Egypt

Sightless in Cairo

Via The Guardian

Being blind didn't deter Ryan Knighton from visiting Egypt in the chaotic aftermath of the Arab Spring. But it did make him wonder how everyone else gets around

Streets ahead: business as usual in the new Cairo

When I touched down in Cairo at the end of April, the Arab Spring seeded in Tahrir Square was just two months old. My own government had advised against travelling to Egypt. Protests continued. Air strikes in neighbouring Libya had begun. Syria rumbled in the background. I was, frankly, terrified. Revolution wasn't the half of it. The cabin of my plane carried only two passengers: an Egyptian woman returning from holidays, and me. The blind guy from Canada.

After we landed, our pilot stopped me at the cabin door. "You're going on your own?" he asked, aghast.

"Think so," I said. "Should be fun."

Cheerful abandon did not reassure him. So the pilot guided me through immigration, exchanged my money, found my bag at the carousel, flagged me a driver, and put my suitcase in the boot. None of this gave me comfort. To be helped so much assumes a need to be helped so much. Without him, perhaps the airport would have killed me.

"He is safe," my driver shouted to my pilot. "We are brothers now, Insha'Allah." Around me, all I could hear were skidding tyres and honks. There was a complementary smell, too, as though you were huffing a tailpipe. Cairo is a car, I thought.

"Sounds angry out there," I said, and mimicked pounding a horn.

The driver laughed. "No, this is to say I am here. Hi, I am here. It is like birds who sing, Insha'Allah." We blew past the palace where Hosni Mubarak, the recently deposed dictator, had lived. I imagined it to be the quietest spot in Cairo.

"What does Insha'Allah mean?" I asked.

"It means 'God willing'. In Egypt we say 'God willing' because we do not think we can say what will happen." And he chirped his horn for the hell of it. Insha'Allah.

My hotel was in Zamalek, an upscale, reputedly lush neighbourhood set on an island in the Nile. The desk clerks were as friendly as the sands are old. A glass of juice appeared in my hand and brightened my senses, the cold and the tart of lemons cutting away the drive. I asked about a restaurant within walking distance. Both clerks puzzled a moment.

"Walk? You cannot walk."

"It's OK. I'm Canadian," I explained, and stepped out for dinner. Feeling along the pavement, I tapped until it dropped 2ft, giving way to gravel. Several paces on gravel, then three steps up at an angle into a post. Beyond that was something my white cane inferred to be an open manhole. Beyond that? I made my way back to the hotel. "I can't walk," I said.

The clerks patted me on the back – good for you for trying – and folded me into a taxi. I tipped everybody fistfuls. I needed fast friends to survive urban planning so hostile to the human foot. Several dozen honks later, a waiter pulled me from my taxi and sat me in front of a bowl of molokhia, a traditional green soup, garlicky and bitter, lovely and viscous. Every time my spoon dug into the brothy rice, the bowl was full again. When I finally gave up on finishing, somebody slid a pipe into my hand. My first apple blossom shisha. In one hour my mouth had taken in more of Cairo than the rest of me.

Earlier, thinking ahead, as the blind must, I'd asked the clerks to scribble my hotel's address in Arabic on a piece of paper. Thing is, Egyptian taxi drivers are often illiterate. So on every block we waved my paper at pedestrians and fished for street names. Finally we stopped. The driver prodded me to climb out. And the taxi left me somewhere. Insha'Allah.

I scurried from the sound of traffic until I hit a wall, then tapped along what I presumed to be a rogue patch of pavement. Footsteps raced at me. A shout. My hand reflexively covered my wallet as a man grabbed for me.

It was one of my hotel's corner men. My thanks gushed. Our pattern was set. Any time I washed up within the block, somebody reeled me into the lobby. A blind man's social network.

How could the blind live in such a difficult place? Cities are our preferred habitat. But here? I called the Canadian embassy and asked them to help me find some of my Egyptian peeps. There had to be a story. A difference of survival skills.

In the meantime I ventured where sighties go. The next day a guide took me to Giza, to the famous Great Pyramid. At 40C, the sky pressed down on my head like an iron. We darted out of the car only to buy our tickets. Then we drove to the vantage point, but because of the superheated winds volleying sand like buckshot, we stayed in the car.

