Nothing is more indicative of how Egypt has changed since the revolution than our government's new approach to announcing Egypt's candidate for the post of director-general of UNESCO. For submitting the candidate's name to the executive board of the UN organisation, Prime Minister Sherif Ismail issued an invitation to representatives of all sectors of society concerned with the selection of Egypt's candidate to that high international post to a meeting on the subject. Last Tuesday, on the grounds of the Egyptian Museum in the heart of Tahrir Square, which amazed the world with the 25 January and 30 June Revolutions, a large assembly of intellectuals, writers, artists, journalists, media figures, ambassadors, parliamentary representatives, minsters and government officials gathered to set a new tradition for public participation in the announcement of Egypt's candidate for UNESCO director-general. In that amazing setting there began a dialogue on UNESCO and Egypt's international cultural role. Featuring a panel consisting of former MP Mustafa Al-Fiqi, columnist Abdel-Moneim Said, Hisham Al-Sherif and myself, the dialogue occasioned valuable inputs from the ministers of higher education, culture and antiquities. Following the discussion, the prime minister announced the nomination of Ambassador Moushira Khattab to the post of director-general of UNESCO. Then Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri introduced the candidate and offered a brief summary of her record of service abroad, after which Ambassador Khattab, much as though she were discussing her qualifications in a job interview, presented an account of her accomplishments during her career and her particular vision for UNESCO. I was personally involved in the last electoral campaign for Egypt's previous candidate for UNESCO, the artist Farouk Hosni. I had the honour to serve as a special advisor to him after the government decided to nominate him on the basis of his eminent cultural status and Egypt's ancient civilisational legacy, which superbly qualifies it for such an important international cultural post. I believe that the choice was a sound one, judging by the fact that Hosni came out ahead of the other candidates during the first four rounds of voting. Unfortunately, the US intervened flagrantly on behalf of Israel, which unleashed a slur campaign through the mouthpieces of international Zionist organisations and spearheaded by Bernard-Henri Lévy and Elie Wiesel in the French press. The result was the surprise election, in the fifth round, of the grim looking Bulgarian candidate, Irina Bokova, who won by a very narrow margin. In all events, as sound as the Egyptian government's decision to nominate Hosni may have been at the time, the public played no part whatsoever in the criteria and calculations that informed the decision. Such participation was not a feature of that era in which such decisions were the exclusive reserve of political authorities alone. On the other occasion in which Egypt nominated a candidate for the UNESCO post (the candidate at the time was the prominent intellectual Ismail Serageldin), political calculations led Egyptian authorities to shift their support to the Saudi candidate, the late poet Ghazi Al-Qasibi who ultimately failed to win the post. This time, the selection and announcement of the Egyptian candidate of the top UNESCO post was marked by another precedent — the consultation process that the foreign ministry set into motion already by the end of last year. The foreign minister formed a working group for that purpose and he, himself, solicited the opinions of intellectuals and cultural figures concerned with the matter. I had the honour of being one of the participants in those dialogues which included such important figures as the late novelist Gamal Al-Ghitani, Sherif Al-Shobashy, as well as Ismail Serageldin, Mustafa Al-Fiqi and Gaber Asfour. At the international level, the foreign ministry took considerable pains to solicit the views of the members of the UNESCO executive board. It is the 58 state members of this board who elect the director-general. The ministry also campaigned at the regional level and, in the recent African Summit in Kigali, it succeeded in winning the African Union's backing for the Egyptian candidate as the candidate for African nations. As for the candidate herself, Ambassador Moushira Khattab is superbly qualified. She is one of those rare ambassadors whose activities and commitments extend beyond the scope of diplomatic service to the realms of public service in general. Khattab has always been involved in social causes and issues of public concern, and not just those related to culture but also to education, women's affairs and the environment. True, contrary to what some imagine, UNESCO's work is not limited to culture alone. The organisation is also concerned with matters related to education, science, the environment and heritage. Indeed, it has been pointed out that the word “culture” in UNESCO's title comes after “education” and “science”. So the director-general of that organisation does not necessarily have to be a literary or artistic innovator. Since UNESCO's founding in 1945, none of the 10 director-generals have been writers, artists or musicians. The first director-general, Julian Huxley, was a biologist and the current director-general, Irina Bokova, is a career diplomat. In between, the American Luther Evans was an international affairs specialist, the Italian Vittorino Veronese was a lawyer and the Spanish Federico Mayor Zaragoza began his career as a pharmacist. Moushira Khattab is a highly erudite individual with diverse interests. She also enjoys a broad range of contacts with international organisations and institutions, having served as secretary-general of the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) in which capacity she launched a campaign that succeeded in ending child marriage and in securing an amendment to the Personal Status Law so as to bring the official age of marriage up to 18. Her diplomatic career also gave her greater insight into the world from the continents of the US and Europe to the continent of Africa. Along the way, she developed close relations with numerous international figures, such as Nelson Mandela, when she served as Egypt's ambassador to South Africa, and the Czech philosopher and playwright Václav Havel at the time he was president of Czechoslovakia and she was Egypt's ambassador there. Perhaps I am one of the few aware of a detail that Khattab herself rarely mentions. She initially turned down her ministerial post after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed his desire to appoint her as his assistant for women's affairs. However, the political leadership in Egypt at the time, with which she had no connection, felt that Egypt was more deserving of her potential. It was no coincidence that the event in which Moushira Khattab's candidacy for the post of UNESCO director-general was announced took place in Tahrir Square, the iconic locale in which the Egyptian people proclaimed their stances during the 25 January and 30 June revolutions. Those stances were informed to a considerable extent by the Egyptian people's desire to see their country resume its due place in the international realm after many years of attrition on its status and prestige in the Arab world, Africa, and internationally. Her candidacy is, in part, a response to that desire.
