Egypt's National Dialogue kicked off on Tuesday with a meeting of the Dialogue's Board of Trustees. Egypt's National Dialogue aims to restore the June 30 alliance, said Diaa Rashwan, General Coordinator of the dialogue. "Today the National Dialogue officially starts, it is a conclusive dialogue. It aims to set the priorities for the Egyptian state," he added. The dialogue sessions schedule is expected to be announced in a press conference following the meeting. Rashwan explained that the dialogue aims to help create a modern democratic national state. "To be blunt, the Egyptian public opinion does not want more talk, they require legislation and actions to be taken and felt by the people," he stressed Head of the national dialogue's Technical Secretariat Mahmoud Fawzy said that the National Training Academy (NTA) has received 96,532 applications. Fawzy indicated that the recommendations received from the dialogue participants were divided into three main pillars, political, social, and economic. MP Ahmed El-Sharkawy, a member of the Board of Trustees called for full autonomy of the board to decide the schedule, points, and pillars of the dislogue, "without any intervention from the NTA." Board members include Head of Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS) Mohamed Fayez Farahat, Deputy Head of the ACPSS Amr Hashem Rabie, and Editor-in-Chief of Al-Ahram Al-Arabi weekly magazine Gamal El-Keshki. President of the National Council for Women (NCW) Maya Morsy and Coordinator of the Arab States Civil Society Organisations and Feminists Network Fatma Khafagy are among the board members. Members also include Human rights lawyer Negad El-Borai, Senate member and journalist Emad El-Din Hussein and House of Representatives' members Ahmed El-Sharkawy, Amira Saber, and Talaat Abdel-Kawy, president of the General Federation of NGOs and Foundations (FNGO). Economy professor and former social solidarity minister Goda Abdel-Khalek, Cairo University's international relations professor Reham Bahy, journalism professor Mahmoud Alam El-Din, and commercial and maritime law professor Hani Sarie El-Din. Board members also include Businessperson Kamal Zayed, political researcher and author Samir Morcos and journalists Abdel-Azim Hammad, Fatma El-Sayed Ahmed, and Mohamed Salmawy.
