Doaa El-Bey assesses reaction to a puny Egyptian wage increase and Rasha Saad reviews the not so surprising WikiLeaks on Iraq The decision by the National Council of Wages to raise the minimum wage from LE280 to LE400 caused controversy after it was rejected by the representatives of workers in the council as not enough to cover the basic needs of workers. The government approved it because it regarded the decision as a quick response to judicial rulings and a reasonable jump in comparison to the previous minimum wage. Nabil Rashwan said that LE400 are not enough to cover a month's need of fuul, falafel and subsidised bread. There would not be any money left for accommodation, clothes or treatment if needed. Fixing the minimum wage at LE400, Rashwan added, meant that the government is provoking the citizen who cannot get his basic needs while the TV is showing ads for food, clothes and luxurious houses. Even apartments designed for youth in the Mubarak project cost more than LE100,000 with a monthly instalment of LE500. "LE400 a month is not enough for the needs of a family for one week. We have to review the decision because the Egyptian worker is the only worker who has to work in more than one job to get the minimum income needed for a decent life," Rashwan wrote in the independent daily Nahdet Masr. Adel Ibrahim wrote that the Union of Egyptian Workers rejected the decision because the new minimum wage does not comply with the continuing soaring prices. To avoid the escalation between the union and the government, Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif held a meeting with the ministers to discuss the decision, after which Minister of Manpower Aisha Abdel-Hadi stated that the decision was not final. However, Ibrahim added, the parties are waiting for a way out of the crisis. Will the government revoke the decision or would President Hosni Mubarak intervene in the last minute as he has done before in other crises? Ibrahim asked in the official daily Al-Ahram. Preparations are in full swing for the parliamentary elections due late this month. Sherif Riad wrote that all signs show that the next parliamentary elections will be the hardest and hottest elections in the history of parliamentary life in Egypt beginning from the 1952 Revolution. The National Democratic Party (NDP), Riad explained, is keen to keep its majority in parliament, and the opposition parties and independents are enthusiastically fighting the battle, particularly the Wafd Party which espouses the call to establish the principle of rotation of power, stressing that the NDP cannot govern forever. As for the Muslim Brotherhood, Riad elaborated, it considers the upcoming election a matter of life and death, knowing that winning 88 seats like in the 2005 elections will not happen again under any circumstances. Thus, it is trying to achieve the best possible result, given that it does not expect to get more than 20 seats. Moreover, the atmosphere is inflamed by tribal considerations which still have the upper hand in any elections, especially in Upper Egypt where voters vote for who belongs to their tribes regardless of partisan affiliations or political stands. So, all the parties participating in the elections choose their candidates according to their tribes and villages because that is the shortest way to victory. However, Riad concluded in the official daily Al-Akhbar that if we continue this way, we will never achieve the rotation of power which is the sign of real democracy and which should be applied to legitimate parties with specific reform programmes. "We should change the individual candidacy system to the slate system in which comparing between parties slates depends on their programmes. The system also ensures an honourable representation of women, Copts and experts in different fields." Amr El-Shobki wrote that the Supreme Election Committee issued two decisions that clearly reflect that we suffer in Egypt from focussing on only secondary issues: reducing the registration fees from LE3,000 to LE1,000 though that decision was not needed because those candidates will spend millions of pounds on their campaigns and electoral bribes, so it would have been better to give that money to the state treasury. The second decision, which is the more random, is to allow voting without an identification card. El-Shobki wondered whether it was allowed in any part of the world to vote without identification, or whether there is more chaos and insult to the Egyptian citizen and a way of thinking which skips laws and rules, and applies the law of anarchy. "If the Supreme Council supervising the elections thinks in that way, how would its representatives behave during the election? How would the election look like? The answer is easy and predictable. All signs so far show that it will be one of the most anarchic and violent of elections," El-Shobki wrote in the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Yom. Mohamed Mustafa Shordi wrote that according to the decision of the Supreme Election Commission, the advertising of the candidates, via posters, banners and broadcast ads, will be allowed after 14 November when the final names of the candidates are announced. That means that the electoral process for the first time in decades will be confined to just two weeks which is not enough for any candidate to conduct a publicity campaign. However, the public is not willing to hear any political talk from the government, the NDP or the opposition. During the last five years, Shordi explained, the Egyptian citizen passed through a number of crises including unemployment, soaring prices and the global economic crisis which is still controlling his life. Thus, the citizen is looking for a solution for his personal problems; he wants a job for his son, an apartment for himself, medical treatment for his wife, and solutions for problems like sanitary drainage. "The role of the MP is to legislate, monitor and solve the public's problems. But after the government drowned the people in their personal problems, every citizen now needs a parliament member of his own to find solutions to these problems," Shordi wrote in the daily Al-Wafd, the mouthpiece of the opposition Wafd Party. The elections season has turned into a season of taking advantages, the columnist added, and the NDP is not trying to improve the picture because that means that people will understand and seek change which could lead to losing all the party's seats. Egypt, Shordi concluded, needs an educating political campaign to encourage the silent majority to take part in the political life, and before all that the NDP members should understand the importance of such change. Elections will end in two weeks or a month but our problems will continue every day.