"The Great Pyramid is right there," my guide said proudly and recited a ledger of stones, workers and years. I stared at nothing. It was like going to a drive-in movie. More enthralling was the desert itself, ricocheting in handfuls, plink plink plink, off our windows.

"Would you like to go to the Sphinx?" the guide asked.

Another short drive and we parked. Though thousands usually visit the spot every day, I was one of only four gawkers. The absence of tourists was, so far, my only glimpse of the revolution.

As for the Sphinx, it looked like the Great Pyramid.

That night, returning to the only restaurant I knew, I ate as much perfumey stuffed pigeon as I could. Missing out on the sights can make a blind guy feel empty. Any more monuments, I'd develop an eating disorder.

Back in my hotel, after a corner man plucked me from the wrong building – an echoing space that felt like a lobby but smelled of cigarettes and tea – I met another hotel guest. Udo was a tall radio documentarian from Germany. We agreed, given his profession and my incongruity with sightseeing, that we'd seek some sounds together that night.

He practically carried me to a concert hall under the Zamalek Bridge. On stage a band played rock versions of Egyptian folk songs, mixing traditional and modern instruments, including oud and electric guitar, over a four-four backbeat. My ears let modern Egypt in. The singers, before we left, asked us to follow the band on Facebook. My hands mimed scratching my eyes, as I tried to describe my particular exile from Facebook.

On my final day I woke to a call from Amal Fikry, the president and matriarch of the Al Nour Wal Amal Association, a school and residence for blind women in Heliopolis, a suburb about half an hour's drive north-east from Zamalek. My embassy had come through for me. Amal and her driver picked me up for a tour. In room after room I met little blind girls, tweens, and women in their 20s. Some spend their days threading carpets, and some weave wicker tables, all to sell and help fund the school. In return they are educated, given a bed, and cared for. The sound of scratchy radios spilled from every room, sometimes two or three competing at once, playing different sickly-sweet pop tunes. Giggles followed me as I tapped my way through the kitchen and the library. Fingers dabbed at the hair and bumpy tattoos on my arms. I never heard another cane.

A few students, I learned, are also given instruments and taught classical music. Amal and I sipped soda in her office as she played a warbly tape of a performance in Japan. A 37-piece orchestra, all of the players blind, all of them women who, were it not for Amal, would be lost to themselves and their country.

Finally, I asked the burning question. "How do they walk about Cairo?"

"Blind men use canes," Amal said, "but the girls do not. The shame is too much. So they walk feeling with their hands. Mostly they stay inside."

The image of blind women groping the streets will never leave me, though I never saw it. During the ride back to my hotel, I felt an exhausting helplessness, though not the kind western blindness has taught me to live with. So much is to be confronted by the blind women of Heliopolis: gender, history, poverty. How unfamiliar, to feel my privilege, my relative ease, as a disabled man. And how beautiful to hear someone's independence begin with music.

"That is Tahrir Square," Amal's driver said, perhaps pointing. I rolled down my window and pretended to look. Out of respect.

This article first appeared as a "Spin the Globe" feature in Afar Magazine (afar.com)

via www.guardian.co.uk

In the name of God

Via EgyptIndependent, by Rania Al Malky

CAIRO: The future of Egypt is on the brink of an Islamist abyss. The Freedom and Justice Party’s tattered poker-faced mask has finally fallen, revealing the bloody fangs of a power hungry vampire, intent on destroying anything that stands between it and its evil, Quran-wielding project to turn Egypt into medieval Afghanistan.

So they say.

Once again the Egyptian political street is polarized over issues that, on the surface appear to be different from earlier standoffs, but upon closer inspection are merely new facets of the same ongoing tug-of-war whose seeds were sown in the heart of the “glorious” 18-day uprising.

The fact is, the FJP is no vampire, and its naysayers are no haloed angels. What is happening in Egypt at the moment is also no surprise. The hair-tearing, red-faced “liberals” who didn’t see it coming are clearly unversed in the vicissitudes of revolutions. Naturally the Islamists were going to fill the void created by the fall of the regime, and just as naturally, the ruling military council was going to try to manipulate the transitional period to serve its interests.

The standoff between Islamists and non-Islamists over the formation of the Constituent Assembly, as well as the contrived crisis between the FJP and SCAF over the issuing of a no-confidence vote against cabinet, are mere manifestations of a head-butting match between the two over Egypt’s next president. What else would explain the FJP’s U-turn on their initial announcement not to field a presidential candidate?

