CAIRO: As updates of the Al-Wafd party's violent internal conflict continue to take prominent spots in local newspapers, related conspiracy theories were the topics for editorial discussion. The news regarding the judges club and their canceled meeting with Human Rights Watch, reports on the national debt and President Hosni Mubarak's visit to Khartoum also received their fair share of coverage. Alongside commentary on the violent clashes that erupted in Al-Wafd's headquarters as former party leader Noaman Gomaa attempted to take control of the offices, writers in all local newspapers debated conspiracies. Allegedly, authorities supported and secretly encouraged Gomaa in his failed armed takeover of the party's headquarters in order to show the futility of Egyptian opposition parties. Arresting Gomaa and placing him in jail, the theory continues, served as punishment for running in the 2005 presidential election. While Hamdy Rizk was sarcastic of the theory in his column in Al-Masry Al-Youm, other writers toyed with the possibility. Mohamed Abu Zeid reported in the same newspaper that many believe that "what happened with Ayman Nour was intentional and what happened with Gomaa was incited by the government, so the opposition would appear in this bad image and the presidential candidates would appear in this shameful picture. In the weekly Al-Destour, Ahmed Fikry said, "Mubarak imprisoned his first opponent Ayman Nour and his second opponent Nomaa Gomaa; who's next? as the title of his article. Meanwhile, the judges club was making front page headlines, even in national newspapers. The club announced earlier this week that they wouldn't meet representatives of Human Rights Watch as originally planned. The decision by the club's board came in response to the attack the club received when it first announced the potential meeting. "Whenever a government official meets a foreign entity, it is [described] as international collaboration, wrote Hisham El-Bastaweisy in Al-Masry Al-Youm, "but if anyone other than government officials meets with it, they say this is foreign intervention that we should resist. El-Bastaweisy argued that treason is often used to term talks with international organizations, regardless of the nature of these discussions. He said he has always called for precision in vocabulary in this regard, concluding that there is a "huge distance between criticizing the government and treason. The news re-ignited the hot topic of the independence of the judiciary, coinciding with recent reports of the current state of the national economy or, rather, national debt. "External debts had reached $292.9 billion in June 2004, wrote Ahmed Ragab in Al-Akhbar. Internal debts are over the secure limit, reaching LE 435 billion, which translates to 89.7 percent of local production. "This is a disaster by all measures, continued Ragab. "We have to keep an eye on harbors and airports so that the government's head, Dr. [Ahmed] Nazif, won't escape. In Al-Wafd, Abbas El-Tarabeily wrote that according to the latest report of the Central Accountability Organization, the government spends billions on parties and renovating offices and buying cars for officials. El-Tarabeily also said that the recommendations made by the organization's head are always overlooked and his reports are placed in archives. "Drawing on our experiment with poor financial management in Egypt, the government surely knows how to waste public money, but it doesn't know how or when to stop this horrible squandering, wrote El-Tarabeily, "It doesn't know how to admit it was wrong. The discussion also evoked talks on the controversial privatization process. "There is a trust crisis spread throughout political, economic and educational reform, wrote Salama Ahmed Salama in Al Ahram, noting that no one cares to explain to the public the truth about several privatization deals, the last of which is the ongoing Omar Effendi chain deal. Salama said the lack of trust is not only because of "the absence of credibility and the lack of transparency, but is because of a lack of emphasis on the public's participation in deciding its future.
