W DRIVES REFORM:

The Challenger: For Egypt's opposition, reforms change little, and America is still the 'kiss of death' (Kareem Fahim, September 28th, 2004, Village Voice)

One night last week, on the ground floor of a cavernous community center in the working-class neighborhood of Bab Al-Sha'araya, an Egyptian opposition politician named Ayman Nour stood on a stage in front of his constituents, his wife, and an American visitor, and held up a slim tangerine-colored pamphlet he hopes will refresh the political life of his country.

The 48-page booklet is a stab at a new constitution for Egypt. Its preamble, which opens with the phrase "We the Egyptian people," is a broad attack on Egypt's current political order, calling for an end to fear and despotism.

"We are owners of this nation, and partners in it, not day laborers," it reads. "Citizens, and not subjects."

Nour is just 39 years old, a two-term parliament member and the head of a nascent political party called the Hizb Al-Ghad, or the Party of Tomorrow. He is a divisive figure here, called a publicity-seeking opportunist by some, by others a politician who has shrewdly taken the Egyptian pulse. He and his confederates in Tomorrow are currently waging a battle to gain official sanction for their movement, but a board that approves Egyptian political parties has denied four of their applications so far.

On Sunday, an Egyptian court postponed until November a response to Nour's request that it overrule the powerful Parties Committee, which is headed by a member of the ruling party.

Tomorrow's struggles are being fought against a backdrop of political upheaval in Egypt. A political loosening that began in the late 1990s intensified after George W. Bush's call for democracy in the Middle East, and the war in Iraq. [...]

"No one is willing to admit that the dynamic for reform is American pressure," says Hani Shukrallah, editor of the English-language Al Ahram Weekly newspaper.

How'd that slip by the editors at the Voice?

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 1, 2004 8:10 PM