Enemy of the masses

At the beginning of the ‘80s, I managed, along with my wife, to save a sum of money in order to buy a flat in Nasr City after we had worked for four years in a Gulf country… she is a physician and I am a journalist.

I remember the “high-level delegation” accompanying me in order to meet the owner of the buildings and her assistant; the mechanic boy whose title became “Bashmohandes” or engineer… and who, in turn, became an owner of several buildings… that woman, who was known by al-Hajja[1], along with another woman were the magnates of selling apartments in Nasr City and Heliopolis before that famous tycoon of Nasr City appeared.

They were all professional in violating laws of construction… whether regarding heights allowed or the percentage of the building area to the whole area… I thank God for I and my family survived death under the rubbles of Heliopolis’ building that collapsed during the 1992 earthquake… as al-Hajja offered in the beginning to the “high-level delegation” that came to mediate for me to give me an apartment in “Hollopolos” building… that’s how she used to pronounce Heliopolis… the price offered was 85 thousand pounds while Abbass al-Aqqad building apartment costed 40 thousand pounds.

That was the very beginning for practicing bullying against the state, its laws, institutions, and authorities… when that amoral cooperation between a certain kind of capital and corrupt people in some official entities took place… to the degree that made that woman’s son during the heated argument we had over the grave violations they made in the building say to me in front of the respected people present: “what law, Mister?... I can build a building tomorrow in the middle of the garden lying in the heart of Abbass al-Aqqad Street”.

It all started in those dark days when those who violated all that is legal and lawful went on their way until crimes of buildings’ violations became the norm… and the ironic exception is to adhere to the law’s regulations and conditions… I still remember that day when a huge building in Abbass al-Aqqad Street collapsed over its inhabitants and the crowded market lying in the first floor… I remember when then-Cairo governor Dr. Abdelrahim Shehata said that all Nasr City buildings were prone to collapsing… as cement, steel bars, and necessary specifications for construction were all violating the standard criteria.

Starting from that time and place; meaning in the upper-class neighborhoods in the time of Infitah and its peak during the eighties… until here in our present time as we live in this state of horrible bullying practiced against the state’s lands and property… against the river, its territory and what comes out of it… against the sea and its shores… we all live a tragedy of behavioral, cultural, and civilization deterioration… that is not committed by the poor and ignorant alone… but also by others belonging to the educated rich of high social classes and perhaps occupying prestigious positions.

In such regard, I may go back in time to what may be entrenched for many reasons in the negative side of the Egyptian character… as those who come from the countryside – like me – know those many who dare to eat out parts of the road, the river Nile banks, main, medium, and small water channels… and who feel no shame to shovel the boundaries of the cemetery area… and even steal the irrigation water from the neighbor who runs the water pump or water wheel… etc., all these practices that I will detail in the coming lines.

As to the road, it starts with a width of 20 meters… then at the end of harvesting a crop and planting another, owners of the fields overlooking the road start to plow, till, and level their fields as a preparation for planning, irrigating, and planting it… then you see axes and plows starting to eat out several centimeters from the road edge… year after year, these centimeters become quarters of meters… and the road shrinks from one wide enough to allow the side-by-side passing of two tractors into a twisting narrow one hardly wide enough for a buffalo or donkey to pass… and they all start their mission after they perform Fajr prayers and before sunrise; meaning before the authority, represented in the agricultural cooperative, village chief, and guards, wake up… and before the road gets busy with people including those who have relatively far fields but this road is the only way to reach their fields… problems and quarrels usually happen because of this… then the iron marks defining the road width are put… but how easy it is for many to transfer “ar-Ragma”; the stiff rock separating between fields and outlining the beginning and ending of each neighbor’s property…

Also, how easy it is to steal the irrigation water either from the state by opening the water locks at night and bribing those who guard them or steal it from the neighbors… as the one stealing makes a hole in the muddy barrier blocking the water channel leading to his field during his neighbor’s turn in irrigation… the muddy barrier looks standing while water is easily passing through it but not easily noticed unless the neighbor goes into the water channel and discovers the hole.

