Al-Ahram Weekly Issue No. 243 19 - 25 October 1995
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

Front page opposition

Al-Wafd newspaper was launched in March 1984 - a parliamentary election year. Initially published on Thursdays as a weekly, it became a daily in 1978, another election year. The paper's goal, according to Editor-in-Chief Gamal Badawi, is "to call for a democratic society in which political and economic freedoms are guaranteed - democracy that is based on a strong constitution that cannot be abused." A goal which, Badawi said, reflects that of the Wafd Party.

In its early days, Al-Wafd often adopted a harsh tone in its criticism of the government, with fiery articles by then Editor-in-Chief Mustafa Sherdy - the scion of a Wafdist family, and himself a Wafdist since childhood.

Under Sherdy's leadership, the newspaper won a reputation of sorts for its regular page-two section entitled "Al-Asfoura" (the bird). Purporting to include confidential items gleaned by clandestine means, the section usually heaped scorn on some government official or exposed wrong-doings in official circles. It was this section which, it was widely believed, caused the weekly edition's circulation to rocket to 500,000 and the daily's to 300,000 by 1989. Current circulation figures are secret.

After Sherdy's death, Gamal Badawi took over and, to the disappointment of many Wafdist readers, gradually toned down the newspaper's harshly critical language. But Badawi is unrepentant. "Any newspaper is liable to change when it changes its chief editor," Badawi told Al-Ahram Weekly. "I am not Mustafa Sherdy."

Sherdy, Badawi said "wrote from the heart, addressing the people's sentiment. His articles were charged with emotion and people liked them. But I address the intellect, making people think as they read."

Rumours that the newspaper has Saudi Arabian financial backing, in the form of grants and a 30,000-copy subscription, were hotly denied by Badawi. These rumours gained ground when the newspaper failed to publish a word on the plight of an Egyptian doctor who was flogged in Saudi Arabia after complaining that his son was raped by a teacher.

But Badawi insisted that "the newspaper's advertisements and circulation cover our expenditure and we are even left with a respectable margin of profit." He described the charge that Saudi Arabia takes 30,000 copies as "ridiculous, because there is no way it could be done discreetly. The newspaper is printed by Al-Ahram and its staff would be the first to know."

He also denied that Saudi Arabia contributed financially to the paper. Acceptance of such donations, he said, would be a violation of the political parties' law.

The newspaper has also been criticised recently for its failure to champion the cause of Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid, a professor of Arabic literature ordered by a court to divorce his wife on the grounds that he had renounced Islam. And the newspaper dealt only very briefly with the case of Youssef Chahine's film The Emigrant, which was banned for a sort time on the grounds that it portrayed the Biblical character of Joseph, whom Muslims revere as a prophet. Badawi declined to explain the newspaper's editorial position on these issues.

However, Al-Wafd won praise from Farouk Abu Zeid, dean of Cairo University's Faculty of Mass Communications. In his opinion, "Al-Wafd is the only credible opposition newspaper which people can rely on, along with the national newspapers." Another positive point, he said, is that the newspaper "is open to writers from different ideological trends".

Abu Zeid believes the paper has improved, largely thanks to the change in editorship. In its early days. "It was yellow journalism, and relied on sensationalism, as was seen with the Al-Asfoura page. But in a short time Gamal Badawi managed to eliminate this page and give the newspaper a more serious image."

However Abu Zeid complained that the newspaper was not rich in content. "Reading the front page is enough. The rest of the newspaper does not offer a wide range of news, and focuses more on criticism."

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