CAIRO - Even before voting on the constitutional amendments and the preparations for parliamentary and presidential elections, most people seem impatient to start practising democracy and freely selecting the leaders of different institutions. The general aim is to oust the old faces that were either appointed by the toppled regime or collaborated with State Security Agency, which oppressed citizens in different ways and perpetrated atrocities against them. Despite the many things done by heads of different universities prior to the start of the second term to please the students, wide demonstrations have erupted in most governmental universities. The purpose of this is to remove these heads who oppressed political activists at the universities and were in cahoots with State Security. The university students, most of whom participated in Al Tahrir Square revolution, insist on being free to elect their student unions and even the principals and deans of their universities. It's a similar story in different State-owned press institutions, whose members insist on changing their leaders who adopted the opinions of the former regime and stifld the opposition in their newspapers. Some of these institutions have already witnessed the forcible removal of their leadership, while the other working journalists have held internal elections to choose their board chairmen and chief editors, handing over the names of those they have chosen to the Government to appoint them. Instead of all the delay and disorder prevailing in these media and academic institutions, why doesn't the Government swiftly amend the laws organising the choice of university presidents and deans, as well as heads of press institutions, so that they can be elected instead of appointed? This step would placate these institutions and pave the way for something even bigger: choosing a new Parliament and President for Egypt, as well as drawing up a new constitution, to satisfy the revolutionaries. If all this isn't done, one cannot guarantee that the introduction of democracy will happen smoothly.
