I start by
submitting a communication to the minister of interior against myself and the
civil status organization affiliate to his ministry… I believe it is a communication
to all those who care about the Egyptian state and the regime of president Sisi
whom I, like many others, am burdened with his tough mission and heavy loads he
is trying to bear… not to mention realizing the importance of having him in
specific atop of the state in such critical era because if it happened that he
left – God forbid – I believe the consequences would be devastating by all
means but it is not the time to detail such thing now.
I can affirm
and swear on all oaths that the civil status organization in specific has done
what hordes of terrorists of muslim brotherhood, salafists, Jihadists and
others failed to do as hundreds of thousands of those whose bad luck drove them
to get a national idea, birth certificate, family record… to the rest of official
documents this organization provides… entered it feeling respect towards the
president, appreciating his role and efforts, feeling happy for the achievement
of the New Suez Canal and hoping for more achievements the president talked
about… but then they came out of it cursing the moment they were born Egyptians…
and those curses were for everyone on all levels… I heard that with my own ears
and could not say a word… actually I thanked God I did not say Amen.
As to me, I and
my daughter tried to be good citizens… and so she went alone in the early
morning to the civil registry office of Nasr City first to renew her national
ID card and change her social status but she could not even get near… day after
day, she comes back crying because the date she should travel on with her
daughters is getting close… until one day after several trials she came back
with her clothes torn down.
All this time,
I have been asking her to keep calm and persistent… finally there was nothing to
do but to seek help form some friends who gave me the telephone number of one
of the officials in charge of the organization… but again it was in vain to
make him answer his phone… and so I went with my daughter to the main
headquarter of the organization in Abbassiya… again, it was no use since it was
impossible for an old man like me and a woman like her to even get near to the
corridors of the organization… then, I decided to try the other way… the way of
bribing a policeman to get our request done… it happened and we got what we
want!
Of course if you
say this to the “Pasha” major general, head of this organization and aide of
the interior minister along with all the major generals and others staying in
their offices stuffed with officers, policemen, soldiers, telephones and
air-conditions, you will hear a single reply: “what can we do?... people are barbarian
and undisciplined… everyone is rushing to issue documents because it is the
season of applying to military academies, travelling abroad, distributing flats
and graveyards and others”… then one of them may ask you ironically if you have
a solution for this problem in your opinion.
I say the solution
is to lay off the whole organization of civil status to be replaced by civil
companies… like the case in getting visas from embassies… meaning companies
managed by major generals too but retired ones having the experience in such
field… receiving the papers in exchange for pre-set fees with good amount of
those fees going to the ministry of interior… then the citizen can get a number
and sit in a human place until his number is called upon and then his papers
get revised… after this, the citizen shall leave knowing the date when he
should receive his required official document.
The same thing
should be applied in the traffic department when renewing the driving licenses,
cars’ licenses… etc… lay them off or displace them to other places… but before
all this, stuff them in the civil registry office of Nasr City in that 3 by 3
meters area with hundreds of people.
Until this
happens… until this organization is replace by those civil companies… why don’t
we allocate a 200 or 300 meters square area of any public park or empty
courtyard affiliate to the governorate where a headquarter for civil status organization
gathering all neighborhoods of eastern Cairo can be established?... and
applying the same discipline adopted in Cairo conscription department
affiliated to the armed forces which receive thousands of people every day with
discipline, dignity, humanity, clean comfortable places and efficiency; meaning
Mr. minister whom we know how much burdens he has over his back, there are
solutions and successful models to follow in the state… only the will to take
the decision is left… but for God’s sake… for the sake of all prophets, pious
and saints… order that aide you have for the civil status organization and
anyone of his relative to be put along with the hundreds of thousands he is
torturing every day.
The second
thing I would like to talk about in this article starts with a question: is it
likely that a writer in these days can practice Taqiya; meaning to hide
his beliefs for fear of prosecution, and go far in practicing political
projection until he reaches the level of falling into fallacies?
I really want
to know if there is still in Egypt people hesitating to write whatever and
however they want in an unmistaken clarity… and if some of those who write are
afraid and frightened to the level of having phobia, do they or those who
publish for them have the right to curse people with their sickness just
because they do not want to pay the price for what they write… and only want to
play smart on other people?
One of those
coined a political projection aiming at combing Mubarak and president Sisi in
one basket saying words like “unnecessary purging of a small water channel”! He
also talked of seeking satisfaction of the foreign powers by buying their
products… while the first projection targets the one in charge and his son
hinting that he may not be fair… the second one targeting the second official
hints that he is a murderer… in addition to many other more outrageous descriptions!
I did not
intend to write about those projections until I received a heated telephone
call from my mentor and friend Dr. Muhammed Ouda; pioneer of contemporary
Egyptian sociology that made me write about this because when the mentor
orders, the student can do nothing but to submit to the orders of his mentor… especially
that his call started with a stating question asking: is it acceptable that an
ex-editor-in-chief appointed by muslim brotherhood and recommended by salafists
can spread his toxics of mean projections over the country while people are
trying to find a hope after the achievement of the New Suez Canal?
Translated into
English by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article
was published in Almasry alyoum newspaper on August 25, 2015.
To see the
original article, go to:
#almasry_alyoum
#ahmed_elgammal #interior_ministry #civil_status_organization
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