CAIRO: Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces' (SCAF) almost obsessive preoccupation with “communicating with the public” stands starkly in contradiction with its complete failure to do so, if the events of the past week are anything to go by. First I must state my position on the SCAF: While I have numerous reservations about how the council is managing Egypt's transition to a civil state, I do not believe that the SCAF should be replaced by a presidential council, since it would be almost impossible to achieve consensus over its members. So this article is not about “inciting” readers against the SCAF. What it is about, however, is a request to the ruling army council to provide the public with its exclusive glossary of definitions for the sake of eliminating miscommunication. Take the SCAF's invitation to representatives of youth coalitions nationwide earlier this week. In their 60th and 61st invitation statements, the council seems to have deliberately intended to be vague in its use of the word “tawasol,” literally “to connect.” The statements never once clearly said that council was proposing to hold a dialogue with the youth coalitions, but repeatedly said that it was extending its invitation within the framework of its “continued effort to connect with the Egyptian people.” The exact nature of this “connection” process was shrouded in complete and utter mystery. There was no hint at the role of the other side — the youth with which the SCAF wished to connect. According to one of the attendees of this “connect fest” where apparently 1,200 participants were treated to loads of food, an hour and a half of one-way “connecting” from the army's side about the achievements of Egypt's glorious protectors of the revolution, one the army members present also made it clear to the youth they were “connecting” with that the army had other options — a certain General Qaddafi was even evoked by name. Like an afterthought, in the last half hour of the “connect fest,” some of the youth were able to get in a few words edgewise. But generally, as far as the attendees were concerned, there was little “connecting” at El-Galaa Theater, where this farcical performance was ironically held. And to reinforce the emerging definition of the SCAF's notion of “connecting,” army PR booklets were distributed among the youth, like party favors, and as a booby prize, the boys and girls were asked to fill in questionnaires that spanned the gamut from (again) how they evaluated the SCAF's performance — note that this comes right after the long related lecture — to their favorite presidential hopeful, a question which in itself raises much suspicion. With this fresh experience of “connecting” in the background, it's hard not to take the SCAF's recent invitation to hold an open forum on media reform on June 8 with a grain of salt. This proposal came on the heels of a growing lack of tolerance for criticism by activists and journalists of the army and the military police for alleged human rights violations, especially the virginity checks, those acts of sexual assault performed on detained female protesters held on March 9, which the SCAF has refused to investigate, let alone acknowledge officially. While the SCAF has repeatedly claimed that it safeguards the freedom of the press and the media, again, its definition of “freedom” is both confused and contentious. Freedom of the press certainly does not mean creating a National Media Council to be headed by a SCAF general, as Al-Ahram daily reported may likely take place in the absence of a minister of information. To guarantee media freedom and at the same time adherence to professional standards of reporting, the army should leave it to the industry professionals to regulate themselves. The starting point is that there should be no oversight on content from outside media circles, and in cases like libel, defamation and slander or incitement to hatred or murder, where a crime has been committed, then this would be an issue for the courts. Everywhere in the developed world where the media truly acts as the fourth estate, monitoring the centers of power on behalf of the people, there are independent regulatory systems and editorial guidelines governing the industry. Now with the profusion of self-publishing online tools, social media and citizen journalism, the old rules and regulations must also be revised. If the SCAF was dedicated to ensuring that the fourth pillar of democracy is firmly established from the outset, it should have given a decree to convene a special committee to embark on drafting a Freedom of Information Act that guarantees the right of every individual, not only journalists, to have access to public records with limited exceptions. Such an act must also reinforce Egyptians' right to access to the media and communications tools, in all their forms, on TV, online, in print, on the radio, through smart phones or whatever new technology is available, and to severely penalize any authority that violates this right by deliberately obstructing this access. Rania Al Malky is the Chief Editor of Daily News Egypt.
