Egypt

Pope Francis Ends African Trip With Visit to a Mosque

In some sense, this story would interest Egyptians and applies to Egypt, too. The New York Times, by SOMINI SENGUPTA

Pope Francis shaking hands upon his arrival at a mosque in the Central African Republic's capital, Bangui, on Monday. Credit Gianluigi Guercia/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

On his maiden visit to Africa, Pope Francis went where most other dignitaries would not — and he went in ways that won him applause from ordinary people.

In Nairobi, he traveled from the airport in a simple Honda — then visited a slum long accustomed to the ribbon of raw sewage.

In Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, he crossed a no-man’s land in a war zone, taking off his shoes at the threshold of a mosque, as is Muslim custom, and then speaking of reconciliation across faiths. “Christians and Muslims are brothers and sisters,” he said, a jarring idea in a country where some Muslims and Christians have slaughtered each other for the last two years.

The pope’s six-day swing to Africa, which ended on Monday, was loaded with potent, stirring symbols like this. On a continent brimming with young people, they were meant to appeal to youth, including the disaffected.

In Uganda, he put aside his prepared remarks to champion the courage of a former child soldier. In Kenya, he expressed sympathy for young men and women who lack education and work. And he gave a nod to the one subject that resonates widely with African youth — but did so delicately, so as not to offend the leaders who were hosting him.

“Corruption is something that eats inside; it’s like sugar, it’s sweet, we like it, it’s easy,” Francis said and then, gently, he urged: “Please. Don’t develop that taste.”

What he did not say was equally potent. The Roman Catholic Church in Africa is powerful — and increasingly conservative. And so Francis was silent about the repression of gay men and lesbians in Uganda, despite the hopes of human rights advocates.

He said nothing about child marriage — which is exceptionally high in sub-Saharan Africa — nor about why so many African women continue to die in childbirth. The church officially opposes contraception, and the pope continues to speak of the need to protect the unborn.

On the flight back to Rome, the pontiff tried to deflect a question on whether the church should change its position on the use of condoms to limit the spread of H.I.V.

After leaving the mosque, Francis visited a school in a Muslim area of Bangui. Credit Gianluigi Guercia/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

After leaving the mosque, Francis visited a school in a Muslim area of Bangui. Credit Gianluigi Guercia/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“I don’t like getting into questions or reflections that are so technical when people die because they don’t have water or food or housing,” he said, according to an Associated Press report.

Francis saved his riskiest venture for last. He spoke in a mosque in a neighborhood of Bangui, called PK-5, where the city’s Muslim minority has been isolated for months. Rival militias stand guard at the gates of the neighborhood, controlling who gets in and out, and the road that links it with the rest of the city is usually eerily deserted.

On Monday, it was an altogether different scene. The barricades broke — at least for a while.

Diane Corner, United Nations deputy special representative, posted on Twitter: “Remember the fall of the Berlin Wall? That’s what border of PK5 looks like. Extraordinary scenes for last 3 hours.”

More than two years of sectarian strife has displaced more than 400,000 people in the Central African Republic, the United Nations estimates. The mosque had been freshly painted for Francis’ visit. The Vatican flag was hoisted in the yard out front. Inside, after speaking with Muslim clerics, Francis appealed for Christian-Muslim unity, as he had throughout his Africa tour.

“Together,” he said, “we must say no to hatred, to revenge and to violence, particularly that violence which is perpetrated in the name of a religion or of God himself.”

Chris Stein contributed reporting.

via www.nytimes.com

Egypt ready to replace Turkey in the Russian market

RT Business, Egypt ready to replace Turkey in the Russian market 

Customers in Russian supermarket © Vladimir Fedorenko / Sputnik

Cairo has asked Moscow to provide it with the list of banned Turkish goods, saying it is ready to export Egyptian products to Russia.

The issue was raised at the meeting between Egyptian Trade Minister Tarek Kabila and his Russian counterpart Denis Manturov, according to Egypt’s Ministry of Trade and Industry website.

"Egypt is interested in filling the needs of the Russian market in goods, especially those that were supplied from Turkey, in the wake of Russia's decision to restrict Turkish imports of fruits and vegetables to 66 percent, as well as clothing items," the Egyptian minister said.

