Fatemah Farag tries to decipher the writing between the lines The week began in orange: the banner of the new Al-Ghad (16 March) newspaper which hit the newsstands on Wednesday announcing the secrets of the release from detention of political activist Ayman Nour and flaunting photos of the popular welcome he received in downtown Cairo. Al-Ghad is published by Al-Ghad Party and its front page showed the party remained undaunted by the arrest and subsequent media campaign against its leader Nour. In a short front page editorial amongst headlines such as "The results of the democracy test in the Arab world: no one succeeded" and "The BBC says Nour will get 30 to 60 per cent of the votes in a presidential election" Nour thanked his opponents. "I owe my opponents the most valuable thing in my life: my success." But deeper within the pages of the paper an effort was being made to distance the party from its American supporters -- support which has been the crux of the media campaign against Nour since his arrest. According to Mursi El-Sheikh it is "no to foreign intervention, yes to reform from within" a banner slogan which has been raised by the most national to the most radical of the opposition press in direct response to American intervention on behalf of Nour. On the same page Aref El-Desouqi slams the US for its human rights record under the Bush administration. "I hope that in Congress, the secretary of state [Condoleezza Rice] and President Bush request from the Egyptian authorities a fair trial for the head of Al-Ghad Party Ayman Nour as they would provide a fair trail for those at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo." And if the Americans are making Al-Ghad uncomfortable you can only imagine the wrath they continue to induce in Rose El-Youssef. In this week's issue (25 March), its editor-in-chief Mohamed Abdel-Moneim continues to take issue with the media campaign against President Hosni Mubarak. According to Abdel-Moneim the American press has subjected the Egyptian president to "lies, criticism and hate, an honour that has not been accorded America's most ardent enemies". It is really unforgivable because Mubarak's Egypt has gone the whole nine yards [in very American terms] in supporting peace and stability in the region. And then, "after Mubarak's Egypt achieves peace and stability in the most difficult region in the world, some American writers reduce the relationship between Washington and Cairo to the $50 billion they have provided to us in aid [since 1975]," laments Abdel-Moneim. Everyone seems to be licking their wounds since the US administration started waving the aid pressure card -- again. The banner of Al- Wafd on 20 March exclaimed "No to US aid" and Abbas El-Tarabili dedicated his column in two successive issues to explain that it has always been the position of the Wafd that it is not in Egypt's interest to accept foreign aid and that it is very possible for the Egyptian people to survive without American financial support. Most would probably not want Al-Wafd 's arguments put to the test and besides, the current Egyptian government is still playing a crucial role in stabilising the region. This was the point driven home by Editor-in-Chief of Al-Akhbar Galal Doweidar on 17 March commenting on Mubarak's trip to Syria. "This is a role [stabilising and protecting national/regional interests] that can only be played by Egypt and its leadership," said Doweidar who described Mubarak's meeting with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad as an attempt to "defuse the current situation which some are trying to ignite in an attempt to promote chaos and instability throughout the Middle East". And within this context he also highlighted the Egyptian role vis-à-vis the Palestinian dialogue. And if the US has any interest in improving its image in the Arab world, according to Suleiman Gouda in Al-Masri Al-Yom on 17 March, the administration should realise that mere PR jobs, such as Al-Horra TV station which has proven a big failure, will not work. "The current US administration seems to be in the throes of a state of hysteria as it calls for freedom, democracy and human rights in the Middle East," says Gouda who goes on to point out that while the US insists that the Syrians' 14,000 soldiers withdraw from Lebanon so that free elections can take place, they have no problem calling the Iraqi elections "democratic" with 140,000 US-led soldiers occupying the country. The double standards have resulted in heaps of "dust" that have tarnished the American image in the area. To clean up the mess "the administration must focus on deeds, not words." Also this week the "national dialogue" went into its third round and debate continued to rage regarding the measures that will either safeguard or render useless the amendment to Article 76 of the constitution making it possible for the first time for Egyptians to elect a president among several candidates by direct, secret ballot. Commenting on a news item in Sawt Al- Ummah on 20 March to the effect that the Egyptian stock market had slumped in reaction to news of the deteriorating health of the president, Magdi Mehana in Al-Masri Al-Yom on 22 March says that the item indicates that "the whole political [and economic] system in Egypt is connected to the president. This is the crux of the matter as it poses the question of how to delineate between the president and the economic/political sphere." Mehana suggests that the appointment of a vice president with full powers is essential to institutionalise governance in Egypt. (This week presidential adviser Osama El-Baz suggested that the president was looking into this possibility, giving the press the opportunity to speculate on the identity of a possible vice-president. The hame of intelligence chief Omar Suleiman was suggested]. And while everyone is concerned with the measures needed to consolidate democracy and freedom, Wahid Abdel-Meguid in Al-Qahira (22 March) warns that this focus is potentially hazardous. "There are other factors that result in progress that are no less important than freedom," he explains. "The most important of these is the environment that promotes the development of scientific knowledge. And while it is very good for freedom to become the central issue in the concern of the increasingly wide political and cultural elite, it will not remain a good [concern] if it is given prominence over all else." For his part, Gamal Fahmi in Al-Arabi this week suggests that if President Mubarak plans to nominate himself again, then he should provide the Egyptian people with a programme which would include reference to the impoverishment that has overtaken the majority of the population, the half million citizens that are estimated to be imprisoned and the "horrors suffered by hundreds of thousands of Egyptians behind the walls of prisons and police stations since the early 1980s; how rabid torture has become normal and widespread in the lives of ordinary Egyptians". And really, what is it that riles everyone when it comes to national interests giving the latter predominance in so many cases over basic human rights? The question is posed by Sayed El-Qimni in Rose El-Youssef this week as he critiques the official religious establishment -- Al-Azhar. "Al- Azhar has changed itself with every change in state and has proven it can adapt to new changes. From Fatimid Shias to Sunnis, with Gamal Abdel-Nasser's socialism and then with economic laissez-faire. With the war and now with peace... But when it comes to the freedoms of citizens and basic human rights such as the right of belief or expression of opinions, Al-Azhar has always taken the most stringent and fundamentalist positions. What is the secret of this duality, this ability to develop itself and explain Islam in terms of what is new while at the same time standing against the rights of Muslims and their basic human rights?" Now why does the question seem particularly pertinent these days?
