Doaa El-Bey follows how the writers look back on the previous year and welcome the New Year The campaign to provide school children with the swine flu vaccine started this week amid controversy on whether or not to proceed. Newspapers recorded the start of the campaign and the reluctance of parents to give it to their children. Al-Gomhuriya wrote "the campaign to vaccinate two million school students in Cairo and Alexandria started today." Al-Akhbar read "The minister of health said the vaccine is safe and its side effects are rare like all other vaccines." Al-Masry Al-Yom read, "The education minister takes the vaccines to convince parents of its safety." Rose El-Youssef wrote, "The Ministry of Health acknowledged that the actual number of cases is double the declared number." Abdallah Kamal wondered why people are scared of the vaccine and not the disease which represents a genuine danger and has caused the death of over 100 people. He found the present propaganda against the vaccine confusing given that it is not scientifically based. He believes that the government should play a more active role in convincing the people to take the vaccine. Although it could not force people to take the vaccine, it could launch an intensive campaign to explain the benefits of the vaccine even if it had to repeat its message over and over. Given that swine flu is a dangerous epidemic, Kamal added, the government should always be serious in dealing with it and warn people not to take it lightly. "A scare campaign about prevention is one of the most dangerous phenomena in facing any disease. But it is the mission of the Ministry of Health to repeatedly provide the citizens with scientific information, and answer all their questions," he wrote in the daily newspaper Rose El-Youssef. A new year should carry new hope with it. While writers agreed that 2009 was not very fruitful, they had high hopes in 2010 because it would witness parliamentary elections. They hoped that important changes would happen before, during and after the election. Sherif Riad expressed his hope that the new year would be better than last year. Perhaps his most important wish this year is that the parliamentary elections would be held in complete honesty. In his new year speech, President Mubarak promised that he would take further firm steps towards supporting democracy by holding free and honest parliamentary elections. However, this goal could only be achieved if the opposition succeeds in holding an unbiased national dialogue on all the important political, social and economic issues. "But our new year wishes regarding the elections and supporting political parties and democracy cannot make us forget our hopes for a more serious confrontation with the issues of unemployment, housing, and raising salaries and pensions," he wrote in the official daily Al-Akhbar. Yasser Abdel-Aziz wrote that any in-depth reading of 2009 reveals that, generally speaking, the performance of the government, regime and state bodies was weak, confused and lazy. There were some positive developments, but they were very minor to affect the general picture which was overwhelmed with failure, powerlessness and corruption. But it is also fair, as the writer added, to note that the performance of the apathy of citizens was an important factor in aggravating the present crises and lack of success in rooting out corruption because he stopped asking for his rights, listened to rumours and believed them and hampered any possible change for the better. Thus he concluded that Egypt deserves better rulers and citizens. "On 31 December 2009, Egypt deserved a better, more efficient and less corrupted regime that ruled over the lives of citizens who should have been stronger, more aware, more positive, less mercenary and superficial," he wrote in the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Yom. Ibrahim Abdel-Maguid questioned whether the new year could be happy. He wrote that there seemed to be no differences between one year and another as if we are locked in a vicious circle. However, he saw a glimmer of hope in the move towards changing the constitution and the electoral system in order to establish a true republic in Egypt. "The real battle of all parties and the opposition should be the establishment of a genuine republic in Egypt," he wrote in the daily Al-Wafd, the mouthpiece of the opposition Wafd Party. And that could be achieved either by choosing a president who is questioned by the parliament or by having an honorary president and a prime minister who is questioned by the parliament. However, he seized the opportunity to wish the readers a happy new year and hope that it is different from previous years. Nabil Rashwan focussed on a more pressing issue: the amendment of the constitution. He wrote that all the parties, political powers, university professors, human rights activists, opposition newspapers and constitutional experts agreed on the importance of amending the present constitution, especially Article 76 that organises the election of the president. Thus, Rashwan added, there is consensus on the need to amend the constitution in order to achieve more freedom and competition on the election of the president. But conservatives and hardliners still insist on the one-party rule and one candidate for presidential elections. As a result, the constitution, especially Article 76, is tailored for the candidate of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) and that is a catastrophe. If we want that catastrophe to continue, we might as well annul political parties, stop abiding by the constitution and accept the candidate of the NDP, he wrote in the independent daily Nahdet Masr. The building of the underground wall on the Egyptian border with Gaza was criticised in various newspapers. Afaf Yehia defended the government decision to build the wall because it is not a separation wall between the two states. She wrote in the official weekly Akhbar Al-Yom that it would be built under the ground to block the underground tunnels dug secretly between Gaza and Egypt to encroach on Egypt's sovereignty, security and economy. Fatma Abdel-Sattar denied that the wall is an Egyptian version of the Israeli "separation wall". It merely discourages the tunnels that are tools for smuggling drugs and explosives which are used to organise terrorist operations inside Egypt. She disagreed with those who claimed that the wall would stifle the Palestinians. "When the Palestinian flag is raised on the Palestinian state, the officials will thank us for closing these tunnels," she wrote in Al-Akhbar.
