Al-Shorouk leads with a story citing anonymous official sources as saying that the president will issue a decree “within a few days” to ratify amendments introduced to the law on the exercise of political rights ahead of the much-anticipated parliamentary poll set for November. The privately-owned daily quotes Mufeed Shehab, Minister for Legal and Parliamentary affairs, as saying that the government endorsed a number of amendments last week and referred these to President Hosni Mubarak.
The amendments deal primarily with assigning a quota for women in parliament. Female candidates are set to compete for 64 of the parliament’s 508 contested seats, according to the paper. The new bill does not heed any of the demands made by the opposition, including the strict documentation of voters’ identities to avoid vote rigging, granting the right to Egyptians living abroad to vote, and the shift from individual to party list candidacy–an old system that the opposition contends would strengthen political parties if resurrected. “Not all suggested ideas should be implemented right away,” the paper quotes Shehab as saying.
Besides Al-Shorouk, Shehab’s name is also mentioned on the front page of Al-Dostour, which highlights a duel between the prominent leader of the ruling National Democratic Party and activists belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood. The paper says that a number of Islamist students belonging to the 82-year-old organization have called for international monitoring of ongoing student union elections.
The Muslim Brotherhood alleges that many of its members were not allowed to run. In the meantime, Al-Dostour cites some of the group’s leaders as saying that the discrimination exercised against their members on university campuses stands as a prelude to the constraints the Brotherhood will face during the parliamentary race. Right underneath this piece of news, Al-Dostour runs incendiary statements recently made by Shehab in Alexandria. “There is nothing called Muslim Brotherhood at all,” he said.
The Muslim Brotherhood is not the only group expecting difficulties during the elections. In the last few days, Facebook activists have been worried about a rumor that the government will block the social networking site during the elections. Yet today’s issue of the state-owned daily Rose-al-Youssef denies these speculations. On its front page, the paper affirms that “there is no intention to suspend or slow down Facebook.” The paper quotes an anonymous source from an internet providing company as denying any intention to interfere with Facebook and saying that such an act is not easy to do and requires technical measures that are as yet unavailable.
Again on the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Shorouk quotes one of the group’s lawyers as saying that the police have arrested 154 Muslim Brothers and raided 88 companies belonging to the group since last week when the nation’s largest opposition organization announced that it would run for parliament. Abdel Moneim Abdel Maqsoud, the group’s lawyer, said in a press release that these arrests aim to intimidate his group ahead of the elections, according to Al-Shorouk.
While the standoff between the NDP and the Muslim Brotherhood occupies the lion’s share in the privately-owned press, the story is not closely covered by the two largest state-owned newspapers, which are usually content with posting more cheerful news on their front pages. Al-Akhbar leads with the following headline: “Reserves of strategic commodities are safe and wheat reserves will suffice for five months.” As for Al-Ahram, its front page reads: “Prices of food commodities have gone down after an increase in supply.” Yet, on reading the Al-Ahram story, one finds out that only meat prices have shown a decline, thanks to the import of large quantities of meat from Ethiopia, India and Brazil. Sugar and rice remain at the same high prices.
Egypt's papers:
Al-Ahram: Daily, state-run, largest distribution in Egypt
Al-Akhbar: Daily, state-run, second to Al-Ahram in institutional size
Al-Gomhorriya: Daily, state-run
Rose al-Youssef: Daily, state-run, close to the National Democratic Party's Policies Secretariat
Al-Dostour: Daily, privately owned
Al-Shorouk: Daily, privately owned
Al-Wafd: Daily, published by the liberal Wafd Party
Al-Arabi: Weekly, published by the Arab Nasserist party
Youm7: Weekly, privately owned
Sawt al-Umma: Weekly, privately owned
