Once a strong supporter of the regime of ousted former president Hosni Mubarak, Sami Anan has suddenly found himself in the middle of a satirical campaign that is undermining his plans to join the presidential elections race scheduled for next summer. The first shot at the Anan campaign came with a design for its posters that featured the reputably tough general wearing civilian clothes and seated on a simple sofa in what seemed to be the garden of an elegant house while reading the front page of Al-Ahram. The general has a cup of tea, or maybe coffee, on the table in front of him. Whatever the intention behind this image may have been, it took less than 24 hours before photo-shopped versions appeared on social media sites, especially Facebook. In one version, the former general from the Mubarak regime who co-chaired the post-Mubarak transition with Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi before they were both removed by ousted former president Mohamed Morsi weeks after his inauguration in summer 2012, appears seated next to comic movie actors Mohamed Saad and Alaa Walieddin, with mocking expressions on both men's faces. In another, he appears to be reading the paper while waiting at the barber's, with the barber attending to another client and looking at him mockingly in the mirror. Other variations on the theme include Anan sitting in the bathroom or at a women's hair salon, supposedly having his hair dried, or seated at a worker's café or next to the controversial belly dancer Safinar, who appears in a revealing outfit. In what promises to be the end of the series that is gaining attention and prompting considerable joking on Facebook, Anan is removed from the picture, also by photo-shop, and the paper is left on the chair with the caption, “are you happy now? He has left the paper and taken off.” The satirical campaign against Anan has not only included photo-shopped pictures, but has also featured hilarious postings on Facebook by political activists, bloggers and others. In one of the funniest postings, satirist Sameh Samir, who has thousands of followers on Facebook, writes that “technical experts have given their reassurances that the slowdown in Facebook services is going to be promptly attended to. In the meantime, there are enough Sami Anan photos for the next three months.” No group has admitted responsibility for the campaign. However, on Monday an associate of the former number two of the army said that Anan had instructed a lawyer to take “all those responsible” to court for what he qualified as a “defamation campaign”. This will be difficult to do, suggest many activists and bloggers, who have been quick to mock the planned litigation on the social media. Whether the litigation is successful or not, said political science professor Said Sadek, “the damage has been done.” Whoever is behind the campaign, Sadek argued, aims to undermine the image of Anan as a potential presidential candidate “by stripping him of the image of a leader and reducing him to an average individual or even to someone who looks rather silly.” It was not a difficult job to do, even if the target was as influential as the feared army general, Sadek said, adding that “Anan's is already an exhausted name. He belongs to the immediate post-Mubarak phase, and like all those whose names were prominent at the time, whether as heroes or as villains, he is an image of the past.” “This is not just about his being a former member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF); it is even the case with some of the obviously revolutionary names like, say, Wael Ghoneim [the activist and social media idol], whose name is hardly heard these days.” Sadek added that the same thing was true for the “Al-Jazeera [satellite] channel that was perceived as the voice of the revolution right after the 25 January Revolution, but that is now seen as a counter-revolutionary channel.” The debate about the potential candidacy of Anan started a few weeks ago, when many were suggesting that Minister of Defence Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, head of military intelligence under Mubarak, who was made head of the Armed Forces by Morsi following the removal of Tantawi and Anan, should run for president given the popularity he developed following the army's removal of Morsi on 3 July in the wake of massive anti-Morsi demonstrations. A statement attributed to an associate of Anan at the time suggested that the general, at times rumoured to be a Muslim Brotherhood supporter and at other times a supporter of the US, was “willing to serve the nation” as president should this be the wish of the people. The statement was countered by another associate of another former Mubarak general, Ahmed Shafik, who lost in the second round of last year's presidential elections to Morsi and has since left for the UAE. “Shafik is also planning to run,” the associate said. However, the two generals were both asked by the “leadership of the army to refrain from addressing the matter,” according to highly informed sources, after it had prompted the apprehension of the revolutionary forces who were opposed to the perpetuation of Morsi's presidency. These had been shocked by the fact that the competing hopefuls for the 2014 elections seemed to be four of Mubarak's generals, Anan, Shafik, Al-Sisi and Murad Mowafi, formerly the head of General Intelligence. Anan was asked to refrain from making public appearances and statements, including publicising his serialised memoirs about the 18 days of the 25 January Revolution. The revolution had started before he was summoned back by Mubarak from a mission to the US, and the serialisation of his memoirs has been interrupted in one of Egypt's independent dailies. Anan has not appeared publicly since then, and early pictures for a possible campaign have not been officially used. The fact that the target of the satirical campaign has been Anan and not the other generals has led some foreign diplomats in Cairo to wonder who is behind the campaign and whether it is the supporters of one of the other generals who wish to discredit Anan. This idea is not excluded by Sadek or by political commentator Wahid Abdel-Meguid, who argues that what is significant is not the mockery of Anan but the fact that the key names that are being proposed “for the future are essentially those of the regime before the 25 January Revolution.” This fact has in itself prompted the mockery of some who had suggested that if Al-Sisi was the candidate who would receive the support of state bodies, then it would be Anan who would receive the support of the opposition. For the time being, however, the campaign against Anan has not affected the others, or “at least not yet”, said script-writer Mohamed Al-Hag, who said that there could be repercussions on the other candidates and that the photo-shopped Anan series was first-rate political satire. “It really is to the point. It is very funny, and it has been made using a simple photo-shop programme,” Al-Hag said. The fact that it was particularly targeting Anan, he added, “might have to do with what has been transpiring about an internal power battle, but it could simply be about the fact that Anan has actually held power and therefore it has had to be him who has had to be ridiculed. Unlike Al-Sisi, Anan also has zero popularity.” Al-Sisi himself, Al-Hag said, had also been subject to political satire that went beyond that on TV comic Bassem Youssef's “The Programme” programme, which has now been suspended. Lots of photo-shopped material on the social media has made fun of Al-Sisi's sentimental nationalism, and he was most recently photo-shopped carrying a gas cylinder for domestic delivery with a caption from remarks he made during the commemoration of the 6 October War: “the people are the apple of the eyes of the army.” Al-Hag said that there had long been waves of satire in Egyptian political life. “It happened under former president Gamal Abdel-Nasser, through the jokes then were made in low voices. Under Anwar Al-Sadat, there were the songs of Sheikh Imam and cassette tapes of comics mocking Sadat's way of talking. Mubarak was labelled La vache qui rit after the cow on the French cheese brand.” According to Al-Hag, it was also the state that had first used photo-shop to deliver a political message “when they photo-shopped a picture of Mubarak's visit to the White House to place him next to [US President Barack] Obama instead of coming at the end of the line of leaders present at the event.” Since then, he said, there had been a wider use of photo-shop to serve political purposes, adding that there was now wider access to social media and wider awareness of how to use the photo-shop programme. “Anan has made himself the butt of jokes by Egyptians who were born to make fun of everything around them, except those things that they take very seriously. But clearly Anan is not one of them,” Al-Hag said.
