Though he had promised he would resign from his post as Egypt’s longest serving Minister of “Culture” if he lost the UNESCO bid, Farouk Hosni has, as expected, U-turned.
Mabrouk, we are stuck with the geezer once again, for at least another decade.
Meanwhile, the crusade to “expose the Jewish/American conspiracy against Egypt and Farouk Hosni” continues virtually in all publications, state-owned and independent alike.
Egypt’s Justice Experts continue their strike:
Justice experts held prayers yesterday on the outside stair steps of the Ministry of Justice’s downtown Cairo headquarters, in an atmosphere full of grief after receiving the news of the death of their colleague, Ahmad Hassan, an expert from the Assiut office, who died on his way to join the Cairo sit-in.
A delegation of the strikers headed yesterday to Assiut to take part in Hassan’s funeral, while other experts prayed on the ministry’s stair steps in Cairo..
“The ministry’s officials are betting we won’t be able to continue (striking) in Ramadan, but we’re ready to continue until al-Fitr Feast,” said the experts, assuring their will to remain on strike until their demands are fulfilled.
Experts had their first sohour, the last meal eaten before dawn after which fasting starts, using their cell phones as a source of illumination, while some of the striking experts’ children joined their parents’ sohour meal and prayers.
The experts are the Justice Ministry civil servants assigned with technical consultancies during judicial investigations and trials. One of their primary demands is the cancellation of a decision that gives courts the right to send the experts only a portion of each case’s entire file. The experts say their working conditions are much harder. Instead of receiving the whole case file at once, they receive only a few documents from each case file, meaning they are forced to go and collect the rest of the case information from a number of sources. The ensuing waste of time, effort and money, they say, will be immense.
The other demand is a change in job regulations that were established at the time of King Farouk by royal decree number 96 in1952. These regulations set the ground rules for salaries, transportation remuneration and other rules for the experts to work by some 55 years later.
The state-backed General Union of Textile Workers has aborted tomorrow’s protest, planned by the Tanta Flax and Oil Company strikers in front of the Labor Ministry HQ in Nasr City.
A strike leader expressed his deep frustration to me in a phone call, and accused the General Union Head Said el-Gohary of continuously curbing and restricting the strikers’ actions. My source added that tomorrow 7pm, Said el-Gohary will be meeting with the members of the factory’s local union members, in the General Union HQ in Shobra el-Mezzallat, to update them on his talks with the head of the corrupt, state-backed General Federation of Trade Unions Hussein Megawer and Labor Minister Aisha Abdel Hadi.
“We will not suspend the strike until all our demands are met,” said the strike leader. “Every sacked worker must return to his job. If Gohary tries to push for a settlement that doesn’t include this, then we won’t accept it. If we allow the Saudi investor to get away with sacking nine workers, then tomorrow he will sack the whole factory.”
Meanwhile, the strike continues…