As has been the case recently, Thursday’s headlines are little more than a series of contradictions. While state-owned Al-Ahram claims members of Prime Minister Essam Sharaf’s reshuffled cabinet are “ready and willing to take the oath,” independent papers such as Al-Shorouk and Al-Dostour complain of the “ongoing crises” and “disturbances” obstructing any further progress. Lingering between the two extremes is Al-Tahrir, the most recent addition to the Egyptian news scene, with its suggestion that “the new government could take its oath today” which arrives under the headline “the end of the cartoon” next to a drawing of Tom and Jerry.
Chief among the “disturbances” plaguing the new cabinet formation, according to Al-Dostour, is Sharaf’s “mysterious” two-day absence from the proceedings. Sharaf, the paper claims, “contented himself with appearing at a celebration at the Military Academy on Tuesday, before retreating to his home with an air of mystery,” which the paper asserts is directly related to the cabinet changes.
Al-Dostour, along with Al-Shorouk and Al-Wafd, attribute cabinet delays to the “utter confusion” between new and former members. In an article titled “Sharaf’s government caught between the military’s orders and people’s wishes,” – which comes with a photoshopped image of multiple Sharafs engaged in some sort of bizarre workout routine in their office – Al-Wafd raises what protesters are calling “critical issues,” namely, the fact that several businessmen and known Mubarak regime sympathizers maintain a place in Sharaf’s cabinet. Meanwhile, Al-Dostour reports that many of Sharaf’s appointees have “politely declined” to accept their posts, while Al-Shorouk illustrates the prevailing confusion with an anecdote of one minister who was pleasantly surprised to find several congratulatory bouquets of flowers in his office one morning, until he discovered they had been sent for his replacement.
Unsurprisingly, these contradictions extend, once again, to Mubarak’s health. The “harsh deterioration” of Mubarak’s health is acknowledged by Al-Dostour, which claims “the former president has been refusing to talk to doctors following a bout of dementia.” The paper also reports that Egyptian nurses have been banned from attending to Mubarak, and that, from now on, German nurses will “suffice.” Deterioration continues in Al-Wafd with the frontpage headline “Mubarak survives a new coma” and a report claiming the former president was, for a while at least, “clinically dead.”
Al-Ahram and Al-Akhbar, on the other hand, insist that Mubarak’s condition has been stable, but also improving, since his sudden drop in blood pressure last Sunday. Al-Ahram adds that security has been beefed up at the hospital in response to rumors of a protest to be held this Friday, calling for the former president’s immediate departure from Sharm el-Sheikh. For his part, the Minister of Health, in a report on Al-Tahrir’s frontpage, states “both Mubarak and Sharaf are in good health, and everything is fine.”
Al-Wafd points out that should Mubarak die before being found guilty of charges against him, he will most likely receive a military funeral with full honors.
The former president is also in the news for a statement made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which he claimed “Mubarak was a great friend to Israel.” Al-Dostour reprints details of the Israeli PM’s interview on Al-Arabiya, which is scheduled to air Thursday evening.
Contradictions are also a theme in Ibrahim Eissa’s editorial in Al-Tahrir, albeit of a different kind. Under the title, “the Opinion of One is the Opinion of All,” Eissa suggests that the post 25 January mentality now shared between younger generations will pose a “significant problem” to organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which might encourage this new atmosphere of change, but do so using a platform based on old-fashioned ideas and beliefs. Post 25 January youth, Eissa argues, are too “spontaneous” and “impassioned” for older, disciplined bodies like the Muslim Brotherhood, which has already been heavily fragmented in recent months.
Independent and state-owned papers also report on the trial against those accused of planning what has come to be known as the “Battle of the Camel” on 2 February. Scheduled to take place on 20 August – despite, Al-Tahrir points out, the fact that the presiding judge, Adel Abdel Salam Gomaa, had planned to take the month of August off – the trial will judge former regime heavyweights Fathi Sorour and Safwat al-Sherif, among others, for their alleged role in the attack on Tahrir protesters. Al-Tahrir also reports that Gomaa has declined to preside over the trial against Mubarak and former Minister of Interior Habib al-Adly for allegedly killing of protesters, in order to give the “Battle of the Camel” trial his full attention.
Two hundred and fifty thousand food packages have been distributed to lower income families, “courtesy of the armed forces,” reports Al-Akhbar, alongside a picture of a young soldier pushing a battered cardboard box into a young mother’s baby-free hand. Each package, the paper informs, contains enough food to last its family for the entire month of Ramadan. In a statement to the paper, a “military source” explained, “our primary concern is to assist civilians in the face of ongoing economic deterioration, and… to ease everyone’s pain.”
Meanwhile, twenty-eight protesters on hunger strike in Tahrir Square have refused to be taken to a hospital, according to Al-Shorouk.