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On Monday, the Izvestia daily published a list it got from a source in the Russian Ministry of Agriculture of banned Turkish products. It includes meat, dairy products, fish and seafood, nuts, fruit and vegetables, berries and herbs. The complete list will be issued on December 1.

Moscow will find no difficulty in substituting Turkish fruit and vegetables, according to Russian Agriculture Minister Aleksandr Tkachev. “Russians won’t feel the absence of Turkish products,” he said, adding that Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Morocco and Israel could be alternative suppliers.

On Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree imposing a package of economic sanctions against Turkey following its downing of a Russian Su-24 jet in Syria. The measures include banning several Turkish organizations and the import of certain goods.

According to the decree, employers in Russia will be prohibited from hiring Turkish nationals for work starting January 1, 2016. The visa-free regime for Turkish nationals traveling to Russia will be suspended starting next year.

The Russian government has also been tasked to introduce a ban on charter flights between Russia and Turkey and to enhance security control at Russian ports in the Sea of Azov and Black Sea.

On Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree imposing a package of economic sanctions against Turkey following its downing of a Russian Su-24 jet in Syria. The measures include banning several Turkish organizations and the import of certain goods.

According to the decree, employers in Russia will be prohibited from hiring Turkish nationals for work starting January 1, 2016. The visa-free regime for Turkish nationals traveling to Russia will be suspended starting next year.

The Russian government has also been tasked to introduce a ban on charter flights between Russia and Turkey and to enhance security control at Russian ports in the Sea of Azov and Black Sea.

via www.rt.com

Egyptian Drs abroad to operate on poor compatriots for free: Minister

Cairo Post

Minister Of Immigration Nabila Makram - YOUM7

CAIRO: A “large number” of Egyptian doctors who live abroad have welcomed an initiative to operate on poor Egyptian patients for free, according to a Sunday statement by the Migration Ministry.

“Resounding success of Egyptian doctors abroad has always caught my attention while working at Egyptian embassies… Once I was appointed as a Minister of State for Migration, I thought of the idea to ask for their help in relieving the pain of their compatriots at home,” Migration Minister Nabila Makram said in the statement.

After Prime Minister Sherif Ismail approved the initiative, Makram decided to begin with liver operations, since liver diseases are common among Egyptians.

Egypt has the highest rate of hepatitis C infection in the world, nearly 15 percent of the population, according to World Health Organization statistics.

Makram received several applications from Egyptian doctors of different specializations to participate in the initiative, the statement said.

She called on Egyptian liver surgeons who live abroad to send their application to [email protected], saying that she had agreed with the Health Ministry to conduct the operation in February.

An integrated program will be executed for doctors during their visit to Egypt and “all facilitations will be provided” to help them carry out their missions, according to the statement.

via thecairopost.youm7.com

Despite pitfalls, Egypt works toward economic stability

CNBC, by Dawn Kissi

Mohamed El Shaid, Getty Images

After several years of social and economic upheaval, Egypt — the most populous and one of the most strategically important nations in the Middle East — appears to be on a tentative road to recovery.

Although recent parliamentary elections were met with low voter turnout, analysts are encouraged by the economic reforms being spearheaded by President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, who appears committed to boosting Egypt's long-term outlook.

Although ratings agency Standard & Poor's (S&P) cut the country outlook to "stable" earlier this month, S&P also said it expects Egypt's economic recovery to "remain gradual" and contingent on political stability.

Despite years of civil strife that earned the Egyptian government the enmity of international human rights watchdogs, S&P expects to keep or even hike the country's 'B-' credit rating — which it raised just two years ago.

Egypt will "largely remain politically stable and its economy will continue to progressively grow in the face of important macroeconomic headwinds," the agency stated, even as it raised concerns about its fiscal position.

For analysts and investors, however, cautious optimism is the order of the day when it comes to Egypt, and the reforms of the al-Sisi government. Economists at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank predict Egypt's economy will grow around 4 percent this year and next, a marked improvement from as recently as 2012-2014, when average growth languished just above 2 percent.

Meanwhile, multinational companies have plowed money into the $272 billion mixed economy. Earlier this year, British oil giant BP inked a $12-billion deal to produce 3 billion barrels of oil equivalent.

