Doaa El-Bey bares a national disgrace Newspapers tackled the arrest of the Israeli spy, the details of the trial of the former president Hosni Mubarak, the protest of those living in Madinat Al-Salam (the city of peace), demonstrations in front of the state TV building Maspero, and the start of the thanaweya amma, or high school exams. Al-Ahram on Monday had 'Israeli officer took part in the revolution to drive a wedge between the army and the people' and Al-Akhbar described the arrest of the spy as 'A painful blow to the Mossad'. Al-Wafd noted in its banner on Sunday that it published the full details of the decision to refer Mubarak to a criminal court. Nahdet Masr blared 'Madinat Al-Salam protesters accuse Interior Ministry of killing one; say they will not leave unless given apartments'. And Al-Masry Al-Youm bannered ' Thanaweya amma students optimistic because the Arabic exam was straightforward'. Mohamed Mustafa Sherdi chose to focus on the thanaweya amma exam and collective cheating. He wrote that the phenomenon had not disappeared and would not fade away easily. Parents nowadays, Sherdi explained in the daily Al-Wafd, the mouthpiece of the opposition Wafd Party, do not mind if their children do not acquire any knowledge as long as they graduate and receive a certificate. "Collective cheating in thanaweya amma produces a generation used to cheating by the help of their parents. Thus it is impossible after that to persuade them that there are principles in life and a price to pay for success," he wrote. While the writer did not underestimate the importance of developing education in general, he called for a campaign to restore values in Egyptian society. Thus it is important now to teach adults these values because they will, in turn, teach it to their children. If we fail to restore values in society, then there is no point in sending children to school and teaching them values, and then leave them in a society that does not respect these values. Cheating and corruption are not conducive to success, Sherdi concluded in his regular back page column. Writers also looked at other phenomena quickly spreading in society like violent protesting. Abdel-Moeti Ahmed wrote that some may say that peaceful protesting is the right of everybody. But hooliganism, blocking roads, stopping trains and trams, sleeping in the middle of the street and breaking into police stations are all crimes against society. The absence of security, he added, has harmed the economy, affecting tourism and spreading havoc. Thus, Ahmed continued, every citizen who loves this country should apply the law to the letter. "Normal life will not return unless there is genuine cooperation between the sects in society and a determined will to abandon differences. When will we give up the worst inside us and live up to the January Revolution?" he asked in the official daily Al-Ahram. Mohamed Barakat wondered why the spirit of October 1973 and 25 January is dwindling. Hooliganism and disobeying the law will soon block out the values that held during the first weeks of the revolution. As a result, it is natural to wonder what happened to that great spirit, the sublime values and disciplined behaviour that we witnessed in the first weeks of the revolution, Barakat wrote in his column in the official daily Al-Akhbar. Another problem, according to Nabil Rashwan, is the insufficient political presence of the political parties on the street. Some believe that parties are not present at all while others claim there are still some parties which are present, on the ground like the dissolved National Democratic Party (NDP) and the Muslim Brotherhood. "The gap between political parties and the people is big and their popularity is very low among the public," Rashwan wrote in the independent daily Nahdet Masr. Opinion polls, the writer explained, showed that some 65 per cent of the people do not believe in the programmes of any political party and that the popularity of either the MB or the NDP does not exceed 15 per cent and that of the socialist parties is no more than three per cent and liberals eight per cent. New parties usually start with 5,000 members with the exception of the Wafd Party that began with double that number. But the old parties do not have that number of members, let alone active members. All this, according to Rashwan, means that political parties are in a crisis and that most Egyptians have not decided who they will vote for. Akmal Qortam pointed to the holding of numerous conferences for a dialogue: the national accord conference, the conference for national dialogue, the conference for youth dialogue, among others. Qortam said he was not against dialogue as long as it had a clear agenda and clear outcomes. However, he noted, that dialogue had broken down into two main sets of issues. The first was related to organising the transitional phase before choosing a parliament, president and issuing a new constitution. Participants are discussing the desired election system in Egypt that would aim to strengthen the role of political parties without encroaching on the constitutional rights of the citizen; issues related to the state economy during the transitional period and the security issue. Most of the participants agreed on these issues and produced recommendations that were referred to the ruling Higher Council of the Armed Forces and the transitional government. The second set of issues, Qortam added, are those related to the basic political and economic principles of the state including the drawing up of the new constitution and the role of the state in the economy. "I believe that the dialogues conducted produced a comprehensive vision of the 'constitutional predispositions' that would help the founding committee to write a constitution," Qortam summed up in the independent political daily Al-Masry Al-Youm.
