Mrs Hillary Clinton must be the unhappiest lady to have been placed at the helm of her country's State Department. After the release of the US diplomatic cables on Wikileaks, I now look with pity at Hillary every time I see her in talks with foreign heads of state or diplomats. My empathy with Mrs Clinton does not spring from the fact that she has been given confusing and difficult undertakings concerning everything global and intractable: global peace, global warming, the global economic downturn, global discontent about her country's foreign policy, global condemnation of her country's war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global nuclear arms race. Rather, I am concerned about a new global embarrassment she is now experiencing after the removal of the fig leaf. During her talks with her foreign counterparts or heads of state, Hillary, I think, moves restlessly in her seat: she is overwhelmed with fears that her dress is diaphanous and that all those men, who are sitting or standing in front of her, are more interested in what has been exposed by Wikileaks than what she has to say about her country's stance on this or that issue. She must also be worried that Wikileaks has removed ‘pieces' and exposed more details of her (country's foreign policy). Mrs Clinton, who is cute and smartly dressed, must be afraid that the documents being released regularly by Wikileaks will soon include her comments and remarks about how uncomfortable she once felt in the presence of a head of state, or a foreign diplomat, whose eyes were riveted on her, while his ears were deaf to her sweet political rhetoric. I'm getting old and my memory isn't what it was, so I can't quite remember whether Mrs Clinton has ever met with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. But if she has, I do not think she can have had any complaints about his deportment. This is because the Italian Prime Minister is said to be a bit of a one for ladies aged in their twenties or younger. Taking into consideration the fact that Wikileaks released thousands of secret US documents last week about details of communications between the US State Department in Washington and more than 270 outposts worldwide, Mrs Clinton must be nervous that its founder Julian Assange has also removed the fig leaf from her ‘sensitive stuff'. In the meantime, it would be interesting if Wikileaks documents were to offer a comparison between Mrs Clinton and her predecessors Mrs Madeleine Albright and Ms Condoleezza Rice. We should like to know what each lady thinks of the other two and which has (or had) more influence over foreign diplomats and heads of state. Volunteering to give an answer, I think Hillary is the one to be envied. The diplomatic cables mostly belong to the last few years. They contain classified information about discussions and the nuclear standoff with Iran, the security of Pakistan's nuclear facilities and the threat of Hizbollah in Lebanon. The Cabinet's popularity Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif has joyfully declared that the vast popularity of his Government played the biggest role in the landslide victories for nine of his Cabinet ministers in the legislative elections last week. Nazif denied that the elections were massively rigged, urging anyone with evidence to the contrary to complain to the Public Prosecutor. In a press statement given on the sidelines of the opening of new development projects, Nazif declared that his ministers' win confirmed to him that his Cabinet's economic, financial, social and medical policies are sound, effective and productive. The big surprise is that the nine ministers, who now double as MPs, include those who are hated far and wide for their financial and economic policies, as well as others, who are unknown to the man in the street. For example, the winners include Minister of Finance Youssef Boutros Ghali, a notoriously aggressive tax collector; Minister of Social Solidarity Ali Mesilhi, adept at eliminating state subsidies on basic commodities; and Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Nasr Eddin Allam, whom ordinary folk hardly know. But people are worried that Allam will squander the ground that Egypt has gained in its talks over the Nile quota with other African countries. There is also Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Mofied Shehab, who lacks the charisma of Parliamentary Speaker Ahmed Fathi Sorour. In his euphoria, Nazif has ignored the fact that thousands of workers and governmental employees have, in recent times, taken to the street to protest at the very high prices in the domestic market and their very small wages. The demonstrators include young doctors, nurses, engineers, accountants, etc.