Watch that budget

That said, some of the enthusiasm has been curbed by fiscal factors, a key reason behind S&P's decision to lower its outlook on the country. The cabinet's recently approved budget is implementing ways to bring the gap below 10 percent of GDP this year, but some analysts are less sanguine. Investment bank Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH) is forecasting Egypt's deficit to hit 11 percent of GDP this year, despite the phasing out of some subsidies.

"Because of this, the government has committed to further fiscal reforms that would help put public debt on a downward trajectory," said Win Thin, global head of emerging market currency strategy with BBH. Global economic headwinds and falling oil prices have clouded the near term outlook, Thin explained, even though Egypt has gotten some help.

"Foreign reserves have been falling steadily and are poised to fall below $15 billion for the first time since June 2013," Thin said. "This has happened despite several infusions of more than $20 billion in aid from Gulf allies Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates."

In spite of an apathy that has resulted in low turnout in ongoing elections, analysts say that al-Sisi has enough support to push through structural reforms. Concerns about terrorist activity — the sort of which brought down a Russian passenger plane this month — remain a wild card.

"We note also that with persistent high unemployment, social tensions are likely to remain high and this could be fertile breeding ground for terrorism to take root," BBH's Thin said.

With that in mind, "the government has wisely signaled that it would like to boost spending on social programs," he added, but such spending could also worsen Egypt's fiscal position.

via www.cnbc.com

Hope for Nefertiti’s Tomb, and Egypt’s Economy

The New York Times, by Karim Faheem

LUXOR, Egypt — For weeks, a group of explorers have scanned the walls of a tomb in the Valley of the Kings, using radar and infrared devices, in the hopes that science might confirm one Egyptologist’s theory: that hidden behind a wall of King Tutankhamen’s burial chamber sits the long-sought tomb of Queen Nefertiti.

The prospect of such a discovery is beyond tantalizing, and would be as momentous a find as any here for almost a century, antiquities officials say. It would also come at a time when Egypt’s tourism industry, frozen by years of political unrest and fears of militant attacks, is in urgent need of good news.

For the noted Egyptologist, Nicholas Reeves, the tests could vindicate his arguments that two of the walls in the tomb of Tutankhamen, also known as King Tut, are likely to mask hidden rooms, and that the tomb itself was in fact an antechamber to a larger burial complex that belonged to Nefertiti, Pharoah Akhenaten’s powerful queen who according to some theories, succeeded him as ruler of Egypt.

Hirokatsu Watanabe, a radar specialist, used his equipment to survey an area outside the entrance to the royal burial chamber. Credit European Pressphoto Agency

Dr. Reeves acknowledges that Egyptian officials, including some of his colleagues in the search, do not share the conviction that Nefertiti is waiting to be found in any undiscovered chambers.

For Egypt, there is much at stake. The government is desperate for the kind of earth-shattering archaeological find that would lure tourists back to its ancient monuments. Visitors have been driven away from everywhere in Egypt but its beaches, and in the last few weeks, the seaside resorts have emptied, too, after militants claimed responsibility for downing a plane full of Russian beachgoers in late October, killing everyone onboard.

With that gathering sense of urgency, the explorers emerged from Tutankhamen’s tomb this weekend, plainly exhausted by the work but carrying what they said was promising news: Radar scans had provided strong evidence of hollow chambers behind the walls. Mamdouh Eldamaty, Egypt’s antiquities minister, said at a news conference announcing the findings that there was an “approximately 90 percent” chance that something — “another chamber, another tomb” — was waiting beyond Tutankhamen’s burial chamber.

“I think it’s a very good result,” he said, adding that more analysis would be carried out over the coming weeks on the radar data to try to determine more precisely what is beyond the walls. After that, researchers may drill into the walls to get an even better look, though there is no set timetable for that step.

Hours after the news conference on Saturday, the explorers returned to Tutankhamen’s tomb, where Hirokatsu Watanabe, the Japanese specialist carrying out the radar scans, surveyed an area outside the entrance to the burial chamber. Mr. Watanabe dragged his silver, battered-looking device back and forth across the dirt, as journalists followed his every move and another member of the team took notes.

Among those watching was Mustafa Waziry, the director of antiquities of Luxor. “I’m an archaeologist, I don’t know what it means,” Mr. Waziry said, speaking of the results of the radar tests. But the implications were clear.

Tutankhamen’s sarcophagus. Credit Khaled Desouki/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Advertisement

“If we discover something, it will turn the world inside out,” he said. “And they will come.”

He can only hope. Mr. Waziry and his colleagues have watched in anguish over the last four years as tourism in Egypt collapsed since the uprising against President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

The year before the uprising, he said, 12,000 people stood in long lines each day to visit the attractions in Luxor. By 2012, the number had plummeted to as few as 300 a day, mirroring a broader disappearance across the country of treasured cultural tourists who spent generously on extended tours of Egypt’s temples and museums.

The numbers had recently started to inch upward, until the crash of the Russian plane, which increased security concerns at Egypt’s airports and caused several countries to either sever or restrict air travel to Egypt.

“We are plowing in the ocean,” Mr. Waziry said, as Mr. Watanabe packed up his equipment. “We need something like this.”

Dr. Reeves, who previously worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, set off the search with a paper last summer titled “The Burial of Nefertiti?” His starting point was an analysis of high-resolution color photographs of the tomb, published in 2014 by Factum Arte, a Spanish company specializing in art replication.

“Cautious evaluation of the Factum Arte scans over the course of several months has yielded results which are beyond intriguing: indications of two previously unknown doorways,” he wrote. One was probably a storeroom, he said, and the other, on the tomb’s north wall, was likely a continuation of the tomb containing an “earlier royal internment — that of Nefertiti herself, celebrated consort, co-regent, and eventual successor of Pharaoh Akhenaten.”

Dr. Reeves cited other supporting evidence, positing that what is regarded as Tutankhamen’s tomb, which was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922, had in fact “been both initiated and employed for the burial of Nefertiti.”

When Tutankhamen died unexpectedly at the age of 19 — about a decade after Nefertiti’s death — her tomb was reopened, and a portion of it reconfigured to accommodate the young king, according to Dr. Reeves.

At least one prominent Egyptologist believes that the entire project will turn up nothing. Dr. Zahi Hawass, a former Egyptian antiquities minister, who for years was the swaggering, public face of the country’s archaeological discoveries and a rainmaker for tourism, ticked off a list of reasons there might be nothing hidden behind the walls — and certainly, he said, not Nefertiti.

“I am an archaeologist for 40 years,” Dr. Hawass said. “I can smell a discovery, and this is no discovery at all.”

But despite his criticisms, Dr. Hawass acknowledged that “all of us are desperate for good news.” Whether a discovery was looming, or not, the search itself had begun to stir hope among the proprietors of Luxor’s empty travel agencies and markets.

Bahaa Youssef, who works as a travel manager at Sunrise Tours in the city, said the company was running out of inventive ways to make money. “Egypt needs big events, to make people look at us again,” Mr. Youssef said.

With their camera crews trailing, Dr. Reeves and his colleagues were at the very least creating a buzz, perhaps taking a page from Dr. Hawass, with his showmanship and grand pronouncements.

“If we find what I think is there,” Dr. Reeves said, “it will be bigger than Tutankhamen.”

via www.nytimes.com

High Chance That 2 Rooms Are Hidden Behind King Tut's Tomb, Egypt Says

NPR, by Bill Chappell

Officials remove the linen-wrapped mummy of King Tutankhamun from his stone sarcophagus in his underground tomb in the famed Valley of the Kings in Luxor in 2007. New radar scans show that other rooms may be hidden behind the tomb's walls. AFP/AFP/Getty Images 

They know something is there; they just don't know how big it is. That's the latest from Egyptian officials who are trying to determine whether Queen Nefertiti's tomb might be hidden behind King Tutankhamun's tomb.

The news came Saturday, as Egypt's minister of antiquities announced the latest findings of a project that's scanning ancient pyramids, in the hope of finding chambers that have remained hidden since the 14th century B.C.

At a news conference in Luxor, Egypt's Antiquities Minister Mamdouh el-Damaty says researchers have boosted their level of certainty about a hidden chamber from 60 percent to 90 percent.

