The new academic year, a marriage of convenience between businessmen and the government, and a US religious freedoms report caused more ink to flow, writes Mohamed El-Sayed As is the norm at the beginning of a new school year, the press was awash with features and news reports about the problems of students and families. In the past couple of weeks opposition newspapers, including Sawt Al-Umma , called upon parents to keep their children at home and not send them to school at the start of the academic year in protest at the government's insistence on starting the new school year on 20 September which coincides with the last days of the holy month of Ramadan and Eid Al-Fitr. The start of the new school year at this time puts more financial strains on Egyptian families who are required to buy new clothes and stationary for the school, and new clothes for the Eid, let alone the expenses of the remaining days of Ramadan. The daily opposition Al-Wafd reported that, "the first day of the new school year witnessed a significant absence of students. Universities are devoid of students because of the timing of the beginning of the new school year [in the last days of Ramadan]". In his daily column in the same newspaper, Mohamed Mustafa Sherdi wondered whether Egyptian students will go to school regularly during Ramadan. Of course not. "The government has succeeded in forcing the start of the new school year, but it will not succeed in forcing parents to send their children to school. Therefore, the new school year will effectively begin after Ramadan," Sherdi wrote. The daily opposition Al-Ahrar reported there was "a 20 per cent increase in school fees despite the fact that the minister of education warned [private] schools against doing so." The front-page headline read: "Thirty per cent increase in the price of notebooks". The paper added, "the Ministry of Education ignored calls to postpone the start of the new school year, while the private lessons marathon started earlier this year." Problems of the new school year were not the preserve of opposition newspapers. The weekly official Akhbar Al-Yom ran a feature about the skyrocketing fees of private schools. "They have become a problem that needs to be solved", ran the headline of the feature. The paper reported that fees had hit LE50,000 in some private schools, excluding the school bus fees and uniforms. Religious freedoms in Egypt featured prominently in the press this week after the US State Department issued its 2008 Religious Freedoms Report in which Egypt fared poorly. Mohamed El-Shabba, editor-in-chief of the daily liberal-leaning Nahdet Masr asked "why does the US [administration] insist on blaming only governments for the deterioration of religious freedoms?" "The American administration's only aim is to [further] pressure uncooperative regimes." Meanwhile, the popular daily Al-Masry Al-Yom interviewed Anba Morqos, the bishop of Shobra Al-Kheima and one of the key officials in the Orthodox Church. Reflecting on current Coptic issues, Anba Morqos argued that even though Copts are suffering from some problems, "they have never reached the point of oppression. "[Poor] economic conditions in Egypt are the cause of sectarian strife [between Muslims and Copts]. The evidence is that all clashes between them take place in poor popular areas." The bishop then moved from the religious to the political sphere. "The leaders of the Orthodox Church will vote for Gamal Mubarak if he runs for the presidency," Anba Morqos was quoted as saying. Concerning the relationship between the Coptic Church and the Muslim Brotherhood, Morqos said, "the church does not have any ties or problems with the Muslim Brotherhood since the state considers it an outlawed group." The series of scandals surrounding a number of heavyweight businessmen closely associated with the regime continued to make news. Writing in Al-Masry Al-Yom about the intertwined relation between the bequeathing of power and the rise of a plethora of businessmen in the echelons of Egyptian politics, Hassan Nafaa argued that, "preparing for the bequeathing of presidency has led certain businessmen to play a greater political role as their interests and wealth have fundamentally mixed with the regime's [goals]. Therefore, their ill begotten gains were passed over in return for their political and financial support." Columnists are still preoccupied with the new traffic law that came into force earlier last month. In his weekly column in Al-Masry Al-Yom, Nasr El-Qaffas said "many people thought the law would put an end to traffic jams and violations of traffic rules in Cairo. However, the application of the law has proven unsuccessful." "We haven't seen tangible change [in traffic]... drivers of microbuses wreak havoc in the streets, taxi drivers do not abide by the rules, and drivers continue to use mobile phones while driving." Blaming the Ministry of Interior for not enforcing the traffic law strictly, El-Qaffas accused officers of "refusing to enforce the law... taxi and bus drivers are mocking it." Meanwhile, Ahmed Ragab argued in the daily official Al-Akhbar that, "the new traffic law lacks a lot of [rules], for it puts all the responsibility on drivers, while not committing police officers to stop speedy and drunken drivers and those who drive lorries under the influence of drugs." The financial problems that struck stock exchanges worldwide and their impact on the Egyptian stock exchange continued to be a hot issue for the second week in a row. Writing in the daily official Al-Ahram, Farouk Goweida criticised a media campaign sponsored by the Cairo and Alexandria Stock Exchanges encouraging middle- and low-income people to invest in buying shares. "I have never heard of a stock exchange in any country that advertises its activities and calls upon people to invest their money in it," Goweida argued. "The government wants to relieve low-income people of their money by convincing them that they will become rich when they buy shares at a time when all foreign stock exchanges are suffering from great losses." Turbulent regional politics continued to dominate op- eds. Al-Ahram 's editorial dealt with the meaning of Tzipi Livni's possible ascension to the premiership in Israel. "The Arab media always assumes that the departure of an Israeli leader and the coming of a new one do not mean anything, for Israeli policies do not change and [different] politicians are just followers of these policies. According to this theory, there is no difference between a rightist or leftist, male or female prime minister. Unfortunately, this theory has made us think that Israel has no political or intellectual variations. As a result, our views and approach to Israel have not changed."
