Climatic catastrophes lend colour to the Arab press, while Egyptian pundits dwell on even less ethereal subjects such as sex, write Gamal Nkrumah and Mohamed El-Sayed What women were Sex -- harassment and wife-swapping -- titillated the commentators For the umpteenth week running, the international financial crisis preoccupied the pundits. The onus, however, was on government incompetence and prevarication as far as an impending disaster of colossal proportions is concerned. Writing in the daily Al-Masry Al-Yom, Khairi Ramadan criticised government attempts to downplay the effects of the global financial crisis on the Egyptian economy. "If the Egyptian economy was not greatly influenced by the global financial crisis, the signals of losses are increasing. The Egyptian stock exchange sustained great losses in the past few days because of random selling trends and the withdrawal of foreign and Arab capitals... all investors in the stock exchange have sustained big losses." Ramadan added that "the government's efforts to [handle the global financial crisis] should not be limited to guaranteeing deposits in banks. Rather, it should include the protection of certain industries from collapsing." The new Egyptian ambassador to Washington, Sameh Shoukri, was interviewed in the daily Al-Masry Al-Yom. "Differences in opinions between Cairo and Washington do not affect their mutual relations," Shoukri was quoted as saying. "The State Department's reports about human rights in Egypt is a routine action," he added. Shoukri dismissed the possibility of the striking of a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians before the end of this year. "We hope that the next American administration pays due attention to the Palestinian cause from the very beginning," he added. The fortunes of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) have come under the microscope. There was a great deal of retrospection and introspection as the party ponders the future. Writing in the daily official Al-Ahram, Abdel-Moneim Said highlighted the recent developments in the structure of the NDP, whose annual convention will be held next week. "The renewal waves that swept the NDP in the past few years did not include the enrollment of scores of young people. It did enroll a number of investors who contributed to increasing the Egyptian national wealth. And for the first time, the mission of the ruling party and its government is not limited to managing poverty and protecting the conditions of the poor from getting worse through providing subsidies [on commodities] and other policies. Rather, the mission of the party included adding to the wealth of the country by encouraging, instead of fighting, Egyptian and foreign investments." Said concluded that, "this does not mean that the NDP did miracles in Egypt. I still believe that it could have done more as far as economic, political, and social reforms are concerned." He added that "the NDP is more capable than all other Egyptian parties." He continued, "when the liberal [opposition] parties succeed in applying liberal approaches, they fail in maintaining its unity and thought; and when some of them succeed in achieving social justice, they remain attached to backward Soviet economic development approaches; and when some of them succeed in winning the support of people through striking cultural or religious chords, they are seeking to take the entire country into darkness." The controversial question of the sexual harassment of women in Egypt has become an issue of major concern for the public and the pundits alike. Writing in the weekly issue of the independent Al-Dostour, novelist Alaa El-Aswani tried to answer the question: why Egyptians harass women? "Sexual repression, delay in marriage, unemployment, poverty, mushrooming of slums, feeling of frustration, and lack of justice are but some factors helping in the spread of sexual harassment in Egypt. However, the main reason behind the phenomenon is the change in our view of women." He continued, "up until the beginning of the 1980s, a civilised, respectful view of women prevailed in Egypt before a wave of Wahhabi and Salafi thoughts swept the country which offered a completely different view. The way Salafists see it, women are not more than bodies that must be veiled." El-Aswani added, "the prevalent backward look upon women in Egypt is imported from desert Bedouin communities... but instead of helping these [retarded] communities become more civilised, we were infected with their backward thoughts." He argued that, "we replaced our respectable look at women with a backward one cloaked in religion. We have started paying a heavy price of such backward thoughts," given the increasing number of harassment cases in Cairo's streets. Al-Masry Al-Yom also reported on the first-of-its- kind "wife swap" case in Egypt. "A Jewish Iraqi helped the culprit launch a Web site promoting swapping of wives in Egypt," the paper reported. The paper also said that three couples were engaged in wife swapping. The main culprit, an Egyptian civil servant, met 44 couples who wanted to engage in the affair.