From Cairo, NPR's Leila Fadel reports:

"The search by the ministry began after British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves published a paper saying that cracks in the walls of King Tut's burial chamber suggest there are two other passages. One is possibly a storeroom; the other might be the tomb of Queen Nefertiti, best known for her beauty.

"Reeves' hypothesis has been met with some skepticism. After all, there have been many false discoveries of the queen. But Damaty says that scans indicate that there almost certainly is some type of hidden chamber behind the wall of the tomb in the Valley of the Kings. They don't know what it might be. They will need to do more scans to be sure."

A radar expert who's working on the project says he's sure that a void exists behind the wall – and that more tests are needed to determine what it is.

"There is, in fact, an empty space behind the wall based on radar, which is very accurate, there is no doubt. We cannot say at this point however the size of the space behind the wall," 

Japanese radar specialist Hirokatsu Watanabe said, according to Agence France-Presse. "We have the data but we must analyze it to understand. But we are working in the Valley of the Kings, so we are expecting to find antiquities behind the wall."

The test results will now be sent to Japan for further analysis, the officials said Saturday.

Mapping the interiors of Egypt's pyramids is part of an ongoing project that will scan ancient sites with a range of non-invasive technologies such as infrared thermography, 3D laser scans, drones, and muon radiography (which uses cosmic particle detectors to image the interiors of dense objects).

The project analyzed King Tut's tomb after Reeves published his findings in July, drawing on laser scans inside the chamber. Soon afterwards, Reeves described his findings to NPR's Renee Montagne; from that transcript:

"REEVES: There is information on two of the four walls. The first lot of information is on the west wall. I believe it's possible to see traces of a doorway there which leads into a room, very similar to the annex, which is Tutankhamun-period storeroom filled with 2000 or so objects.

"MONTAGNE: Fabulous objects, I must say.

"REEVES: (Laughter) Fabulous objects, but the really interesting stuff is going on beneath the north wall.

"MONTAGNE: A wall that he says, once you peer through it, suggests a large hidden passage. And that led Reeves to his idea that is Nefertiti's lost tomb because that passage seems to continue on from an actual staircase.

"REEVES: The tomb of Tutankhamun's was a staircase going down, then turning to the right, which identifies it, I think, as the tomb of a queen because the king's tomb normally turns to the left, and the queen's tomb turns to the right.

That's the first indication that we're dealing here with the burial of a queen. The second indication is that this corridor has been enlarged. And we know why that enlargement took place in the case of Tutankhamun - because they needed to introduce through it the huge panels of the gilded shrines which surrounded his sarcophagus and coffin. So that's the second thing. It's a queen who had obvious pharaonic prerogatives, in that she seems to have been buried within a nest of gilded shrines, similar to those of Tutankhamun."

The scanning project is being led by Cairo University and the Heritage Innovation Preservation Institute; it will continue through the end of 2016.

 

via www.npr.org

Egypt explores King Tut's tomb, searching for Queen Nefertiti

USA Today, by Mary Bowerman

(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

Archaeologists are exploring King Tutankhamun’s tomb in a quest to find hidden chambers that could hold Queen Nefertiti’s remains, officials said Thursday.

Egypt's Antiquities Ministry said exploration of the 3,300-year-old tomb will last three days and results of the search will be announced on Saturday in Luxor, AP reported.

In August, Nicholas Reeves, an Egyptologist with the University of Arizona, published a paper that suggested Nefertiti's tomb might be hidden in a passageway behind Tutankhamun's tomb.

Reeves examined high-resolution images of King Tut's burial tomb and found what appeared to be fissures and cracks in several places on the wall. Reeves said that the cracks suggested that behind the wall, "two previously unknown doorways" were sectioned off and plastered over.

Egypt's Antiquities Minister Mamdouh el-Damaty said in September that he believed that Nefertiti’s tomb was likely hidden behind the walls of King Tut’s final resting place, AP reported,

A 3,300-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti is displayed at the New Museum in Berlin, Germany. (Photo: AP)

Known for her beauty, Queen Nefertiti has long held a prominent place in ancient Egyptian history. Yet, researchers have been unable to locate her final resting place.

Archeologists discovered King Tut's tomb in 1922.

