Doaa El-Bey unveils divided opinion over the opening session of Egypt's parliament, while Rasha Saad explores the domestic situation inside Iran The front pages focussed on President Hosni Mubarak's address before the joint session of the People's Assembly and the Shura Council. Al-Ahram 's banner described the speech as a great take-off and quoted Mubarak as saying we aim to root the basics for a new civil state and deepen moderation. Al-Akhbar also quoted the president: "Our top priorities are containing unemployment, raising living standards and increasing investment". Al-Masry Al-Yom had Mubarak introducing a new draft law to protect state lands from corruption while Al-Dostour wondered what would happen to some businessmen who took millions of metres from the state with the cheapest of prices. Eissa Morshed described the speech as the start of a new phase of national work in which Mubarak clearly outlined the route for domestic and external problems. The president, Morshed wrote, highlighted all the issues that affect the simple Egyptian citizen and confirmed that it would be the focus of both the People's Assembly and Shura Council. "The speech acquired important dimensions in both the legislative and executive fields, according to important criteria, including achieving social justice that could guarantee a dignified life for the citizen in rural and urban areas and in Lower and Upper Egypt," Morshed wrote in the official daily Al-Akhbar. Thus, Morshed added, the present parliamentary round has a comprehensive and important agenda ahead of it. He consequently called on the MPs to confront all national issues in the hope of realising better education without private lessons, fixing prices and stabilising the market, providing job opportunities for graduates, and finding immediate solutions to issues like drinking water, communication and sanitary drainage. Writers were still studying the significance and impact of the parliamentary elections on the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) as well as the opposition. Tariq El-Ghazali Harb wrote that he was not surprised by the results of the elections because it came after the local and Shura Council elections which he said were rigged as well. However, what amazed Harb were the statements issued by the leaders of the ruling party on the studies, questionnaires and tactics conducted since the 2005 elections which led to the landslide victory in 2010. Most probably, Harb added, they wanted to convince the party leader that they had made a big effort to achieve such a result. The election, Harb wrote in the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Yom, showed the appalling state that we have reached four decades after the end of the post- revolution era following the death of its leader Gamal Abdel-Nasser. During these decades, we witnessed setbacks shown in the return of weak and ineffective political parties, monopoly, the absence of social justice, the spread of poverty and negligence in education, culture and the Arabic language. "During the past four decades, few elections were held and even then could not be described as elections in the sense of the word. Elections mean free people who have their daily food and their free will, besides transparency in procedures, popular protection and proper monitoring," Harb added. And during and after that period, he elaborated, we moved from bad to worse until we sowed the biggest harvest in the latest elections which one respectable writer called "the national occupation". Mohamed Amin wrote that the NDP's absolute monopoly of political power is not right for many reasons: monopoly is not suitable for politics; it could lead to a state of full passivism on the part of the people; it could lead to abolishing the role of the opposition and could have a detrimental effect on the atmosphere of investment. "Does the NDP know the mistake it committed? Does it know that it is taking Egypt backwards to the days of the Socialist Union? Is monopolising politics and the economy suitable to run a nation? And will the president punish whoever made these mistakes or reward them?" Amin asked in the daily Al-Wafd, the mouthpiece of the opposition Wafd Party. Wael Qandil regarded official voices which considered the new parliament fair and honest as rather funny. However, he found the opposition, which repeatedly said that the elections and the parliament were void and the people's will rigged, but then rushed to attend the opening session of parliament, even more of a joke. The simplest rules of logic state that when you reject something or consider it corrupt or void, you do not take part in it. "Some people hailed the opposition's decision to boycott the second round of the elections as being better late than never. But the situation changed when the Wafd Party boycotted the second round, yet its leader attended the opening session of parliament which the party swore was rigged and null," Qandil added in the independent daily Al-Shorouk. Qandil, who quoted a senior opposition figure as saying that the Egyptian opposition emerged from the bosom of the authority, expressed fear that it would always stay in that warm bosom even if it became the joke of the world. Abdel-Aal El-Derbi hailed the Wafd's decision to withdraw from the second round of the elections to show the whole world that their decision came after they witnessed that the principles of transparency and honesty were replaced by fraud in the first round. He also praised the Muslim Brotherhood's similar decision that aimed to embarrass the government at the international level after showing that the new parliament is the private property of the NDP. However, what the political process suffered from most during the parliamentary election, El-Derbi wrote, was the blow given to the democratic experience in Egypt. By failing to properly monitor the elections, the government took us back to scenarios that were familiar during the days of the Socialist Union. "What happened during the elections is a catastrophe in the full sense of the word because Egypt's fledgling democracy was buried." Concluded El-Derbi in the independent weekly Al-Dostour, "no need to console the opposition for their loss."
