Regional concerns dominated official newspapers while domestic issues preoccupied the opposition press, discover Gamal Nkrumah and Mohamed El-Sayed The daily semi-official Al-Ahram reserved its headlines for developments at the United Nations. It also featured the lightning-quick visit by President Hosni Mubarak to Libya for the traditional working Iftar with the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, an annual event that reinforces the traditionally warm political relations between the two countries and special rapport between the two leaders. According to Al-Ahram, the Darfur crisis topped the agenda. Also featuring prominently in the two leaders' brainstorming three- hour session were issues of common concern such as bilateral trade and investment relations and the prickly question of the maltreatment of Egyptian workers in Libya. In his prestigious column in the daily liberal-oriented Nahdet Masr, Abdel-Moneim Said lambasted the Muslim Brotherhood and was dismissive about their recently launched platform. "What is astounding about the platform of the Muslim Brotherhood is [its vision of] the nature of the Egyptian state and regime," Said said, deriding the Brotherhood. "It is a completely theocratic state." Said hit the nail on the head when he exposed the true intentions of the Brotherhood to promulgate more sweeping Islamic laws. "The Brotherhood wants to create a theocratic mechanism to legislate. [This mechanism] consists of creating an elected religious body whose authority is superior to that of the elected parliament," Said noted. He likened the Muslim Brother's platform to that of the Islamic Republic of Iran. "The Muslim Brotherhood seeks a full-fledged theocracy modelled on the Iranian regime which is based on velayat-e faqih." Said obviously counsels against the not so hidden agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood, saying they would lead the country down the path of political chaos, disintegration and self-destruction. On a radically different note, columnist Mohamed El-Saadani, writing in Al-Ahram, castigated the United States' report on religion in which it slammed Egypt for allegedly curtailing religious freedoms in the country. Egypt was harshly criticised for its maltreatment of religious minorities. Indeed, El-Saadani did not mince his words. "People in Egypt of all faiths reject the US report on religion," El-Saadani claimed. "The stupid report dares to suggest that the Egyptian government should punish so-called anti-Semites. The disaster is that the ignorant Americans do not even recognise that the Arabs and Muslims are Semites. The Arab public is against racist Israeli laws and aggression and not against the Jews per se," El-Saadani insisted. Hazem Abdel-Rahman, writing in Al-Ahram about the perennial debate about the freedom of the press in Egypt, had followed the sentencing two weeks ago of four editors-in-chief to one year in prison for slandering the president and his son Gamal, and for publishing unsubstantiated reports about the president's health, reflected on the political implications of the case. "It goes without saying that the rule of President Mubarak allowed for an unprecedented margin of freedom for the press. This [margin] could not be all what we aim to achieve, but to be fair we have to admit this fact. A quick look at the amount of criticism in national and private newspapers proves this point clearly," Abdel-Rahman extrapolated. "Some might believe there were some infringements [on the part of newspapers] while covering some issues, but this could be attributed to the fact that we are unfamiliar with freedom, and that [these newspapers] have good intentions and seek to honestly achieve reform," he added. In much the same vein, Said Abdel-Khaleq writing in the daily liberal Al-Wafd , mouthpiece of the Wafd Party, elaborated further about this controversial question. "There is no doubt that the National Democratic Party has entered a battle with independent and partisan newspapers, finding that it is the only loser [in this battle], and that the [four] editors-in-chief emerged heroes inside and outside," Abdel-Khaleq purported. Mohamed Barakat, writing in the daily pro- government Al-Akhbar about the current press crisis, was highly critical about the Press Syndicate and its inertia and inaction. "One of the main reasons behind the current crisis... is the Press Syndicate's silence and paralysis about all the wrong journalistic practices that have made their way into the pages of some newspapers," Barakat wrote. "Another cause of the current crisis is the state of outspokenness that has overtaken some newspapers." Writing in the daily pro-government Al-Gomhuriya about the NDP's failure in properly handling the sentencing of the four editors, Mohsen Mohamed defended the government's position. "The party has allowed for the freedom of the press for the first time since the 1952 Revolution. And it was shaken by the rumour about the health of the president published by four newspapers. And instead of refuting the rumour, it brought four editors to stand before justice in a very strange manner, having assigned a lawyer to file a lawsuit against them. "It was clear the party did not want to be accused of seeking to imprison journalists." Freedom of expression has obviously become the test for democratisation in Egypt today. The independent Al-Masry Al-Yom reported that there are 264,000 divorces annually in Egypt on average, according to the Marriage Officers ( Maazoun ) Association. According to the association, 42 per cent of the cases happen to couples who have been married for less than four years. "Divorce of young married couples takes place because of the husband's inability to provide the necessary financial resources. It takes place because the husband is unable to provide a luxurious life for his wife. Divorce usually takes place in Egypt during feasts and back-to-school season when more money is needed," the paper quoted Sheikh Ezzeddin Ata as saying. The paper also reported that in 51 per cent of these cases there is some kind of sexual incompatibility, according to the National Centre for Social and Criminal Research.