What is happening today is an extension of an earlier debate over the supra-constitutional principals through which the military tried to impose its guardianship over the so-called “civil nature” of the state as a pretext to shield its economic activity from public oversight and protect its leaders from criminal accountability. In that SCAF was supported by “extreme liberals” who, as is the case now, would rather keep SCAF at the helm than see Islamists in power, and are today calling for SCAF intervention to defuse the crisis.

The FJP has been weighing its options from day one, planning diligently on how to navigate potential pitfalls, working double time to impose a reality on the ground, through legitimate means, through the ballot box, to give the party the leverage it seeks, not only with SCAF, but sadly also with Egypt’s moderate liberals.

Therein lay the seeds of the FJP’s guaranteed future undoing.

A conflict with a wide spectrum of non-Islamists, including liberals, triggered by the controversial formation of the Constituent Assembly, in which Islamists, led by the FJP and the Salafi Al-Nour Party, control almost 60 percent of the 100-member panel, was a golden opportunity for Islamist forces to prove that to which they've been paying lip service for over a year. Consensus-building is not impossible if there is genuine will; but neither is the decision to dominate the political space, and the numbers prove it.

Of the 50 panel members allotted to sitting MPs, 25 are FJP, while 11 belong to Al-Nour. The remaining 14 are a motley crew of independents and FJP allies, whose existence on the assembly carries some weight, but clearly not enough weight to influence the balance of power.

Over 25 of the 50 members elected from outside parliament are also Islamists, meaning that only 40 percent of “others” are represented in the body tasked with writing the constitution. To compound the problem, over 20 percent of those 40 have walked out in objection, not to mention a boycott of the assembly by the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, the Free Egyptians Party, Al-Wafd Party and even Al-Azhar, the Coptic Church and the Supreme Constitutional Panel. All have rejected much more than the Islamist hegemony; they criticized the lack of sufficient criteria regulating the representation of a diverse Egyptian society whether ethnically, religiously, professionally, socially or gender-wise.

While Coptic representation was at six members, reflecting a calculated adherence to the lowest estimate of Egypt’s Christian population (generally put at between six and 10 percent), the representation of women is even more of a disgrace, also sealed at six who mysteriously fail to include some of the most outspoken social and political female actors such as Justices Noha El-Zeini and Tahani El-Gibali, any recognizable women’s rights advocates or even one of a handful of political players like Gamila Ismail.

To build consensus over the constitution, the Islamists must give up at least ten of their seats on the panel to the benefit of non-Islamists, and sectors that were not even represented in the first place, like the Nubians, for instance. While a such a solution may have been reached, according to news reports on Thursday, the effectiveness of it is still questionable, considering the fact that those replacing the Islamists are restricted to an already elected list of substitute members. So fundamentally not much has changed. Besides, replacing only 10 members is simply not enough and does not guarantee to fill the gaping hole of unrepresentated or under-represented sectors of society.

Talk of the illegitimacy of a “dictatorship of the minority” (who indeed have a knack for shooting themselves in the foot) by some FJP members is all well and good, as long as the “majority” on its part stops speaking in the name of God. This was never a fair fight from the start (partly because there is no coherent viable alternative) and even though the Islamists have toiled for decades to reach where they are today, they have a moral obligation to ensure that all Egyptians are involved and empowered in this crucial milestone in our history. It would be a grave mistake to seek a total monopoly on all the reins of power today because the sure failure that will ensue will fall squarely on their shoulders as well.

My advice to the FJP: drop the presidency, back-peddle on the Constituent Assembly and remember that SCAF is your enemy, so don’t lose your friends for a pact with the devil.

Rania Al Malky is the Chief Editor of Daily News Egypt.

via www.thedailynewsegypt.com

Yes, Hazim Abou Ismail will force women to wear the hijab

The young girls in Heliopolis walking around shouting, "I'll vote for Ismail because he won't force me to wear the hijab," are tricked. The man is a hypocrite. He is also ignorant.

     

Egypt bans porn websites - Technolog on msnbc.com

By Athima Chansanchai

Many Egyptians are living without electricity or jobs, and soon, those who still do have access to power may also have to do without online porn, which has been declared illegal within the country.

