Cairo - Egyptians are becoming increasingly polarised as the presidential elections draw closer. And residents of the building where I live in eastern Cairo are no exception. A poster of the controversial presidential contender, Ahmed Shafiq, appeared the other day in the entrance of the building and triggered a huge row. When the janitor was asked, he said that one resident pasted it up because “he supports Air Marshal Shafiq and wants to campaign for him inside the building”. “But this Shafiq is a feloul,” retorted an angry neighbour, using a derogatory term referring to loyalists of the ousted president Hosni Mubarak. Shafiq, 71, was appointed as prime minister days after a popular revolt forced Mubarak to step down in February last year. An ex-Air Force commander, who also served as an aviation minister under Mubarak, Shafiq was last month allowed back into the presidential race after a brief disqualification. A commission, supervising the presidential polls, said that Shafiq's appeal against the exclusion was accepted over doubts about the legality of a ban, approved by Parliament, on former officials in the Mubarak regime. Shafiq is remembered for his frequent public appearances during the anti-Mubarak revolt, wearing a dark blue jersey. “I have many suits, but I liked wearing this jersey because it felt comfortable at the time,” he said on a recent TV show. “Clothes shops have cashed in on this, selling thousands of such jerseys,” he noted. But, according to Shafiq's opponents in our residential building, he should not have been allowed to run for president altogether. “This man was involved in the Camel Battle and should be in prison,” said one resident. He was referring to an attack by Mubarak loyalists riding camels and horses on thousands of pro-democracy protesters in early February 2011. The assailants wielded machetes and knives in the onslaught mounted in the iconic Tahrir Square in central Cairo. Shafiq, the then premier, later denied knowledge of the attack that came nine days before Mubarak's ousting. “The man said he had no idea about the battle [attack],” said another resident, a man in his fifties, the one who'd pasted up the controversial Shafiq poster. “With all the chaos we have been seeing since Mubarak's departure, Shafiq is the right man for president,” he staunchly argued. “He is known for being strict and is good on public relations. He's the man to encourage the outside world to help Egypt.” In a recent TV interview, Shafiq said that, if he is elected president, the US will be the first country he'll visit, “because our interests closely lie with them”. “Nonsense!” retorted an anti-Shafiq neighbour. “Did we stage a revolution and remove Mubarak, only to replace him with one of his cronies?” he asked. “This makes a mockery of the revolution and its martyrs,” he added, before ripping the Shafiq poster off the wall and tearing it up. His act angered the Shafiq supporter, who had to be restrained to prevent him starting a fistfight. “What you've just done is uncivilised and undemocratic. You can vote for whomever you like. And I have the right to show my support for whom I want,” he added. “It's a big joke that Shafiq is allowed to nominate himself for presidency, while Sheikh Hazem has been excluded for trumped-up reasons,” added the Shafiq opponent. Hazem, an ultra-conservative Salafist lawyer, was barred from the race after the election commission said his late mother was a US citizen. His supporters have held a series of mass protests in Cairo against the ban, accusing the US and Egypt's military rulers of being behind the exclusion. “He was excluded because he pledged to enforce God's Sharia. This is not what the Americans and the military want,” said the Shafiq opponent, who turned out to be a supporter of the ‘Sheikh'. To stave off political tensions from mounting inside our apartment block, a group of wise residents suggested a compromise. “In the name of democracy, each resident has the right to promote his favourite [presidential] contender by putting up his poster on the door of his apartment,” they said. “No poster should be allowed in the entrance to the building, as we want to keep it looking nice and clean,” they added.
