The limited scope of this week's cabinet shake-up took many by surprise, reports Gamal Essam El-Din After two months of anticipation, President Hosni Mubarak on Sunday ordered a minor cabinet reshuffle, appointing two new cabinet ministers and five provincial governors to the five-year-old government of Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif. Mubarak replaced Yosri El-Gamal, regularly attacked in the local press for his poor performance as education minister, with Ahmed Zaki Badr, president of the public Ain Shams University. Ahmed is the son of Zaki Badr, the former interior minister known for his confrontational style in the second half of the 1980s. Opposition and independent papers say Badr's promotion is a reward for clamping down on Muslim Brotherhood students. "As president of Ain Shams University, Badr allowed security guards to swoop across the campus and arrest Brotherhood students who demonstrated after being stripped of the right to participate in student union elections in 2007," the independent daily Al-Dostour said. Badr, 54, addressing the People's Assembly on Tuesday, said: "I thank President Mubarak for his confidence that I can serve as education minister and I vow that I will do my best to improve education standards in Egypt." Sherif Omar, chairman of the People's Assembly's Education Committee, told Al-Ahram Weekly that "it is too early to judge whether Badr will act like a police officer". "I think if he tried to manage the Education Ministry in the way his father managed the Interior Ministry he would fail," said Omar. Mubarak also appointed Alaa Fahmi, chief of the National Postal Authority, as new transport minister. His predecessor in the post, Mohamed Lotfi Mansour, resigned on 27 October after two passenger trains collided north of Cairo. The crash left 19 passengers dead and saw Mansour sharply criticised in parliament and the local media. Pundits speculate that Fahmi, 56, was appointed because he is close to Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif. Fahmi, a graduate of the Technical Military College, was chairman of the National Telecommunications Authority when Nazif was Minister of Information Technology and Telecommunication. Observers agree that three difficult tasks await Fahmi: upgrading the performance of the Railway Authority, expanding the country's network of roads and bridges, and reforming the maritime transport sector. Hamdi El-Tahan, chairman of the People's Assembly Transport Committee, told the Weekly that "improving the poor performance of the Railway Authority is the most difficult job awaiting Fahmi". "Rail accidents have already forced the resignation of two transport ministers, in 2002 and 2009," says El-Tahan. He hopes Fahmi, a graduate of a military college, will be able to instill discipline in the Railway Authority and improve the living standards of its employees. The most significant feature of the provincial governor appointments is that the majority of promotions were among military staff. Major-General Mohamed Abdel-Fadil Shusha, who was the governor of North Sinai, is now governor of South Sinai. He was replaced by Major-General Murad Mowafi, chief of Military Intelligence. Mowafi, 60, is now in charge of the governorate that borders Gaza. With Gaza controlled by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, and Egyptian efforts aimed at reaching a reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah caught in deadlock, the government has said it will construct a barrier along the border to stem the tide of weapons smuggling and infiltration of terrorists. Observers believe that Mowafi, as chief of Military Intelligence, will be tasked mainly with controlling the border with Gaza in coordination with other security agencies. Mowafi was decorated by French President Nicolas Sarkozy for his role in strengthening military cooperation between Egypt and France. Major-General Ahmed Hussein Mustafa, a former commander of the Second Field Army, was appointed governor of Marsa Matrouh. The only civilian appointees are Samir Seif El-Yazal, new governor of Beni Sweif, and Qadri Abu Hussein, now governor of Helwan. El-Yazal, 59, is an agronomist who was dean of the University of Fayoum's Faculty of Agriculture. Abu Hussein, 70, is a graduate of the Faculty of Commerce and served as secretary-general of the Upper Egyptian governorate of Sohag. The limited changes, say observers, is a sign that the Nazif government will remain in office for some time. "The reshuffle suggests that Nazif will stay on for a while, may be until the next parliamentary elections due in November," says Amr Hashem Rabie, a political analyst at Al-Ahram. Rabie believes that the appointment of Mowafi is the most significant because "it tells something about Egypt's strategy towards the Gaza Strip in the coming period." El-Tahan agrees that the government of Nazif is likely to remain in office in the run-up to the next parliamentary elections. "It is clear that President Mubarak believes that the government of Nazif is working well with the economy and that it is better if it stays in office until the end of the next parliamentary elections." Addressing the People's Assembly on Tuesday, Nazif was upbeat about the economy, boasting that his government's policies have been able to weather the negative effects of the global financial crisis. Nazif asked parliament to approve new budgetary allocations of LE11.2 billion to fund water, sanitary drainage and social service projects.
