Workers breathe life into democracy, Sinai Bedouins and Copts fathom their true identity -- what is the country getting up to, write Gamal Nkrumah and Mohamed El-Sayed These are exciting times as far as Egypt is concerned. While the Sinai Bedouins and the Coptic Christians are embroiled in struggles pertaining to their respective crises in their identities, the workers are vociferously demanding their rights. Meanwhile, the hot debate concerning the future of the country has reached boiling point. A person with the calibre of Mohamed Hassanein Heikal has inadvertently been dragged into the debate. "The war on memory is the worst aspect of contemporary Egypt," Heikal was quoted as saying in a prominently displayed front-page story in the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Yom. Heikal insisted that the inviolability, indeed the immunity of President Hosni Mubarak, is suspect under the present circumstances. The question of presidential immunity should be prerequisite upon the accountability, credibility and above all legitimacy of the president, Heikal insisted. He raises this matter at a time when the country is in the grip of a heated debate over constitutional amendments and political reform. Heikal raised this prickly issue at the headquarters of the Heikal Foundation in downtown Cairo. The veteran writer recounted his experience of working with two former presidents, Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Anwar El-Sadat. "I was critical of Abdel-Nasser, and I consistently refused to be hemmed in by the narrow restrictions of the Arab Socialist Union, the then ruling and all-powerful party," Heikal mused. The pro-government weekly Akhbar Al-Yom, on the other hand, continued its attacks on Heikal for the second week in a row. It published a "testimony" by former prime minister Atef Ebeid about Mubarak's era, which has been usually scathingly criticised by the veteran writer. "Heikal said in one of his episodes aired on Al-Jazeera satellite channel that Egypt took roughly $20 billion from other Arab countries in the aftermath of the 1967 War... I would like to refute Heikal's claims," and he went on giving his account, the paper quoted Ebeid as saying. Conflict over the issue attained such intensity that by the end of the week matters came to a head. During the past week, the daily Al-Akhbar published articles by Gamal Hammad, a member of the Free Officers Movement, challenging Heikal's account of the 1952 Revolution. Independent papers freely give Heikal a forum to defend himself. It is not as if Heikal is suddenly being followed everywhere by the paparazzi, but the pro- government pundits believe he criticises with impunity the moral standing and credibility of the government, especially when he tackles such ticklish issues as presidential immunity. Another subject which caused much ink to flow was the civil liberties of the indigenous inhabitants of the Sinai Peninsula, the nomadic Bedouins. Saadeddin Ibrahim, in Al-Masry Al-Yom, extrapolated about the state security apparatus's handling of the sorry state of Sinai's Bedouins. Ibrahim used the paper as a platform to denounce government policy in Sinai. "Every time the state security investigators dealt with an issue, they mismanaged it", read the headline of an opinion piece. "The Bedouins of Sinai are still angry with Egyptian government policy which assigned their affairs to the State Security Investigation Department since the return of Sinai on 25 April 1982... and the Bedouins expressed their anger during the past four years by orchestrating the Taba and Sharm El-Sheikh bombings," explained Ibrahim. He pointed an accusing finger at the state security apparatus and was quite candid. "Security facilities, police stations and security checkpoints were the only ones the state set up on a large scale in North and Central Sinai. There are 50,000 security personnel working in this area, which means that for every seven residents of Sinai there is one security element, the highest security level of its kind in the world." Moreover, Ibrahim put the unrest of Sinai Bedouins in a social and economic context. He noted that as the joblessness rate is very high among Bedouin youth, they were left with no alternative but to indulge in dubious dealings and unconventional means of earning a living. "Poverty and unemployment, especially among the youth of the Bedouins, made a large number of them resort to smuggling to earn their living, given that they were not allowed to work in South Sinai resorts for security and cultural reasons," he explained. Just what the dark side could mean to the indigenous inhabitants of Sinai was elaborated in Ibrahim's article. "Misery and unemployment increased since the return of the Egyptian administration, which depends mainly on security elements, in 1982," he concluded. In the meantime, workers' strikes continued to rock the entire country in an unprecedented surge of proletarian activism. "Workers' strikes sweep eight companies in Cairo and other governorates", ran the front page headline of the daily liberal-leaning Nahdet Masr. "Workers' strikes and sit-ins escalated yesterday in Cairo, Suez and Alexandria. And in spite of repeated claims by officials that the crisis is over in most of the factories, the fact remains that workers rejected all the solutions suggested to settle the workers' problems." Soured by an ugly controversy over the civil rights of the Coptic Christian minority of Egypt, several papers picked up the theme. Indeed, the question of Coptic- Muslim relations was extensively raised once again in the papers this week. Tarek Heggi, in Al-Masry Al-Yom, wrote about the Coptic conundrum. Last week a clash between Christians and Muslims took in a village in Ayat in Giza over the construction of a church. Heggi's article entitled "If I were Coptic", warned of serious consequences. "If I were a Copt, I would have complained to the world about the injustice done to a lot of Copts in Egypt since the 1952 [Revolution]. This unfair approach deprived them of senior political and executive positions, let alone parliamentary ones," Heggi warned. This utterance of Heggi, evidently well-intentioned, nevertheless caused much deliberation at a popular level. He touched upon a raw nerve. "If I were a Copt I would have cried because I pay taxes that are used in building dozens of mosques, while the Egyptian state did not contribute to the building of a single church since 1952, except for Gamal Abdel-Nasser's contribution to the building of a Cathedral in Abbasiya 40 years ago... If I were a Copt I would have complained about the sufferings the Copts experience when issuing a licence to construct a church from their own money, not from tax money they paid." Coming from a prominent Muslim businessman, these observations were most poignant. "If I were a Copt I would have told the whole world what is happening to Coptic history in Egyptian educational programmes". He rounded up his argument with a pertinent question. "If I were a Copt, I would have launched a local and international campaign to cancel the identification of religion in the Egyptian identity card. Why does anybody dealing with me want to know my religion?"