The tomb was one of the most intact tombs ever found, but the small size of Tut's tomb in comparison to other Egyptian pharaohs has puzzled archeologists for decades. Reeves notes the "restricted size" of Tut's burial tomb is "less than appropriate for a king's burial."

According to Reeves, the small size of Tut's tomb suggests that the tomb was originally built for Nefertiti, and later expanded to accommodate the young

via www.usatoday.com

Gods of Egypt's director and studio apologize for its sheer whiteness

The Verge, by Ross Miller

 

There was something a bit off about that Gods of Egypt trailer that hit last week, and not just for its weirdly obvious use green screen. The cast was virtually all white with just one person of color (who, it's worth noting, was only shown in the footage literally cowering), which is rather conspicuous for a movie based in ancient Egypt.

Today, director Alex Proyas (I, Robot) acknowledged the lack of diversity in a statement, according to Variety. "The process of casting a movie has many complicated variables," he said, "but it is clear that our casting choices should have been more diverse. I sincerely apologize to those who are offended by the decisions we made." Lionsgate, the studio behind Gods of Egypt, echoed the sentiment with its own statement, which said "In this instance we failed to live up to our own standards of sensitivity and diversity, for which we sincerely apologize... We have, can and will continue to do better."

It's a positive sentiment — certainly better than the more flippant remarks Ridley Scott gave in response to similar criticisms of Exodus: Gods and Kings last year — but it doesn't change the film itself, which is already filmed and set to hit theaters in February. Maybe, however, the studio can apply the lessons here to its upcoming adaptation of Naruto.

via www.theverge.com

If it weren’t terribly upsetting, it would be hilariously comic (Part One)

I’m in the process of getting some documents legalized. If you have never visited an Egyptian bureaucratic office to legalize, authenticate, or approve a document, you will find the following description utterly amusing, but if you happen to be Egyptian and had visited such an office, you will cringe as you remember the ordeal where inefficiency and wastefulness rule. At the same time, you will realize that if this attitude persists, if no major revamping takes place, Egypt will remain stagnant never taking itself one inch forward.

As a preamble to today’s circumstances, my two documents had to be first notarized in Vancouver ($35 each), authenticated by the Egyptian Embassy in Ottawa ($35 each), and couriered to and from Ottawa ($70). I must admit dealing with the Egyptian Embassy was the most respectful part of the whole process leaving me feeling proud. Check mark, one signature down.

However, upon arrival in Egypt, I was told that, no, the Civil Registry Office I planned to visit soon will not accept the embassy’s authentication, that I had to have my documents approved by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, too. No, even the stamp of the Egyptian Embassy is not good enough for the Egyptian bureaucrats, so a visit to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs became mandatory before I face the Civil Registry Office.

The office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which stamps all documents coming from abroad literally reminds one of a prison. It is a dark spacious area where desperate folks line up until they reach several windows behind columns of bars. I have no clue why the staffers sit behind these bars, hence, the term prison.

Can the staffer tell if this is the true stamp of the Egyptian Embassy? Does he have an eye to differentiate between forged documents and genuine ones? I doubt it. In any case, he signed my documents and let me go. A third set of stamps, after the notary public's and the Egyptian embassy's stamps, now coloured my two documents. Check mark, second signature down.

I head to the Civil Registry in Abbasia, a macabre madhouse where just about all Caireans go to get foreign documents, ambiguous legal matters, and complicated issues approved. For death and birth certificates, for marriage and divorce licenses, and for everything else in between, one heads to the nightmarish office called the Civil Registry in Abbasia. I stand in a mob-like queue for some time only to be told that, since my document is in English, it had to be translated. Where? The next door building. Off I head to the next door building.

It proved to be the courthouse with an adjacent structure that handles more civil work. Where is the Translation Department? On the eighth floor. I avoid the elevators since another mob awaits the elevators’ arrivals. I climb up the eight storeys my heart pounding and my legs ready to call it quits.

I arrive at the translation office. My documents are passed from an admittance staffer, to the head translator, to a regular translator, to another regular translator, and back to the admittance officer. He fills a form, adds up the cost, and says, “Now, go, pay, and bring the receipts back.” Where is the cashier? “First floor.,“ he says. “You must be kidding,” I exclaim. No, he was dead serious.

