Video of Mostafa el-Fiqqi before the revolution defending the extension of the emergency law, the draconian legal framework Mubarak used to justify repression, torture, kidnapping and detention of activists all throughout his reign.

This is NOT the man Egypt should nominate for the Arab League secretary general post.

Mostafa el-Fiqqi, former NDP, diplomat and Mubarak’s secretary of information has reinvented himself as a revolutionary as soon as Mubarak stepped down. Fiqqi won his 2005 parliamentary seat in Damanhour in a completely rigged vote (I covered the elections in his constituency on that year and I’m witness to the irregularities that happened) and was the one of the regime’s biggest propagandists in dealing with media outlets. In the video above, Fiqqi is praising Sameh Fahmy, the former Petroleum Minister who oversaw the under-priced gas deals with Israel, and who had to resign after the revolution under the pressure of labor strikes in the gas/oil sector.

Fiqqi was also kicked out by the revolutionaries in Tahrir when he tried to visit the square on 10 February, one day before stepped down (as seen in the video above). Hence, it came as a shock for me and many others that this NDP man who praises Israel’s normalizers and who was a cornerstone in Mubarak’s foreign policy, would be Revolutionary Egypt’s candidate for the secretary general of Arab League post.

Please join the activists in their protest on Wednesday 20 April, 2 pm, in front of the Arab League to denounce the Fiqqi’s candidacy.