CAIRO - Following a Thursday court ruling ordering the removal of ex-president's name and that of his family from the nation's public facilities, the Ministry of Transport decided Sunday to replace the name of the Mubarak Station in Cairo's main Ramsis Square with a new one. Minister of Transportation Atef Abdul Hamid has urged the public to participate in selecting one of five proposed new names for the station: el-Shohada (Arabic for Martyrs), Khamsa wei Eshreen Yanayer (January 25), Ramsis,el-Thawra (The Revolution), or Mahtet Misr (Egypt's Station). Meanwhile, Underground Metro Authority Chairman Mohammed Sheimi said that he had already removed Mubarak's name from the station in accordance with the court ruling and urged the public to participate in choosing one of these five new names. "The Ministry has designed a special section on its official Facebook page, where the public can select one of these proposed names and the station will be named after the one that gets the biggest number of votes," he said. The Egyptian practice of naming places after those in power harks back to ancient times, when pharaohs etched their names on public monuments, often on top of those of their predecessors. It became even more rife during Mubarak's era when graft and nepotism riddled the administration.
