As he reads the newspapers every day, Wahid El-Oqsori is stunned a thousand times at what he calls the "stark" absence of many rights. The chief of Egypt's opposition Arab Socialist Party reads of aspiring political activists who strive for participation, but are kept at bay because of the many "restrictive" laws here. He feels there is a need for radical change. "Our Government keeps parroting empty and phoney slogans without putting any of these slogans to effect," El-Oqsori said. "There's no equality among the citizens whatsoever," he told the Mail in an interview. El-Oqsori's disappointment underscores the desperation of millions in the most populous country in the Arab region, for what they call their "rights" as citizens. Whenever one reads local newspapers, watches TV, or even goes for a small stroll on the street, one is faced with the tremendous violation of citizens' rights, El-Oqsori and like-minded politicians say. They add that what began as an ambitious project for the invigoration of citizens' belonging by the country's government and ruling party, has gone no further than the papers that contained the original idea. So far, it is still favouritism, and ‘who you know, not what you know,' that decides who gets a particular job. This is an issue that was raised recently in the Parliament, as members of the ruling party themselves admitted that administrative corruption had killed lots of this country's talent. "Citizens need solutions to their problems," said Ahmed el-Fadali, a legal expert and the chief of Egypt's opposition Democratic Peace Party. "When the Government puts its concept of citizenship rights to effect seriously, citizens will start trusting the Government," he added. But this "trust" has almost totally perished from the public lexicon in this country for a long time now. One latest example relates to the country's bid to inoculate school students against the swine flu virus. Although the Government offered the vaccine for free, many parents abstained from sending their children to school to receive the vaccine. Some of them pedalled the rumour that the Government wanted to vaccinate the students so that they would lose their fertility in a bid to contain the population. None of the protestations made by health officials to the contrary seemed to produce any result. But this does not surprise people like El-Oqsori at all. "This is a time when citizens have lost almost all their rights," he said. "How can people believe what the government says when the law isn't applied to every body here?" he asked. This might be shocking to the leaders of the ruling party who in every meeting and conference underline the importance of ‘citizenship rights'. Indeed, this term is the most common thing in almost every party gathering. The party has even prepared a special paper on citizenship rights and keeps revamping it every now and then to make it look like the ‘real deal'. But it seems that the accumulation of financial and social woes in a country that keeps struggling to keep afloat in a changing world has made many lose their senses as far as these rights are concerned. "Our country is now in transition," el-Fadali said. "Now the Government controls everything. But the question is How long will it be able to do that?" he asked. Many might agree with el-Fadali in his assessment that Egypt is in transition. Some people say that Egypt has enjoyed much change over the last 20 years, with its media enjoying unprecedented freedoms and its citizens expressing their thoughts freely without the old levels of licenses political parties censorship. Yet despite this, Egypt continues to be an international backslider as far as press freedoms are concerned. And until now, the Political Parties Committee, keeps putting obstacles in the way of politicians aspiring to found new political parties. The latest case involved Abulela Madi, a civil engineer who wanted to establish a new party. The inability to form new political parties, a lack of information, and cases of police eavesdropping on some opposition figures, flies in the face of any official talk about ‘citizenship rights,' observers say. Likewise, Egypt's Coptic Christians cannot build their own churches as set down by the law. According to the Egyptian Coptic Church, there are only 4,000 churches in Egypt, despite the fact Copts make up around 10 per cent of the population here. At the same time, there are around 400,000 mosques in this country. And attacks against the Copts, the last of which was a particularly bloody murder on Christmas Eve, coupled with what some have called the lax security treatment surrounding these attacks, makes some observers question the presence of freedom of faith in Egypt as well. Until recently, Egypt's Bahais, who number around 4, 000, could not even get identity cards on which their faith was registered. Even after the courts ruled in their favour in this regard, they were still unable to register their faith in their identity cards without a fight. A few months ago, angry Muslims attacked the followers of the Bahai faith in a southern Egyptian village and set their homes ablaze. The Bahais had to leave their homes and scramble for hiding. "We need to give equal opportunities to everybody if citizens will ever trust the government," el-Oqsori said. "We also need to improve our education and give people true role models to imitate," he added.
