Protests and sit-ins in various professions including doctors and public transportation workers spread in Egypt this week posing additional challenges to the government and the ruling military council. Al Wafd had 'Sit-ins besiege cabinet', and Al-Masry Al-Youm blared 'Cabinet: outdoor protests and indoor confusion'. Meanwhile, the controversy on the system of voting in the parliamentary elections is still in full swing. Al-Ahram wrote 'Two-thirds of seats of People's Assembly and Shura Council to be elected by the election list, and one-third by individual elections', and Al-Akhbar headlined 'System of elections and the constituencies decided'. Gamal El-Sharqawi criticised the government for not taking any decision regarding fixing minimum and maximum wages. The previous minister of finance, El-Sharqawi wrote, fixed both, but said there could be exceptions for the maximum wages. The current minister agreed with his predecessor but said that the law was still subject to discussion. "Teachers, doctors and workers at the public transportation department protested. University professors are still calling for an increase in their salaries. While officials declare that all these demands are legal, they ask protesters to wait until the economy improves," El-Sharqawi wrote in the official daily Al-Akhbar. He ended his article by blaming the prime minister and the minister of finance for failing to see the matter from the perspective of the revolution or to feel for the people. As a result, they are still adopting partial and slow approaches to problems instead of taking revolutionary decisions to resolve them quickly. Moetaz-Bellah Abdel-Fattah provided these revolutionary decisions in his article "If I were the field marshal" in the independent daily Al-Shorouk. "If I were the field marshal," Abdel-Fattah wrote, "I would have promised that all the country's salaries would be looked into and declared within three months that the maximum wage would not exceed LE35,000 and the minimum wage would not be less than LE1,000. "Second, I would have announced a quick and clear review of all the files of political prisoners and promised their release as soon as possible and would have clearly stated the decision to make the parliamentary voting system two-thirds for the election list and one-third by individual election. "I would have clearly stated that the Armed Forces would hand the country to a democratically elected government and produce a constitution that abides by the sublime values of our great revolution like democracy, social justice, equality of all citizens before the law and respect for human rights. "I would have said that creating a good atmosphere for investment is one of our top priorities and would have declared that I would give away a big portion of my salary to the poor because they deserve it more than myself." Nasser Fayad questioned whether we returned to the age of patch-up laws. There are signs on the ground, Fayad explained, that we are repeating the mistakes of the previous regime which used to tailor laws according to its needs. Fayad expressed fear that the past would come back to haunt us because the remnants of the previous regime are taking part in writing new laws like patching up laws organising the voting system of the People's Assembly and constituencies. These laws showed a few facts: that they were hastily drafted in a way that does not meet the demands of the people. Second, the cabinet responsible for producing the final draft did not consult with legal experts in drafting such sensitive laws. What also worried Fayad were laws that got lost or placed in the government fridge or just ignored like the laws governing places of worship. Other laws, he added, were referred to the ruling military council more than two months ago like the law banning members of the disbanded National Democratic Party from participating in political life for five years. The council did not take any step regarding the matter. "Nobody knows why the ruling military council is not taking quick action regarding laws that have already been passed by the government," Fayad wrote in the daily Al-Wafd, the mouthpiece of the opposition Wafd Party. The editorial of the official daily Al-Gomhuriya said that the cabinet witnessed big protests from five professions on one day, Monday. It acknowledged their right to ask for their legal rights and the duty of officials to listen to them and meet their demands. However, "protests like that of workers in public transportation which affect citizens and paralyse public utilities are not acceptable, especially if they are accompanied by the rejection of initial, partial solutions to the problems followed by negotiations." "Resorting to legal ways to ask for one's rights is in the interest of the individual as it gives him the support of public opinion if it sees these rights as fair and does not cause unacceptable harm to citizens," he concluded. Writers looked at the repercussions of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's request for full UN recognition of a Palestinian state. Makram Mohamed Ahmed wrote in his column in the official daily Al-Ahram that the Security Council will not be in a rush to respond to the Palestinian request. The procedures could take weeks or months, or probably wait for the next step by Abbas. "The General Assembly accepted Southern Sudan as a full UN member in a few hours due to pressure from the US. But Washington is pushing in a different direction regarding a Palestinian state," Ahmed wrote. Meanwhile, it is putting pressure together with the Quartet on Abbas to sign an agreement stipulating he will not go to the International Criminal Court to indict Israeli soldiers and officers who took part in torturing Palestinians. It is clear that Washington and the Quartet are trying to exert pressure on Abbas so that he would be left with only one option: returning to the negotiating table without any Israeli commitment to stop building settlements and with the possibility of imposing more conditions on him. It is obvious, Ahmed added, that the problem was not in the Palestinians' rights which are crystal clear, but in the European and American support for Israel which allows it to behave with absolute arrogance. What will a UN resolution do to the Palestinians, he summed up by asking. Above: Habib Haddad in the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat
