CAIRO: A few dozen people gathered Saturday outside the Journalists' Syndicate in Cairo at a scheduled protest against the National Democratic Party (NDP) during its fifth annual conference. Opposition leaders and senior activists were mostly absent in a demonstration which lasted barely two hours. Police and media representatives clearly outnumbered the protestors. The protest was originally planned to be staged outside the Supreme Court House but police security forces sealed off all the roads leading to it more than two hours before protesters began to appear. Hence it was shifted to the syndicate. We had to turn to plan B as earlier agreed and moved the protest to the Journalists' Syndicate, activist and journalist Mohamed Abdel-Qoddous told Daily News Egypt. If there had been real democracy in Egypt as they claim, the opposition would have been allowed to protest peacefully anywhere. Young activists arrived about one hour after the protest kicked off, denouncing the NDP, the government, President Hosni Mubarak s regime, the perceived monarchy-style presidential succession of his son Gamal, and the decline of the Egyptian economy. At that moment, they were cordoned off by riot policemen. The young protesters were followed by Duweiqa residents, whose homes were hit by a rockslide in September, claiming that they had not yet been given alternative housing. Duweiqa resident Hoda Mohamed told Daily News Egypt that she and her neighbors had been living on the streets since the disaster. When I went to the municipality to ask for the new flat they promised, the employee in charge tore up the official letter I had, she said. The protest was held concurrently with a virtual conference on www.anti-ndp.com organized by April 6 movement to counter the NDP s annual conference. We attempted to organize a real conference, but were prevented. So we chose the internet to be our medium for free expression, 22-year-old member Mohamed Abdel-Aziz told Daily News Egypt. Saturday s demonstration was preceded by a press conference held Thursday by opposition leaders and activists where they denounced Egypt's deteriorating situation since President Hosni Mubarak took over 27 years ago. At the press conference, journalist and co-founder of Egyptian Movement for Change (Kefaya) Abdel-Halim Kandil demanded Mubarak step down and proposed an alternative plan for ruling Egypt. More than a quarter of a century is enough for a whole nation to develop. Egyptians have no more hope for a better future, Abdel-Qoddous said.
