchanged for shares in state-owned industries. He said the announcement was not made at the right time when Egypt was facing the vagaries of the international financial crisis.

Bar replay

FOR THE SECOND time, elections at the Bar Association, due to be held on 18 January, might be disrupted, reports Mona El-Nahhas.

Lawsuits contesting the legality of election procedures, the authenticity of the current voters' lists, and the timing of candidate nominations, are now before the courts.

The claimants have requested a court ruling that would stop upcoming syndicate elections.

In October, the Administrative Court ordered a stoppage of the Bar polls scheduled for 14 November. The court said that Law 100/1993 regulating polls at professional syndicates was not applied while preparing for the elections. However, a judicial committee authorised to supervise syndicate elections fixed a fresh date for a poll.

Candidates had completed registration procedures on Tuesday while not totally sure if there really would be elections or another court ruling.

Lost light

HUNDREDS of street lamps worth millions of pounds were stolen from a road in Alexandria. The 400 lamp posts, worth LE5 million, were stolen from a motorway outside the Mediterranean city of Alexandria where they were supposed to be installed. Police have asked workshop owners to report anyone trying to sell the lamps as scrap.

Shake hands

A PICTURE of a handshake between Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi and Israeli President Shimon Peres has caused an uproar and demands by opposition MPs that the government-appointed Tantawi be dismissed.

Tantawi has denied he knowingly shook hands with Peres at a religious UN-sponsored conference, saying he did not recognise him.

Those who published the pictures of the handshake were "a group of lunatics", Tantawi told the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Yom. "The handshake was in passing... because I don't know him to begin with."