While some have criticized the government for pursuing a pornography ban when larger issues loom over the embattled nation, conservatives in the government have kept a steady fire burning to eradicate what they consider a moral scourge. The lawmaker leading the charge, Dr. Younis Makhioun, targeted porn sites as the gateway drug to all kinds of societal problems, including divorce and rape (though, as The Next Web pointed out, he didn't provide any evidence backing up his claims.) 

Backed up by the Ministry of telecommunications and information technology, Makhioun pushed for the ruling, which came from an Egyptian court.

Egypt officially banned porn first in 2009, which the lawyer that led that movement called "a "victory over vice and corruption" -- but it was never enforced. Looks like three years later, the courts are hoping this ban sticks better.

Egypt -- part of the early 2011 Arab Spring uprising/revolution an -- has recently been beset by fuel shortages, soccer stadium melees and fatal riots, and further prosecution of pro-democracy activists. 

The Internet played a huge part in that uprising, both in getting the word out to the rest of the world, and to connecting dissidents within the country. Now, as then, it might prove challenging for Egyptian officials to control content people want to see. 

Details of what is considered pornography have not emerged.

Check out Technolog on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Athima Chansanchai, who is also trying to keep her head above water in the Google+ stream.

via www.technolog.msnbc.msn.com

Egypt's 2012 stock boom worries some fund managers

Via Ahram Online

This year's world-beating gains for Cairo's exchange have spurred a mixture of optimism and caution among western investors

Egyptian stocks are striding ahead, but much uncertainty remains (Photo: AP)

Egypt's stock market has jumped 37 per cent so far in 2012, the largest gain of any country, but top U.S. fund managers focused on the region remain wary of further political turmoil and currency weakness in the most populous Arab nation.

The country's main stock index lost nearly half its value last year as massive public protests drove longtime president Hosni Mubarak from power in February 2011 and military leaders assumed control. 

 

This year's stock market bounce came as investors snapped up shares of companies like Orascom Construction Industries SAE and telecom carrier Mobinil. 

But in recent interviews, several fund managers who most closely follow the nation said significant risks from Egypt's political and economic situation remained. 

 

Egypt's fragmented political parties are struggling to reach consensus on a new constitution and tensions are rising with a president election just two months away.

 

A major risk is the country's currency, the Egyptian pound, which several fund managers said could fall in value despite heavy government spending to prop it up.

 

"Yes, we're bottom-up investors and we want to buy the stocks; but the economic politics are so uncertain you could lose half your money just on the currency," said Oliver Bell, portfolio manager for T. Rowe Price Group Inc's Africa & Middle East Fund.

 

Bell, who oversees about $300 million in the fund, has mostly kept it out of Egypt since joining T. Rowe in October of last year. His fund is up 11.97 per cent so far this year.

 

Famed emerging markets investor Mark Mobius slightly trimmed his Egyptian holdings in the fourth quarter of 2011 in his Templeton Frontier Markets Fund . The fund is up 14.05 per cent this year.

 

Mobius said while he is optimistic about Egypt's long-term outlook, further political struggles could hurt stock prices in the interim.

 

"The trend towards political liberalization will have a positive impact on equity markets and markets in general," he said via e-mail. "Of course, in the interim there will be turmoil and uncertainty, but at the end the impact will be positive on markets," Mobius said.

 

Another manager of a fund with interests in the region, Adam Kutas of Fidelity Investment's Emerging Europe, Middle East, Africa Fund, said he is currently avoiding Egyptian stocks completely. Noting that Egypt imports much of its food, Kutas said inflation is one of his major concerns.

 

"The value isn't there," Kutas said, citing the recent run-up. "You're not being compensated for all the risks." The Fidelity fund has gained 16.22 per cent so far this year.

 

With investors willing to take on risks and with go-anywhere mandates, frontier fund managers like Mobius, Kutas and Bell have wide latitude to judge global events and trends and spend much of their time traveling.

 

Kutas spoke by telephone from Krakow, Poland, where he had gone to check on several mid-sized companies; Bell spoke from his base in London, just before getting on a flight to South Africa, where he has moved much of his portfolio.

 

Egypt has drawn much interest because of its fast-growing population, now about 80 million, and large domestic economy. The country's gross domestic product of $515 billion last year was second only to that of oil-rich Saudi Arabia among Arab countries.

