Though innuendoes and subtleties in the national press intimated an unspoken power struggle, it was not clear between who, writes Aziza Sami For the first time in weeks, if not months, ripples appeared on the usually quiet surface of domestic political life, as reflected in the press. On Friday, the editor-in-chief of the national daily Al-Ahram Ibrahim Nafie wrote, "The government of [Prime Minister Atef] Ebeid will submit its resignation to President Mubarak before the end of June." That day, the national daily Al-Akhbar had no such scoop. The newspaper's Editor-in-Chief Galal Dowidar wrote an article whose tone was quite combative: "Rumours of the fifth column; meant to hit our security and stability". Dowidar launched a virulent attack on "the alliance which brings together the forces of evil lurking on the outside and the forces of darkness, the elements of khawarij (terminology from Islamic history), who have relinquished their national identity and have become agents working for others". This, it transpired, as the independent weekly Sawt Al-Umma published on Monday, was the militant Al-Jihad organisation which through its London-based Al-Maqrizi Centre for Historic Studies, had disseminated the rumour that President Mubarak had passed away. On Sunday, the two national dailies and the opposition newspaper Al- Wafd issued by the Wafd Party carried the news that President Mubarak would travel that day to Germany to undergo surgery for a slipped disc. On Monday, Al-Akhbar columnist Said Sonbol wrote: "President Mubarak ... is, after all, a human being who, like others, feels happiness, sadness, anger, anxiety, love and hate." From this, Sonbol goes on to conclude that "illness does not discriminate between president and subordinate, rich and poor, etc., for a president to fall ill is natural, because he is, after all, human!" Abdallah El-Sinnawi, the editor of the weekly newspaper Al-Arabi issued by the opposition Nasserist Party wrote on Monday, "Political observers say that the reality of the president's recent malaise should have been announced because transparency in such matters is more conducive to trust and not disrupting of the state's apparatuses." He adds that the news of a cabinet shakeup "had come as a surprise to the prime minister and ministers. No one of the pillars of the regime knows what will happen next, or if they themselves will continue in their positions." El-Sinnawi's prognosis that no one really knows anything might explain the caution mixed with intimation displayed by some editors over the past weeks. The prudence displayed by these writers and the ambiguity and sometimes contradictory forecasts of political change must surely have impeded the average reader's understanding, leaving him to ask: "what is it exactly that the writer wants to say?" One instance of such writing is the opening article written on Wednesday by the national weekly magazine Al-Mussawar 's Editor-in-Chief Makram Mohamed Ahmed. Entitled, "An outlook on the necessities of change and its dimensions -- ministerial change, or a government change?", this kind of question implies a sophistry not very typical of the usual style adopted by Ahmed, whom one can fairly say is one of the press's best political analysts. This time, however, the reader is presented with a preamble elaborating the need for change on every level -- domestic and regional, economic and political. Within this context, the writer vaguely suggests that Egypt should reassess its priorities, including, perhaps, "its desire to enter into incongruous partnerships like the common Arab market". From there he proceeds to launch an attack on the Muslim Brotherhood -- a staple tactic adopted these days by some national press writers. This, though, coming from Ahmed who played no small role in encouraging dialogue with "repentant members" of the [even more militant] Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya seems rather discrepant. "Unfortunately," he writes "we now see in the Egyptian political street the beginnings of a new and worrisome orientation which resorts to the slogan of democracy, demanding that legitimacy be given to ambiguous forces within society which have not yet been absolved of accusations of violence and mixing religion with politics. This group, moreover, has not atoned itself for having given birth to extreme and violent organisations adopting the cloak of religion." After having thus dissuaded the reader that the Muslim Brotherhood could ostensibly play a role in any future change, Ahmed then asserts that the broadest possible spectrum of constitutional, democratic and human rights reforms are sorely needed. Al-Mussawar also carried a photograph of the issue of Newsweek which featured Gamal Mubarak, the president's son, on its cover, entitled: "Egypt's future: Forget Iraq. The key to the Middle East is change in Cairo". Al-Akhbar on Thursday carried a big advertisement of the magazine, as did Akhbar Al-Yom on Saturday. In their interpretations of the Newsweek article, Al- Arabi and Sawt Al-Umma were quite uncomplimentary. Sawt Al-Umma 's editor Adel Hammouda dubbed the article "superficial, obtuse and not well- argued" with Al-Arabi, which interpreted the article as an "attack on President Mubarak's regime", publishing its full text in Arabic. Al-Arabi then asks if the article, which posits the liberal and pro-business Gamal Mubarak as Egypt's sole saviour, is really concerned with reforms or whether this is an "insidious manner of gaining acceptance for the idea of inherited rule" (which, Al-Arabi asserts, has already been rejected by the Egyptian public). On Tuesday, Al-Wafd reported that the Egyptian initiative concerning arrangements in Gaza following Israel's unilateral withdrawal have "reached a dead-end". The newspaper quoted Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher as saying, "Egypt insists that Israel's withdrawal must be the first phase of its complete withdrawal from Palestinian territories and that Egypt will not undertake any security arrangements in Gaza without the approval of all of the Palestinian factions." On Saturday, Akhbar Al-Yom 's Editor-in-Chief Ibrahim Se'da argued that perhaps Egypt should not involve itself in any arrangements in Gaza following Israel's unilateral withdrawal "unless all Palestinian factions are in agreement with this". He then expresses his doubts that the Palestinian factions "will allow such arrangements to succeed anyway". A perusal of the economic press showed several prognoses on the mysterious rise in commodity prices despite the improvement in the position of the pound. On Monday Al-Wafd reported that the reason was the failure of government bodies to monitor and control prices. Al-Ahram on Friday reported that the main challenge facing the National Democratic Party (NDP) will be to "control prices and allow subsidies to reach those who deserve them". The newspaper on Saturday quoted administration professor Hamdi Abdel-Azim as saying a main cause for "dysfunction" in the Egyptian economy is the absence of fair competition and the presence of monopolies which "wreak havoc with the market". Akhbar Al-Yom for its part continued its attacks on businessman Ahmed Ezz, parliament member and the country's major steel producer, reporting on parliamentary hearings to discuss his alleged monopoly of steel and asking whether Parliament Speaker Fathi Sorour "will be able to demand a further investigation into this matter or if he will succumb to pressure not to do so. Only time will tell."
