CAIRO - Young Egyptians, angry with their fathers, are planning a dilatory tactic. In the run-up to next week's presidential elections, the first since Hosni Mubarak's overthrow, the Internet has gone viral with a call for young people to stop their fathers from voting for the feloul, the Mubarak-era officials, who are standing for president. ‘Hide your father's ID if he plans to vote for the feloul' is the title of a widely popular message on the social networking website Facebook. The targets are two Mubarak-era contenders: Ahmed Shafiq and Amr Moussa. The former was Mubarak's last premier, seen by the young revolutionaries as an extension of the Mubarak regime. Shafiq, an ex-army general, has been allowed back into the dramatic race after a brief exclusion. A controversial ban, rammed through the Islamist-dominated Parliament, on senior officials in the Mubarak regime and the now-disbanded ruling party, has failed to derail Shafiq's presidential bid. Shafiq, 71, portrays himself as a would-be president capable of re-establishing security in the country "within 24 hours" of his winning the presidential post. “This claim does not shake a single hair in my body,” a confident Shafiq said during a recent TV appearance, when asked to comment on his detractors' calling him a feloul. Moussa, a frontrunner in the presidential marathon, served for ten years as foreign minister under Mubarak, before becoming the chief of the Arab League for another decade. Moussa, 75, is at pains to project himself as an opponent of Mubarak, a claim dismissed by young critics, who brand him as a ‘transformer' ��" allegedly for shifting his alliance from Mubarak to the revolution. The career diplomat, who boasts about his background as a veteran statesman, appeals to secular-minded voters, who are worried about the Islamists' growing clout. As Election Day grows ever nearer, the young revolutionaries are intensifying their online campaign to stop the Mubarak holdovers from ‘reproducing' the ousted regime. “Have we removed Mubarak only to install Shafiq or Moussa?” wrote one detractor on a Facebook account. “It would be a disastrous insult to the blood of the martyrs if either of these two became president,” he added, referring to more than 800 Egyptians killed during the anti-Mubarak revolt. “Our fathers have failed to catch the spirit of the revolution. They are obsessed with stability, no matter what the price,” he wrote. Egypt has been hit by street turmoil and a surge in crime in the past 15 months, with Mubarak loyalists suspected of being behind the unrest. “Enough of this instability,” said Ahmed Hatem, a construction worker. “I have been out of work for most of the past 15 months. It is high time things settled down and life returned to normal in this country,” added Hatem, a father of four. He said he had not heard about the campaign to prevent older voters from casting their ballots for the Mubarak-era presidential hopefuls. “If someone steals my ID ��" even my son ��" it is illegal and undemocratic,” he stressed. “As a precaution, I'll hide my ID in a secret place, that even a professional thief won't be able to find,” added Hatem with a smile, declining to say for whom he will vote.