 

Egypt's 37 per cent stock market gain through 26 March was the best of any country's individual equity market according to index provider MSCI Inc . Next best was tiny Kazakhstan, with a 32 per cent gain, followed by Vietnam, which rose 29 per cent, and Hungary, which gained 28 per cent.

 

Instead of jumping on Egyptian equities, T. Rowe's Bell said in the Mideast, he prefers to own shares of banks and other companies in Saudi Arabia.

 

He had owned shares in Orascom traded on the Cairo exchange, but has since moved to own them via the London exchange, in case a future Egyptian government puts currency controls in place as a crisis measure.

 

"You have political paralysis. It should be ended by the end of June, but meanwhile the economic clock is running down," Bell said.

 

Mobius's Templeton Frontier Markets Fund owned about 1.79 million global depository receipts, or GDRs, of Orascom Telecom Holding SAE at the end of December, down from 1.95 million at the end of September, according to the fund's securities filings. Other top holdings were unchanged, including stakes in Egyptian International Pharmaceutical Industries Co and Alexandria Mineral Oils Co.

 

While he trimmed his stake in Orascom, Mobius added to a position in Aramex PJSC, a freight & logistics company in the United Arab Emirates, in the fourth quarter.

 

The fund had 6.2 per cent of its assets invested in Egypt at the end of December, down slightly from 6.3 per cent invested in the country three months earlier. Mobius declined to discuss specific holdings.

 

Not all frontier managers are as worried about Egypt, however.

 

Larry Seruma, whose New York-based Nile Capital Management focuses on African companies, has about 10 per cent of his Nile Pan Africa Fund invested in Egyptian stocks, up from about 5 per cent six months ago.

 

Seruma took some profits in Orascom Construction after the shares' recent run-up but still has faith in the company's prospects. "I think the big story is that things were beaten down tremendously; it was just irrational," he said.

 

Still, Seruma said he too has worries about the value of the Egyptian pound and the country's declining foreign reserves. Much is at stake in the outcome of elections, which could determine whether Egypt will receive international financial backing, Seruma said.

 

"The new government will have to negotiate a loan with the IMF (the International Monetary Fund) or the World Bank, and the new loan will come with some tough terms. If you have a new government that is not friendly to the West, you are not going to get that loan," he said.

 

via english.ahram.org.eg

Presidential contender Abu-Ismail given heroes’ reception at Cairo University - Presidential elections 2012 - Egypt

A grim moment in the history of Egyptian politics

Via Ahram Online, by Sherif Tareq

Prominent presidential hopeful Hazem Salah Abu-Ismail was given a heroes’ reception by several thousand students, as he paid a visit to the Cairo University midway through Tuesday to deliver a speech as part of his electoral campaign.

Several hundred students rallied by the main gate of the Cairo University to form human corridor large enough for a cars to pass, with many holding photos of different sizes of Abu-Ismail, on which several slogans hailing him as the coming president were emblazoned.

The campus was also bustling with his supporters, some of whom were wearing unified shirts proclaiming their allegiance.

By the three doors of the Aiouty hall, one of the university’s largest where the conference was held, hundreds more were massing while waiting for the arrival of the Islamist candidate. Others were trying to enter the hall but to no avail, as it was already packed.

Abu-Ismail appeared to have entered the campus from a side door in order to avoid the excited crowd and possible stampedes at the main gate. Physically protected by his campaigners, however, the renowned Islamic preacher was escorted by hundreds of students as soon as he materialised.

There were, overall, several thousands of his cohorts outside and inside the hall by the time he arrived. They were enthusiastically chanting “the people want Hazem Abu-Ismail [for the presidency],” among other slogans.

It took Abu-Ismail and his entourage a few minutes to make their way through the crowd and enter the hall that was already crammed. Hundreds of students were occasionally banging on the doors that were frequently opened by organisers for some to come out and others to get in in extreme jostles.

More resolute students even risked their lives by climbing the external walls of the faculty of commerce’s hall to reach the 15-20 foot high windows, from which some indeed got inside.

During the speech, Abu-Ismail tackled a few issues.

The 51-year-old warned of the influence of western countries, specifically the US and Israel, saying that through their ideologies they want the new regime in Egypt to resemble the toppled one of deposed president Hosni Mubarak.

