Egypt's press focussed on the forthcoming parliamentary elections and the anniversary of the 1952 Revolution, while the Arab press concentrated on negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and the impact of King Abdullah's visit to Lebanon, write Mohamed El-Sayed and Doaa El-Bey The forthcoming parliamentary elections, assessments of the 23 July 1952 Revolution and civil and religious liberties caused much ink to flow in the Egyptian press this week. As Egypt celebrated the 58th anniversary of the 23 July 1952 Revolution, the Egyptian press was awash with analytical articles, feature stories and memories of figures who were eyewitnesses to the key events of the time. Pro- and anti-Revolution writers continued an annual habit of trying to find support for their arguments in testimonies and other documents. In an attempt to take an impartial position on the revolution, writer and poet Farouk Goweida offered his thoughts in the independent daily Al-Shorouk. "The 23 July Revolution has divided Egypt into two teams: the pro-revolution team, which has made it a sacred legacy, and the anti-revolution team, which has criticised everything related to it." Goweida believes that "the history of the revolution has not yet been subject to serious study and unbiased opinion," arguing that an impartial approach was impossible due to the lack of official documents. "The most important events in the history of the revolution remain secret. Historians do not have access to the documents, so they are unable to assess the revolution's achievements and failures." For his part, Goweida tried to assess these from a writer's, and not a historian's, point of view. "The revolution laid the ground rules for the political oppression and the detention centres that control people's lives until today," he wrote. However, he also criticised governments over the past two decades for squandering the economic achievements of the revolution, wasted, in his view, "in the waves of privatisation and selling of assets of the Egyptian state and public sector." As the country gears up for the parliamentary elections due in November, pundits continued to assess possible scenarios. Leading opposition parties Wafd, Tagammu, and the Nasserist Arab and the Democratic Front are pushing the government to provide guarantees that the elections will be fair and transparent, and analysts have applauded such moves. Also writing in Al-Shorouk, commentator Diaa Rashwan applauded efforts exerted by the opposition parties over the past few weeks to unite their efforts in the run-up to the parliamentary elections. "Unifying the opposition parties' positions on the guarantees required for fair elections is something that has long been missed in Egyptian political life," Rashwan wrote. He called upon the opposition parties to close ranks in the elections. "Without a shadow of a doubt this movement will gain momentum if the opposition forces manage to coordinate their efforts, in such a way that no two opposition party candidates compete for the same seat." News of former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed El-Baradei continued to perplex the country's columnists. El-Baradei's intermittent appearances on the political scene, as well as his international agenda and his distancing himself from the National Association for Change (NAC), have led pro- government pundits to argue that his campaign has now run out of steam, with columnists in independent newspapers refuting this argument. Writing in the independent daily Al-Dostour, Khaled El-Sirgani wondered whether El-Baradei's star was still in the ascendant. "El-Baradei knows how to weigh his moves, and he cannot be hijacked by movements aiming to make him serve their interests," El-Sirgani wrote. El-Baradei's campaign was snowballing, with the number of signatories to his statement of demands hitting over half a million this week. El-Baradei had chosen to rely on the youth vote in his campaign, El-Sirgani argued, instead of allying himself with the NAC, which brings together a number of senior political figures from the left and right of the political spectrum. As controversy over the building of churches surfaced in the press again, especially in Upper Egypt, the question of secularism continued to perplex columnists. In an attempt to answer the question of whether Egypt really is a secular state, Yehia El-Gamal wrote that "in a modern state issuing a licence to build a church should not be hampered by the state," in the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Yom . Writing in the official daily Al-Ahram, political analyst Nabil Abdel-Fattah criticised the Egyptian Copts' resort to the church, rather than to state institutions, in efforts to resolve their problems. "Has the church become the political representative of the Christians?" he wondered. Controversy over religious issues was also the subject of discussion on the websites of the daily newspapers. Writing in Al-Masry Al-Yom, Khaled Montasser continued his series of articles arguing for the superiority of scientific knowledge over religious texts. "One of the poor characteristics of Muslims is that they don't know the art of dialogue. Instead of presenting logical arguments in treating a particular topic, we insult each other." Montasser's article came in response to the mountain of e-mails he had received and the mass of comments that had appeared on the newspaper's website following his questioning of an alleged saying of the Prophet. Meanwhile, the website of the independent daily Al-Yom Al-Sabei was also hacked by unknown religious activists following the publication of a novel they considered to be "insulting to the Prophet".
