While I was about to write my article today about the significance of Laura Chenchila's victory in the presidential election in Costa Rica, the telephone rang in my home on Monday morning and it was my friend – whom I have never seen before – the Egyptian Researcher and PH.D. holder in political science Maged Maher, who has been a resident of the United States for years. Maged Maher, who is the mastermind of establishing a group on Facebook called “as an Egyptian Citizen, I support Ayman Nour as the President of Egypt†and who is also a liberal writer by nature and one of the most prominent leading activists on the Internet. Due to Maged's subtle follow-up to what's happening in his homeland, he presented through his phone call, critical remarks about the political discourse – and more accurately, the media discourse – of the al-Ghad party and my discourse, personally. The first of these observations and the most important in my estimation, is his reference – rightly – that the police regime in Egypt has succeeded in converting – in recent months – a space of our political and media discourse to talk about the reactions of repression and oppression more than addressing our political project for change. The speech became all about the suffering of the people and the country itself, although there is a strong organic link between the suffering of both. The phone call that lasted more than an hour. Maher calls on us to stick to our role as a platform for launching ideas, solutions and programs, rather than the role being imposed on us to as a platform for the exchange of fire with the regime and their governmental or semi-governmental media, which is assigned to distract us from focusing on the origin of the crisis by making us involved in the circle of actions and reactions in the conflict of the security and political tensions, the conflict that the regime owns its tools like no other. And because I believe that, personally, I'm not incapable of criticism; the same degree that I believe that dialogue and self-criticism are the only ways to overcome the crisis of the Egyptian parties and currents, which are important parts of the crisis of political life in general, so I chose to postpone my article on what happened in Costa Rica and dedicate this article to what was discussed in that phone call. I agree with my friend Maged Maher that the media discourse of the al-Ghad Party has become more preoccupied with the daily crises, rather than paying attention to the strategic and programmatic issues, and this is a common mistake in autocratic states, with the police nature, where opposition movements are often caught in the state of reactions to the policies of the regime. The media discourse in the current media format takes part in our conferences, speeches, activities and our symposiums and what is deemed more exciting and attractive to publish for the readers, while it never exerts real effort in dealing with the visions, solutions and programs that we pursue and cannot find a way to access them to public opinion; only through the modern media, which is still less prevalent if compared to state-owned media and the state media, and semi-independent media, which tends to distort the approach of all political movements and describes them as naive and lacking awareness in a clear unjust generalization. Yes, we have our own mistakes and perhaps, several sins, that we should not only blame on non-neutral media, but we are also productive intellectually and politically. We should redouble our effort in manifesting this production, and re-produce it in forms that are more capable of penetrating the media siege and lust of some elites in rubbishing everyone and who are responsible for the dissemination of defects and shortcomings without making a real effort to clarifying verifying them. I also read a new book I bought from the Cairo Book fair by the prominent liberal author Dr. Abdel Moneim Said entitled “Reform of the Politicians … the Muslim Brothers, Liberals and the NDP.†The book is another call for political reform, but from another perspective, not less important than the observations of Maged Maher. It has become clear to me – more than ever – that we need to listen to the real, important, observations that reflect a desire sweeping the Egyptian street, a desire for reform that includes both politics and politicians. BM