Down I go eight floors. I visit two cashier offices and once more head up to the eighth floor with six receipts. I kid you not: six receipts. As I pant, feel dizzy and remain totally out of breath, I am told to return at 10 a.m. in four days to get my translated documents. No check mark so far.

How can a country function in this fashion? How can incompetency rule, inefficiency reside, and failure become the norm? To get a document approved a person needs to take a week leave of absence.

I am not a person who enjoys criticism. If I can’t find a solution to an issue, I usually avoid talking about it. But how can Egypt fix 60 years of deterioration and decay? Where does it start? How can it change the mentality that has become the norm in this decent country of ours? I honestly don’t know. At the same time, I’m petrified by the scene I witnessed today and know that it is bound to keep Egypt far from progress leading it to an everlasting standstill.

My next visit to the Translation Office and from there to the Civil Registry Office takes place in four days. I’ll keep you posted.

Pro-Sisi coalition set to be dominant parliamentary bloc after sweeping Egypt's polls

Ahram Online, by Gamal Essam El-Din

Preliminary reports from the second stage of Egypt's parliamentary elections suggest a second landslide victory for the pro-Sisi 'For the Love of Egypt' coalition

File Photo: Meeting members of the list "in love with Egypt (Photo: Al-Ahram)

Initial figures from the second stage of Egypt's parliamentary elections suggest that the For the Love of Egypt coalition, widely believed to be loyal to President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, is likely to emerge victorious, trouncing two rival secular coalitions – the Republican Alliance of Social Forces and the National Movement and Independence Current Alliance – and one Islamist force, the ultraconservative Salafist Nour Party.

Observers and media reporters attending the vote-count on Monday night confirmed that For the Love of Egypt has won the two constituencies reserved for party-based candidates in the second stage: Cairo and the Nile South and Middle Delta with 45 seats, and the Nile East Delta with 15 seats.

The above results mean that the coalition has won all 120 seats reserved for party lists in the two-stage poll. These form around 23 percent of seats in Egypt's new parliament.

Sameh Seif El-Yazal, the For the Love of Egypt coordinator, told reporters Tuesday that the coalition's victory in the second stage was even larger than in the previous stage.

"We won 67 percent of the vote in Cairo and the Nile South and Middle Delta and 72 percent in the Nile East Delta," said El-Yazal, referring to the fact that his coalition's gain in the first stage did not exceed 60 per cent of the vote.

El-Yazal said that the For the Love of Egypt coalition, together with its allied political parties, has now become well placed to be the dominant bloc in Egypt's new parliament.

As in the first stage, the three secular political forces forming part of the For the Love of Egypt coalition – the Wafd, the Free Egyptians Party and the Future of Homeland – have shown strong performance in the second stage. Initial reports show that out of 326 candidates fielded by these parties as independents, 145 were able to qualify for the run-off stage, scheduled for next Tuesday and Wednesday.

In the first stage, held between 17 and 28 October, independent candidates affiliated with the three above-mentioned forces were able to win around 70 seats. If added to the 120 party-based seats the For the Love of Egypt coalition has won, they would make a total of 190 seats, or more than 30 percent.

Al-Yazal said last September that the coalition “aims to act as a back-up force for El-Sisi in the coming parliament”.

Accusations

The fact that one political faction – For the Love of Egypt – has monopolised all 120 seats reserved to party lists in the two-stage polls has provoked criticism from rival forces.

Tahani El-Gibali, coordinator of the Republican Alliance, attacked the leaders of For the Love of Egypt, accusing them of using unscrupulous methods to win the Cairo and Nile Delta's 45 seats.

El-Gibali claimed at a press conference on Monday that For the Love of Egypt obtained cash donations from members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait, as well as money from the US, France and seven other foreign countries.

El-Gibali's remarks were strongly condemned by Osama Heikal, a former information minister and a leading official at For the Love of Egypt, who said that the coalition intends to file a lawsuit against El-Gibali.

"This is the best way to respond to her because we do not allow ourselves to be dragged into verbal clashes with our rivals," said Heikal.

