LITMIR.BIZ

      The Art of Pleasing the President

      I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself on a tape recorded by the Mehwar channel during the recent conference of the National Democratic Party. Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak arrived in the hall surrounded by bodyguards, and ministers and officials rushed to greet her. The minister of manpower, Aisha Abdel Hady, then approached her and started to follow her. The minister was speaking about a subject that did not seem to interest Suzanne Mubarak but she kept listening with a polite smile on her face. Then suddenly, in front of everyone, including the photographers and the television cameras, Aisha Abdel Hady bent down toward Suzanne Mubarak’s hand and started to kiss it. The scene looked very strange. In France, a man might kiss a woman’s hand, but that custom is not widespread in Egypt. Egyptians might kiss the hand of their mother or father to express deep respect, but apart from that kissing hands in our country is considered to be incompatible with one’s dignity and self-respect. In 1950 the Wafd Party had been out of power for some years and when the party was asked to form the new government, Wafd leader Mustafa al-Nahhas met King Farouk. Al-Nahhas leaned down to kiss his hand—a scandal that haunted Mustafa al-Nahhas until his death.

      What would impel a government minister to bend down and kiss someone’s hand? The truth is that Aisha Abdel Hady never dreamed that she would become a minister, for the simple fact that she never completed her basic education. In other words she failed to graduate from preparatory school but managed to become a minister in a country that has tens of thousands of people with doctorates. Aisha Abdel Hady understands that she was not appointed minister because of her competence or her capacity to do the job, but only because the president and his family approve of her, and in order to retain presidential approval she is fully prepared to do anything, including kissing the hands of the president, his wife, and his sons.

      The question is: Can we expect Aisha Abdel Hady to defend the dignity and rights of Egyptians as she should in her role as minister of manpower? The answer is absolutely not. Thousands of Egyptians who work in the Gulf states are robbed of their due by their sponsors, are mistreated and humiliated, and are often detained and flogged unjustly. They wait for the government of their country to defend their rights, but Aisha Abdel Hady, who kisses hands, does nothing for them. On the contrary, two years ago Aisha Abdel Hady announced she had made an agreement with the Saudi authorities to provide thousands of Egyptian maids to work in Saudi homes. This extraordinary deal shocked Egyptians, first, because Egypt has hundreds of thousands of highly qualified people who are more eligible to obtain contracts to work in the Gulf; second, because sending Egyptian women to work as maids is incompatible with the most basic rules of national dignity and puts them at risk of being humiliated or sexually abused; third, because many Egyptian women have intermediate or advanced qualifications but under pressure of poverty and unemployment are forced to agree to work as maids; and, fourth, because the Saudi authorities, who are strict in all religious matters and require that women be accompanied by a close male relative when they go to the country on pilgrimage or umra, did the opposite this time and asked for Egyptian maids to go to Saudi Arabia unaccompanied. Aisha Abdel Hady defended the deal she made for the maids, saying there was nothing shameful about domestic service and advising her opponents to abandon their meaningless sensitivities. I remember that one Egyptian intellectual, Dr. Ayman Yahya, decided at the time to respond to the minister in a practical and inventive way. He placed an advertisement on the front page of al-Karama newspaper reading, “Wanted: A Saudi live-in maid for a wealthy Egyptian family. Attractive salary.” He left his telephone number for people to call and over several weeks he received a barrage of curses and insults from dozens of Saudis who thought the advertisement was an affront to their country.

      Under pressure of public opinion, Aisha Abdel Hady was forced to back down on sending the maids to Saudi Arabia, but she came back and announced last month that she had reached a new agreement to send Egyptian maids to Kuwait this time. I don’t know why some officials in the Gulf insist on bringing maids from Egypt instead of Egyptian doctors, engineers, and other qualified Egyptian professionals of the kind who can take credit for the progress the Gulf has seen. Does using Egyptians as servants give some Gulf people a particular pleasure? I also don’t understand why this strange minister is so enthusiastic about providing maids for Gulf countries. But I do understand that someone who has already lost something cannot then give it away, and someone who is willing to kiss people’s hands in public cannot defend anyone’s dignity. The incident when Aisha Abdel Hady kissed Suzanne Mubarak’s hand reflects the relationship between the ministers and senior officials on the one hand and President Mubarak and his family on the other.

      In the same tape I saw on the Mehwar channel, there are shots of Dr. Alieddin Hilal, the head of the information department at the National Democratic Party and a professor of political science, as he faced a curious dilemma when just by chance he found himself standing in the way of Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak. He was seriously confused and did not know what to do. He was worried that turning his back on her might be interpreted as an insult to her status, with serious consequences, but he dared not risk turning to her and talking to her when she had not asked him to do so. And if he decided to get out of her way suddenly, that, too, might appear as inappropriate conduct. So what should he do? The senior official looked confused and undecided. He hovered in his place until the chief bodyguard came up to him and pushed him aside so that Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak could proceed on her way. This complete submission to the president and his family is a shared characteristic of all ministers in Egypt. Perhaps readers will remember how last year Gamal Mubarak reprimanded higher education minister Hani Hilal in public at an American University in Cairo function. He prevented him from sitting next to him on the platform and with a wave of his hand told him to move away at once. The minister was not angry at the public reprimand but was merely anxious that Gamal Mubarak was angry with him.

      In a democratic country a minister reaches his position through fair elections, is indebted to the voters, and does his utmost to retain their trust and their votes. If a minister there disagrees with the president he submits his resignation immediately because he knows he will regain his position if he wins in the next elections. But in a despotic system the minister does not care at all what people think because he does not obtain his position through his competence or his work, but through his loyalty to the president, and so his whole political future depends on a single word from the president. In Egypt you will never find a minister who disputes anything the president says or disagrees with him or even expresses reservations about a single word he says. They all glorify the president and praise his genius and his great achievements, which we Egyptians cannot see or feel (simply because they don’t exist). Some years ago I saw a prominent state official and economist assert on television that although President Mubarak did not study economics he was gifted with an “economic inspiration,” which enabled him to have brilliant and powerful economic ideas that eluded academic economists themselves. The way officials are appointed in Egypt automatically rules out qualified people, natural leaders, those who have self-respect, and those who care about their dignity, while official positions are usually given to losers, partisans, sycophants, and those who cooperate with the security agencies. This has brought conditions in Egypt to rock bottom in most fields. The moment when Aisha Abdel Hady bent down to kiss the hand of Suzanne Mubarak symbolizes how Egyptians have lost their rights at home and abroad. When there is real democratic reform, elections will bring to power competent and respectable officials who do not kiss hands and do not flatter the president and his family. Only then will Egypt prosper.

      Democracy is the solution.

       December 2, 2009