He also implied that some of these countries back some presidential candidates, whom he did not name, saying, “for this reason, you should not accept all the shiny talk of the presidential candidates."

He went on, “the students are the hope of this nation; you need to guard your own future and you also need to protect the forthcoming presidential elections [from possible orchestration] because it will decide the fate of the country."

“Whether you vote for me or someone else, you must promise yourself to never again be driven like sheep.”

Abu-Ismail is to start a nationwide tour on Wednesday in Mansoura University in the Nile Delta valley.

via english.ahram.org.eg

Egypt's Brotherhood faces double backlash

Via Yahoo News, by Hamza Hendawy (Associated Press)

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt's powerful Islamists on Monday faced a backlash on two fronts as they try to solidify their hold on the country's politics, as liberal politicians quit a panel tasked with drafting a new constitution to protest its domination by Islamists.

More ominously, the ruling military issued a veiled threat of a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood if the group persisted in demands to form a new government.

The warning pointed to a growing possibility of confrontation between the Brotherhood and the military, which emerged as Egypt's two most powerful institutions since the fall of longtime authoritarian ruler Hosni Mubarak a year ago. For months, they have moved between cooperating and jostling for position.

But the Brotherhood appears to be growing in confidence over its position. The group holds nearly half the seats in parliament, making it the largest bloc — and its strength grows even more on some issues in which it is backed by the second-largest bloc, the ultraconservative Islamic Salafis.

Together they have been demanding the ouster of the military-appointed prime minister so they can form their own government. The military has staunchly refused. They have also used their strength in parliament to create a constitutional panel with an Islamist majority, giving them the strongest hand in writing the new charter.

In response to the tensions with the military, the Brotherhood's leader, Mohammed Badie, said in comments posted on the group's website Monday that it was "quite possible" for the Brotherhood to reverse an earlier decision not to field its own candidate in presidential elections due in May.

If the military-Brotherhood quarrel escalates, the transfer of power from the military to a civilian president — scheduled for before July 1 — could be in jeopardy. Their dispute could also hand the liberal and secular groups that engineered the 18-day uprising that toppled Mubarak an opportunity to move back to center stage after months on the side.

The independent Al-Shorouq daily said on Monday that several members of the ruling military council have expressed their disapproval of the makeup of the panel in a meeting with Brotherhood leaders. Brotherhood officials could not be reached for comment, but the report was the latest in a series published in the independent media suggesting that relations between the two sides have become so strained that a rapprochement may not be possible any time soon.

Two prominent liberal Egyptian politicians — independent lawmaker Amr Hamzawy and Christian activist Mona Makram Obeid — were the first to announce they were pulling out of the 100-member constitutional panel on Monday.

Lawmaker Emad Gad said 11 other liberal politicians have also decided to pull out and were due to formally announce their decision on Tuesday, a day before the body is scheduled to hold its inaugural session. The group include eight members of the panel and three "reserve" members, who would serve if a member bows out for any reason. Gad is one of the three reserve members pulling out.

 

"The entire process is a show to conceal the intention to draft a constitution for a religious state," said Gad, a Christian. "It's a disgrace to the constitution," Sherif Samir, a spokesman for the secular Free Egyptians Party, said of the religious slant of the panel.

The controversy surrounding the panel's makeup drew a guarded reaction from the United States, which has over 30 years regarded Egypt as a key partner in the fight against Muslim militancy.

"We want to see a new constitution for Egypt that upholds democratic values and universal human rights in all of their aspects and provides protections and assurances for the participation and the rights of all Egyptians," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in Washington on Monday.

She said the panel has an "obligation to uphold and defend and protect the democratic rights that brought them to power in the first place, including the universal rights of all groups."

Selected over the weekend, the panel includes nearly 60 Islamists and only six women and six Christians. The members were chosen by parliament's two chambers, where Islamists have a comfortable majority of more than 70 percent.

"I polled those who elected me and the majority of them said they preferred for me to stay on the constituent assembly," Hamzawy wrote. "I gave the matter a great deal of thought and studied the makeup of the assembly. My conscience told me to pull out."

Obeid, a former lawmaker and a prominent women's rights activist, said, "the religious nature and the absence of women are behind my withdrawal from the constituent assembly."

