From time to time, Finance Minister Youssef Boutros Ghali loves plunging into problems and fighting some battles, although he has recently been injured at his left eye. Ghali is the toughest minister in the Egyptian cabinet. He sparks and invents crises and does not care about the public opinion. Every time he says he will not backtrack, but he eventually does under the slogan "the spirit of the law". Minister Ghali has previously been involved in crises with the national press, doctors, real estate tax employees, pharmacists, journalists, the Central Auditing Organization [CAO] and others. He has also had personal disputes with some MPs, such as Dr. Ayman Nour (it ended up in slanders), independent MP Alaa Eddin Abdel Moniem and some MPs from his own National Democratic Party [NDP]. This minister, who has recently been elected to an outstanding international post, has undoubtedly his own vision when it comes to running his ministry, but he has no political or popular feeling ("no one should say he's an MP, because we know how he made it") or social dimension. Likewise, he deals with such issues as if there were no Prime Minister. One of these two scenarios takes place in every crisis. Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif may disappear, as was the case with real estate tax employees although they staged a sit-in in front of his office. Otherwise, he may make his famous statement "We won't backtrack" - as happened during the pharmacists' crisis –and then back down. Meanwhile, it seems the Prime Minister's role for Ghali only consists in issuing decrees that allow him to travel abroad at the expense of the State, as reported exclusively by Al-Masry Al-Youm yesterday. With regard to journalists' allowance, we heard from the head of the Syndicate of Journalists, Makram Mohamed Ahmed, that Dr. Zakaria Azmi called him to inform him that President Mubarak had ordered to quickly pay them their allowance. I do not know where the Prime Minister went at the time. Did the Ministry of Finance turn into a sovereign entity following the President? Ghali also seems to know that he will remain finance minister, contrary to everyone's will, as his international post requires this. Indeed, the Egyptians had to bear his conduct and errors for the sake of his international post. Ghali undoubtedly has some outstanding technical and cognitive capacities that emerged only during his serving as finance minister, after he failed in several other ministries before. Once, at a meeting of the Budget and Planning Committee of the Peoples' Assembly, I heard him speaking about the global financial crisis with an exceptional capacity to analyze, explain and realistically present suitable alternatives. All this, though, will vanish into thin air if Ghali cannot communicate with the public opinion or the people and have a dialogue with them. His colleague, Investment Minister Mahmoud Mohieldin, should be an example for him, as he carries out his vision and ideas by talking to the people and not as Ghali does. The people can be satisfied with the government only if they feel that it works for them and does not only try to come up with some good figures. This, though, does not mean being blackmailed by the public opinion or one of its categories. ** Tax Authority Chairman Ashraf el-Arabi was the scapegoat in this crisis. He believed the government when it said that it would not backtrack and that what the pharmacists were doing wound lead to nothing. Based on this, he forced the pharmacists syndicate delegation out of his office. But he was then surprised to see the government sitting with the pharmacists themselves, agreeing on a solution and condemning his conduct, which proved that the Tax Authority Chairman had not acted very smartly in this crisis.