Prominent winners on the For the Love of Egypt list include Heikal, now the chairman of the Egyptian Media Production City; Taher Abu Zeid, a former sports minister; Mahmoud Badr, the founder of the anti-Islamist tamarod (rebel) group; Akmal Qortam, an oil business tycoon and head of the Conservatives Party; Tarek El-Khouli, a former spokesman for the 6th of April Movement; Mohamed El-Sallab, a construction magnate businessman; and Alaa Abdel-Moneim, a former leftist MP. The victorious list also includes 24 women and 10 Copts.

Islamists, leftists struggle

The ultraconservative Salafist Nour Party continued its poor performance in the second stage. Not only did Nour failed to win the 45-seat party list constituency – the Cairo and Nile South and Middle Delta – which it chose to contest in the second stage, but initial reports suggest that it has trailed far behind the other three rival secular coalitions competing in this constituency, and that none of its 73 candidates standing as independents won a seat or was even able to qualify for the run-off round. In the first stage, Nour gained only eight seats, reversing its strong performance in 2012 when it won 112 seats, or 22.1 percent.

Yusri El-Azabawi, an Ahram political analyst, noted in a TV interview that the victory of For the Love of Egypt came at the expense of not only the Nour Islamists, but also the anti-Mubarak 25 January revolution forces which are fiercely critical of president El-Sisi.

The Egyptian Social Democratic Party, a force representing the anti-Mubarak 25 January, won only three seats in the first stage.

El-Azabawy also notes that leftist forces have come out almost empty-handed in the second stage. No one from the 38-year-old leftist Tagammu party, which fielded 13 candidates as independents in the first stage and 10 candidates in the second stage, has won seats. Only Abdel-Hamid Kamal, the Tagammu's candidate in Suez city and a former MP, was able to qualify for the run-off stage. This is in addition to Nashwa El-Deeb, an independent who won a seat with the leftist Arab Nasserist party in the first stage.

Unlike in the first round of the first stage in which only four independent candidates won seats without facing a run-off round, around 10 were able to win seats outright and without a run-off.

A number of high-profile figures top the list of these winners, including Mortada Mansour, a flamboyant lawyer who heads Zamalek Sporting Club, and whose son, Ahmed, also won a seat in the first stage. Also included are Khaled Youssef, a high-profile movie director; Ali El-Moselhi, a former minister of social solidarity and a former leading official of Mubarak's now defunct ruling National Democratic Party (NDP); Talaat El-Sewedy, a former NDP official and an electricity cable business tycoon; Mahmoud Khamis, a former NDP MP and a major textile industrialist; journalist Ahmed Badawi; Samir Ghattas, a political analyst; and Mahmoud Othman, a former NDP official and a construction magnate who is the son of late housing minister Othman Ahmed Othman, the founder of the giant Arab Contractors Company. Mahmoud Othman is married to Jihan El-Sadat, the daughter of late president Anwar El-Sadat.

Two independent candidates – Ibrahim Abu Shiira and Gazi Abed – were able to win seats in the troubled governorate of North Sinai. El-Azabawy notes that despite terrorist threats afflicting it, North Sinai came on top in terms of turnout rate.

"A record 44 percent of voters turned out to vote in this terror-stricken governorate," said El-Azabawy.

He also notes that the turnout for Egyptian expatriates increased by 22 percent in the second stage, with the majority voting in favour of For the Love of Egypt. Most observers believe that the turnout in the second stage will be revealed to have ranged between 30 and 35 percent, compared to 26.5 percent in the first stage.

El-Azabawy also notes that many of Mubarak's NDP officials were able to win seats this week, while many others have qualified for the run-off round to take place on 1 and 2 December.

The results show that senior NDP officials who qualified for the run-offs include Hussein Megawer in Cairo's Maadi district; Moataz El-Shazli, the son of the NDP's late parliamentary affairs minister Kamal El-Shazli in Meoufiya governorate; and Ihab El-Omda in north Cairo's district of Shorabiya; and Mohamed Hammoud, a lawyer defending former NDP millionaire Ahmed Ezz, in Cairo's Boulaq.

By contrast, Mohamed Abdel-Alim, a long-time Wafdist MP and a fierce critic of Mubarak and his son Gamal, lost in Kafr El-Sheikh governorate.

via english.ahram.org.eg