Category: Blog

SCAF and Essam Sharaf’s cabinet under fire

Posted on By 3arabawy

[Video removed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtLBxpLJ8ck]

As the Tahrir occupation continues, PM Essam Sharaf made a public speech on Saturday evening, whereby he

…ordered the suspension of police accused of killing protesters during the uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.
Essam Sharaf also said a panel would be created to speed up court cases against them and those accused of corruption.

Earlier in the day, the prosecutor general ordered the re-arrest of head of Suez police and two secret policemen, while in Alexandria the prosecutor ordered the arrest and interrogation of 12 police officers involved in the torture and killing of Sayed Bilal, the salafi young man who was wrongly accused by the State Security Police in January of blowing up the Two Saints Church in Alexandria.

But as always, the government’s “concessions” are vague and meaningless. No names of officers were announced, no transparency, no public trials, no mention of Suzan or Omar Suleiman, and nothing said re the national minimum wage. And of course nothing re halting the military tribunals. Nothing concrete at all. And while promising one of the biggest “restructuring moves” in the history of the interior ministry by mid July, Sharaf’s interior minister, General Mansour el-Essawi, went on Al-Hayat channel, describing the use of the word “purge” as a “silly”.

[Video removed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejvDEkWytVs]

Sharaf’s speech doesn’t assure anyone. The protests continue as of time of writing, and in Tahrir Square already thousands are marching demanding Sharaf’s immediate resignation.

[Video removed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1scFulTW5o]

While in Suez, tens of thousands of the city residents are now threatening to block the Suez Canal, and sit-ins continues in other provinces.

The Ministry of Truth

Posted on By 3arabawy

Despite repeated promises earlier to dissolve the Information Ministry (Mubarak’s Ministry of Truth), PM Essam Sharaf re-established the ministry and brought Osama Heikal, editor of Al-Wafd to head it. Heikal had written an editorial on 24 January, one day before the outbreak of the revolution, denouncing the call for protests, asserting that “not a single Egyptian loyal to the nation would wish to see the repetition of the Tunisian scenario in Egypt… and no one wants a confrontation between the people and the regime.”

More troubling, Heikal spent long years as the paper’s “military affairs correspondent.” In Egypt, according to our draconian press law, you cannot write a single word about the army without the approval of the army’s Morale Affairs Department (read: public relations). Those “military affairs” journalists and editors are hardly “journalists and editors” at the end of the day. They are ones who keep close contact with the official establishment of the army and are more than happy to repeat what they say and copy and paste their statements as “news reports.” Heikal is hardly an “opposition” or a “dissident” journalist. He’s someone who spent his career as an army mouthpiece.

It might be worth mentioning too that Osama Heikal’s Al-Wafd party boss, Sayed Badawi, owns Al-Hayat channel, one of the biggest counterrevolutionary media outlets we have in the country, which is sensationally whipping up security paranoia, glorifying the police, and denouncing labor strikes.