The new constitution will determine whether Egypt, a mainly Muslim nation of some 85 million people, will become further Islamized. The charter also will determine whether the decades-old system of a powerful president will be maintained, or instead, an empowered parliament under Islamist domination will set the tone.

The Brotherhood's spat with the military has its roots in the Islamists' resolve to fire the military-backed government of Prime Minister Kamal el-Ganzouri, a Mubarak-era politician who is nearly 80.

"The (ruling) military council bears full responsibility for attempts to hinder the process of democratic transition and ... exporting crises to future governments," said a statement by the Freedom and Justice Party, the Brotherhood's political wing. The party also charged that the military might try to rig the presidential election to install a favorable candidate.

The military hit back with a strongly worded statement on Sunday saying it was unacceptable to question its commitment to turning over power to a civilian government and to a fair presidential election.

It also made a thinly veiled threat of a crackdown against the group by alluding to the mid-1950s, when the Brotherhood was outlawed and its members detained after the group challenged the rule of the military.

"We ask everyone to learn from the lessons of history so we avoid the mistakes of a past we don't wish to return to," the military statement said.

But the Brotherhood appeared to dismiss the warnings. One senior Brotherhood figure, Essam Yassin, suggested times had changed and that the group had no fear of the military.

"The hands of the clock never go back," he wrote on his Facebook page. "Believers are never stung twice from the same snake pit."

AP correspondent Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

via news.yahoo.com

Akhbar Alyoum 2027, brilliant, brilliant!

Anonymous, wish I knew the author to thank him/her.

Egypt: the democratic disillusion

Egyptians will finally get to exercise their voting rights in a presidential election.  After 60 years of dubious elections, an honest and reliable one will truly be a milestone of incredible proportions. Some Egyptians had avoided voting for years; from Nasser’s 99.9 percent vote way to Mubarak’s totally rigged 2006 elections, almost all elections had been fraudulent. The 2012 election promises to be an improvement from that perspective, but will it be truly democratic?   And is a democratic vote the way to go?

Omar Suleiman, the ill-fated vice-president that came to power during Mubarak’s last few weeks before stepping down, claimed that Egyptians “are not ready for democracy yet.” This angered Egyptians who had just toppled their tyrant and believed the world was theirs. Even if true, Suleiman should have kept his thoughts to himself since this quote will haunt him forever. However, his infamous saying may not be totally off.

In a country whose population is 40% under the poverty line and where millions remain uneducated, Maslow’s theory applies in every sense of the word. This deprived, unprotected, and unsheltered sect of the society is unlikely to know what democratic choices are, a far higher rung on the ladder of self actualization. These Egyptians are unable to fathom candidate platforms, choice ramifications, but more importantly, whom to vote for.

Some will vote with their hearts, for Islamic contenders have supported the underprivileged for long, but others disappointingly will vote with their basic needs in mind.  

The reality is that a ration of oil, sugar, or rice, or a Kentucky meal, is the preferred way to buy votes. Within a poverty-stricken society, staples can buy a candidate a following, and yet these voters will remain totally oblivious of the harm they caused. This is a sobering truth, but a truth nonetheless.

Another reason why democracy will lose in this election is the downpour of financial aid flooding Egypt while promoting certain candidates. It is mostly coming from the Gulf and Saudi Arabia in support of Muslim fanatics. Hazim Abou Ismail has his face permeating thousands of posters, banners, billboards, and other kinds of advertisements because he is the candidate who can afford it. In the meantime, the simple folks, brainwashed, are getting used to the face of their future president.

What remains is the democratic process itself. The vigilant Egyptians are sorting through the hopefuls, weighing one candidate against the other, and aiming to choose the best amongst the liberals. But even in this process, Egyptians are going to lose fair and square. Almost nine hundred presidential candidates have already applied and hope to attain the necessary 30,000 support letters from around Egypt.

Logically hundreds of these will lose steam and end withdrawing from the race. However, no matter how many are weeded out, dozens will remain. And if liberals in the dozens run and compete against one another, votes will most definitely be spread thin. From this perspective, practicing democracy will ultimately not only lose but backfire.

By exercising democracy, liberal Egyptians will lose to the strong following that people such as Abou Ismail have. Ismail’s following has one and only one candidate to vote for. So while liberals are claiming democratic success by choosing from a wide spectrum, the Salafis will win by choosing the one single candidate.