Not to mention the pleasure of stealing the ripe ready-to-be-grilled “corncobs” and hiding the stealth by uprooting the whole corn stalk and filling its place and not only snatching the “corncob” and leaving the stalk erecting so that the field owner does not notice the crime…

And when winter comes and there is not enough dry rubble to put under the cattle feet in barns… the one stealing goes to the cemetery usually erecting since old times over a hill so that water does not reach it during flooding… then he uses his axe to cut the edges of the hill even if his axe unearthed his ancestors’ bones… there are many more cases of practicing aggression over others’ property… whether that other was the state or people.

Now, we find ourselves in a dilemma that many long wrote about… that is the serious leader, who loves his country and is keen to protect its people, is sometimes regarded as acting in the opposite side of what people want… since people, in times of deterioration and cultural and political decline, get used to and even master practicing all that hinder the institutional work, law regulations, and fundamentals of comprehensive development… in times when individual solution becomes the answer to individual salvation even if on the expense of others and against the law and norm… also interpretation of the religious doctrine is distorted in order for this misleading twisted interpretation to provide the ethical cover for the crime.

And when things change and someone leads the society into its collective salvation in an institutional and scientific manner… then he will definitely turn into an enemy of the people… and those fishing in the troubled waters will start targeting the nastiest feelings of human beings; that is the feeling of individual salvation over the expense of the state and society in general.

I guess the message is delivered.

Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar

This article was published in Al Ahram newspaper on July 20, 2017.

To see the original article, go to:

http://ahmadelgammal.blogspot.com.eg/2017/07/blog-post_19.html

#alahram #ahmed_elgammal #Egypt #fighting_corruption

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[1] Title meaning that this woman performed the religious obligation of pilgrimage or Hajj.

Medications’ issue… cauterization

Like the case when a patient complaining of a slight pain sees a doctor, then the physician asks him for some radio scans and laboratory tests to finally discover that the patient is suffering from more than a disease in many parts of the body…

This is what happened in the case we have been discussing here during the last weeks regarding the medications’ issue in Egypt… as we started with an incident that some saw is fake and not true about accusing a pharmacist and certain pharmaceutical company of hiding important medications to cause damage to both people and economy… but the issue went bigger and bigger to the extent that we had several articles, comments and replies demonstrating the matter.

In such regard, I wrote an article last week where I excerpted part of the message sent to me by the pharmacist Raga’i Qousa who was in charge of important positions of the syndicate of pharmacists. Once I published the article, I received a lot of comments on my Facebook page representing different opinions. I will mention two of them here as I believe they shed light over a real dilemma we have in the fields of medicine and pharmacy; whether regarding the education or the practice levels.

The first comment was of Professor Dr. Gamal Mustafa; the eminent professor of public surgery domestically and internationally known in his field. He is also known in the cultural domain and public work through Al-Garrah cultural saloon which tackles the most important and critical problems facing our society.

The second comment came from Professor Dr. Charles Beshri Megally; the prominent Cardiology professor. He is also very much in deep love of the Arabic language and its arts. In addition, he is a big fan of music and singing especially al-Rahbani Brothers and Fairouz and he has a distinguished talent to analyze both melodies and words. And so, I believe both of them are interested in the issue discussed, not due to our friendship, but due to what is more important; they are true to themselves.

Dr. Gamal wrote: “… that’s what I expected… all doctors are being unfairly accused and misjudged… while there are doctors who are kinder to the patient than his own family… as to writing the scientific name of the medications, there are many disputed issues regarding applying such practice, since scientific names are compound, complicated and long because they have basically Latin origins … and those selling medications in pharmacies now are not often pharmacists, but actually holders of average degree of education… and so, there is a risk here that will emerge when applying such practice… however, you stirred a real problem concerning the patient that is more important than any other problems. Here, there are some key points we have to pay attention to:

1- Fresh graduate physicians and pharmacists need long years of practice to memorize the scientific names.

