542 Unintentional Irony and Arrogance
Unintentional Irony: Mustafa al-Fiqi, commenting on renewed speculation over the life and death of Nasser’s defenestrated son-in-law, Ashraf Marwan: “If Ashraf Marwan had told Israel about the time of the war, we would have lost.”
Arrogance: A few days ago Finance Minister Yusef Boutros-Ghali turned his back on opposition and independent MPs questioning him about the government’s plans to reduce the budget deficit and its national debt and took a call on his mobile. The minister has every reason to hold the People’s Assembly in contempt. It’s an expensive rubber stamp with a few futile trappings of democracy. The MPs’ no-confidence motion in the minister and the government (over the substance of the proposals, not the minister’s contempt) was doomed from the start.
Usually, though, ruling-party types like to maintain the fiction that the Parliament is important. Or at least important enough to warrant good mobile-phone etiquette. In any case, I’ll take casual arrogance over the erratic thuggery the government can display when it’s really challenged, as it was in the Judges’ Revolt two years ago, or in the Rafah border crisis a few weeks ago, when Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit threatened to break the legs of any Palestinian trying to cross into Sinai.
The world’s diplomatic set has been snickering or stunned by Aboul Gheit’s bizarre rants about gays for years, leaving those who work under him banging their heads on their desks as they watch years of hard work representing Egypt with dignity evaporate with each vituperative word.
Lately Aboul Gheit has been in a particularly bad mood. Some weeks ago, he told the world that “Egypt totally rejects attempts by anyone who takes it upon himself to be an investigator of human rights in Egypt.” This was in response to a motion before the EU Parliament censuring Egypt for its human-rights record. Of course the EU doesn’t want to get rid of the Association Agreement, so obviously not a big deal. Or at least not so big a deal as to warrant the exaggerated response.
Aboul Gheit seems incapable of being diplomatic for very long. Perhaps that’s the key to his success. Diplomats who try to bring up human rights and democracy with the Egyptians do complain of bullying, and they confess that it usually works. Perhaps he’s kept his job in the same way former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton kept his for as long as he did: He’s a good man to deliver a big fuck-you.
Also on the subject of thuggery and casual contempt, this one a week old: Ayman Nour has accused Speaker of the People’s Assembly Fathi Sorour and prison authorities of falsifying a report he submitted to the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Geneva. Nour said those cited in the report had never examined him, and asked that the report be amended to reflect his medical records on file at the Qasr al-Aini hospital downtown. He said he feared he’d die in prison from a failure of his heart or kidneys.
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