The bottom line is that democratic choices and civic rights in such an ambience are not attainable.  

So what is the solution? The solution is twofold. First, liberals must continue to promote the candidates that they find most appropriate, and the examples are many. Then, when push comes to shove, they ultimately vote strategically—they vote for the candidate who can win. They must stand together to gain a majority.    

Democratic elections as a notion will take time to be fully grasped and then realized in Egypt. It’ll take a few rounds till it finally arrives. During this period it is only one’s hope that literacy and awareness will have gained the necessary momentum. In the meantime, the end result of the current round may not be what Egyptians want. How they will react to a president not to their liking remains to be seen.

For the immediate future, the result of this battle will be of overwhelming consequences. But whatever the results are, I hope Egyptians will accept the democratic process and accept the new president even if he wasn’t their choice. This is what a democracy, even if it is a misguided one, is all about.  

Muslim Brotherhood Leader Rises as Egypt’s Decisive Voice

Via NY Times--click on the link to read the full story

Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood attended Friday Prayer at a mosque in one of the group’s strongholds in Alexandria, Egypt.

CAIRO — For more than a dozen years, Khairat el-Shater guided his family of 10 children, his sprawling business empire and Egypt’s largest Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, all from a prison cell.

Each week, he held court behind prison walls as young Muslim Brothers delivered to him dossiers about the organization that sometimes were as long as 200 pages. His corporate employees paid regular visits for strategic advice about his investments in software, textile, bus manufacturing and furniture companies and other enterprises. And before consenting to the marriages of his eight daughters, he met in prison with each of their suitors. Some of the grooms were prisoners with him, others made the pilgrimage, and five said their vows in his presence, behind bars.

Now Mr. Shater, 62, commands far wider influence.

One year after the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak brought Mr. Shater freedom, he has emerged as the most decisive voice in the leadership of the Brotherhood, the 83-year-old fountainhead of political Islam, at the moment when it has established itself as the dominant power in Egyptian politics.

With firm control of Egypt’s Parliament, the Brotherhood’s political arm is holding talks to form the next cabinet while Mr. Shater is grooming about 500 future officials to form a government-in-waiting. As the group’s chief policy architect, Mr. Shater is overseeing the blueprint for the new Egypt, negotiating with its current military rulers over their future role, shaping its relations with Israel and a domestic Christian minority, and devising the economic policies the Brotherhood hopes will revive Egypt’s moribund economy.

With power he could only dream of when he padded around Mr. Mubarak’s prisons in a white track suit, Mr. Shater meets foreign ambassadors, the executives of multinational corporations and Wall Street firms, and a parade of United States senators and other officials to explain the Brotherhood’s vision. To the Brotherhood, he tells them, Islam requires democracy, free markets and tolerance of religious minorities.

But he also says that recent elections have proved that Egyptians demand an explicitly Islamic state. And he is guiding its creation from a position that his critics say may undercut his avowed commitment to open democracy: he sits atop a secretive and hierarchical organization, shaped by decades of working underground, that still asks its members — including those in Parliament — to swear obedience to the directions of its leaders, whether in the group’s religious, charitable or political work.

“The Islamic reference point regulates life in its entirety, politically, economically and socially; we don’t have this separation” between religion and government, Mr. Shater said in a lengthy interview. “The Muslim Brotherhood is a value-based organization that expresses itself using different political, economic, sportive, health-related and social means. You can’t take one part from one place and another part from another — this isn’t how it’s done.”

A former leftist and a millionaire businessman who is also the Brotherhood’s chief financier, Mr. Shater was known for years as the group’s most important internal advocate for moderation and modernization.

In prison, he talked radical Islamist inmates into renouncing violence. He helped chart the Brotherhood’s first steps into electoral politics, initially in Egypt’s professional associations of doctors, lawyers, engineers and the like. Then he was at the forefront of its more transformative drive to win seats in the Mubarak-dominated Parliament; the experience did more than anything to moderate the group as it forged coalitions and courted the mainstream. And over the past decade he also oversaw its stepped-up outreach to the West through Web sites in Arabic and English.

“No need to be afraid of us” declared the headline of a 2005 article he wrote from behind bars for the British newspaper The Guardian. “The Brotherhood,” he wrote, “believes democratic reforms could trigger a renaissance in Egypt.”

via www.nytimes.com