CAIRO: Some Egyptians are lashing out at the government over the case of Culture Minister Farouk Hosni and his failed bid for the top job at UNESCO, blaming the regime or Hosni himself for the defeat. Egypt fought a tough diplomatic battle to get Hosni elected, and when the man lost out to Bulgaria s Irina Bokova last week, government officials and Hosni blamed Jewish groups and some Western states for his defeat. But some commentators say the causes of the Hosni s failure lie much nearer to home. It reflects a dangerous tendency in the Egyptian and Arab consciousness to see fraud in every election. We have a rule - whoever enters elections must win - and that s wrong, said Ezzat El-Qumhawy, editor of the state-owned daily Al-Akhbar s literary supplement. The literary critic said Hosni has made a series of mistakes during his 22 years as culture minister that came back to haunt him. If we consider that the most important work by UNESCO is taking care of artifacts, many Egyptian artifacts were threatened with removal from the world heritage sites list because of Hosni s negligence, he said. Novelist Alaa Al-Aswany, author of "The Yacoubian Building , said Hosni s identification with President Hosni Mubarak contributed to his defeat. Egyptians view Hosni as a minister imposed for 22 years by a regime led by Mubarak for 30 years without a single free election, so it is natural that Egyptians associate Hosni with a despotic and corrupt regime, he wrote in the daily Al-Shorouk. Hosni, who reached the fifth and final round of voting before losing to Bokova, undermined his reputation last year when he vowed to burn any Israeli books found in Egyptian libraries. He later apologized for the remark, which he made during a heated exchange in parliament with Muslim Brotherhood MP Mohsen Radi, as well as for others in which he said Israeli culture was thieving and hostile. Writing in the independent daily Al-Dostour on Wednesday, Radi said: Defeat and failure and regression will keep following this regime, whose members policy is to stay in office forever. The rigging of elections and barring judges from supervising them and closing down unions and starving the Egyptian people and terrorizing them with the emergency law will remain obstacles to any achievements. Aswany and Radi were repeating a longstanding litany of opposition complaints against the president, whose National Democratic Party has won every election since then, with various obstacles preventing other political groups from any hope of unseating it. Hosni still insists he lost because of a concerted effort by Jewish groups and some Western states, telling an Egyptian weekly: My fight was not against candidates but against states. The conspiracy was bigger than you can imagine. But Hossam El-Hamalawy, a blogger and journalist, said he is now trying to turn himself into a victim.
