Information Minister Anas el-Fiqqi finally threw in the towel, as boxers do when on the verge of defeat. He failed to defeat the Arab satellite channels and the Gaza scandal is haunting him. He also failed in his battle against the privately-owned satellite channels. The concepts of "ceiling" and "freedom," used by el-Fiqqi and his men to justify their political failure, did not work as far as serials and sports are concerned. Therefore the minister and his men resorted to their last card, that of "government bullying," and rejected the principle of fair competition. They willingly gave up all government policies encouraging the private sector and investment. The TV Union, headed by el-Fiqqi, has become a tool for monopoly and the bullying of production firms for serials as well as private satellite channels and advertising companies. Investors in all fields should be concerned because the government says that it will turn to the principle of "nationalization" if it fails with fair competition. If el-Fiqqi were prime minister, he would close down private newspapers, companies and factories. The government would be sent backwards 50 years. His takeover is however surely feasible, since even his assumption of the role of information minister was previously beyond anybody's imagination. The relationship between el-Fiqqi and private satellite stations is unique, a phenomenon that cannot be found in any other country. I was initially reluctant to talk about the issue, given that I work at "Mehwar" and "Al-Hayat" satellite channels. But my justification is that "Mehwar" has nothing to do with the crisis, and that I began work for the latter channel as chief editor for its daily program after I had already started writing articles about the policies of el-Fiqqi (18 and 25 March 2008). I worked as a producer for Egyptian TV together with my late friend, Magdy Mehanna, for two years. I and many others are baffled about Anas el-Fiqqi. Nobody knows how the man attained his post and, more surprisingly, how he has been able to stay on until now despite the criticism surrounding him. The prime minister asserts that el-Fiqqi does nothing with the government. The foreign minister recently queried him about his advisors and he responded in an astounding way, even though the foreign minister and his people had taken it upon themselves to defend Egypt's reputation during the Gaza incidents. At the National Democratic Party level, Zakaria Azmy (chief of the presidential staff) used his parliamentary right to blast the media. Most recently, Azmy presented an inquiry about Ramadan serials and programs as well as overspending. The NDP's secretary general for organizational affairs, Ahmed Ezz, implicitly referred, in a speech before the NDP congress, to the poor performance of government media in marketing the party's accomplishments. Even parliamentary members from the NDP at the Policy Secretariat slammed media performance, not just in the context of the Gaza crisis. More astonishingly, Secretary of the Policy Committee Gamal Mubarak himself has frequently admitted a deficiency in communicating the government and the party's achievements. Gamal also criticized el-Fiqqi for poor performance in relation to a speech by Mubarak which was photographed during the Gaza incidents. All of this raises questions about the secret behind Anas el-Fiqqi, as well as questions about who brought him to the post, and who is providing him with backing at the expense of the Egyptian people. Things have worsened so much that a senior official at Egyptian TV advised the minister not to broadcast a concert jointly performed by Egyptian singer Mohamed Mounir and Algerian singer Cheb Khaled, so that the Egyptian supporters would not cool down ahead of the world cup qualifier match between the two sides. All of which affirms a lack of political, popular and even security sense. Moreover, one official contacted a police officer urging him to have photographers working for private TV channels arrested while shooting the joyous demonstrations of the Egyptian people after beating Algeria in the world cup qualifier. Indeed, police contacted the "Video Cairo" company, threatening to remove their cameras from the streets or to face the arrest of their photographers. The government must now announce its position regarding private satellite channels after the latter publicly protested, through suspending broadcasting two days ago for several hours. They called the information minister's policies "monopoly-oriented and arbitrary". Does the government believe that private satellite channels should be fought? If so, why has it allowed them to be established? Secretary General of the National Democratic Party Safwat el-Sherif, the real media pioneer (and former long-time information minister) has backed the satellite channels and even sought their coverage of the NDP conferences by Mehwar, and of President Mubarak's tours during the presidential elections by Dream. Nobody forgets the fact that the private satellite companies were the first to cut broadcasts and announce a four-day mourning for the loss of the president's grandson, thus demonstrating that they share the feelings of the Egyptian people. There should be an official statement made separating between the information minister's stance and state policies, unless both are identical and there is some kind of government game going on. El-Fiqqi is known to have told an official at a satellite channel, "You should thank God that we allow you to work." Apart from a lack of political decorum, such a sentence denotes an approach which is not concurrent with statements and positions expressed by the government and the NDP over recent years. The Egyptian people have the right to watch the game on any channel of their choosing without guardianship or monopoly. Competition should be open to all, so that Egyptian citizens receive the best service possible, especially bearing in mind that satellite channels have been spending from their own money while Egyptian TV spends from the pockets of the poor Egyptian people, through loans from the National Investment Bank without control or accountability. Anas el-Fiqqi did not move to save Egypt's reputation during the Gaza crisis - to the extent that the son of a senior official asked his father, "Papa, is my uncle Anas still the information minister? If so, why he does not speak?" The minister, meanwhile, did take action when Hesham Taalat was interviewed on two television shows to defend himself when charged with killing singer Suzan Tamim. El-Fiqqi even contacted an official at a private channel when a female presenter criticized Talaat; the minister asked the official to cut this part so that the stock exchange would not collapse. El-Fiqqi also contacted newspaper officials to tell them that the Egyptian Authority for the Protection of Competition and the Prohibition of Monopolistic Practices was investigating monopoly charges against the steel factories of Ahmed Ezz. He however failed to defend Egypt's reputation during the Gaza incidents, and I challenge him to deny any of the facts I have already mentioned. Egyptian TV practices a monopoly under the guise of protecting the citizen. The question raised here is why television did not defend Egypt (the state not the government) against attacks from Qatari-based Al-Jazeera satellite channel, from the time of the Gaza incidents until the Algeria face-off. Al-Jazeera blew things out of proportion regarding what happened to the Algerian team in Cairo. The private satellite channels stood in to defend Egypt, while the state-run Sawt el-Qahera (Cairo Sound) awarded broadcasting rights to Al-Jazeera. Translated from the Arabic Edition.