2- The scientific names of some medications could be very similar and may vary in only one letter. This may result that we have two medications, very similar in name, curing two diseases; one for the heart and the other for rheumatoid for example. Here, there is a risk that may reach causing death to the patient if the wrong medication was administered to him.

3- The commercial names include some meanings that are of benefit to the one writing the prescription… as the commercial name may indicate if the medication effect is short- or long-term… it may also indicate if it can be used for male or female patients… it may indicate if the medication contains any dangerous components, like Cortisone for example… it may indicate the organ the medicine will affect… and the way of taking it… not to mention that the commercial name sometimes has a melodic tone and is easier to remember, especially for general practitioners who represent more than 90 percent of physicians and pharmacists.

As to experts like me, only long-years experience determines which medication to use regardless of the production company no matter the temptations they offer, since the physician is responsible of the result of the cure he prescribes… and the production company will be of no good to him if he was prosecuted before law”.

Then, Dr. Charles Beshri Megally wrote: “… most of what came in the pharmacist’s message regarding the fancy cars is nothing but pure imagination… this could be possible if we are talking about the one responsible for registering or pricing the medication, but it is completely unreasonable to be a reward for a doctor to write the medication in his prescription…

Your article has stirred many grudges and generalization issues spread in our society like it is always the case in Egypt and the east in general… of course, we have here in Egypt, like in the whole world, doctors who make profits out of brokering and corrupt dealings… also, there are pharmacists who sell medications they know very well are deadly like, for example, that anti-clotting medication that was deadly and illegally smuggled and that led to killing hundreds of the poor people… there are also pharmacists who hide medications and refuse to sell them waiting for their price to go higher…

We do not live in a community of angels; however, there are doctors and pharmacists here in Egypt who can really make you proud of them… as to writing the scientific name of the medications, this will make a lot of problems like Dr. Gamal Mustafa said… not to mention that most of those selling medications in pharmacies are not qualified… the truth is, our universities right now are producing pharmaceutically-ignorant pharmacists who do not know the names of medications or their uses, and so they make horrible mistakes that can lead to the death of the patient.

In addition, we know very well that the original medication; whether made in Egypt or imported, is different in its effectiveness to what we call “Copies” spread in the market. These Copies, made of law-quality raw materials, are definitely different to the medications fabricated by a company other than the original company after intellectual property rights expire… these medications are called the alternative medicine. This message of the pharmacist made me laugh… too miserable to make you laugh”.

Comments of professors Dr. Gamal and Dr. Charles ended. They shed light on what is more important than the medications’ issue in Egypt because they agreed on the point that we suffer from corruption and ignorance in the fields of medicine and pharmacy. However, they both were against generalization and inciting grudges. Also, they did not deny the deterioration of university education in the faculties of pharmacy. And so, again we come back to the main question: how can we achieve the renaissance of our nation by curing the main problem and not its symptoms?... will cauterization by applying severe punishments be the answer?

The medications’ issue has opened up some abscesses Egypt is suffering from. However, the Egyptian nation is still resisting, like the files of corruption abscess the Administrative Control Agency is opening and investigating in places that were once above judgment.

Now, I ask your permission to pay attention to other issues other than medication, however, we may come back to it if necessary.

Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar

This article was published in Almasry alyoum newspaper on January 4, 2017.

To see the original article, go to:

http://ahmadelgammal.blogspot.com.eg/2017/01/blog-post.html

#almasry_alyoum #ahmed_elgammal #medications_in_Egypt #corruption

Remissness, corruption, and terrorism

These are the main three obstacles that stand in the way of our country to be one of the developed countries… Egypt which has been through two revolutions; the first toppled an autocrat ruler who planned to stay more than 30 years… while the second toppled a theocratic fascist ruling regime that planned to rule Egypt forever.

Such a great nation certainly deserves to be in a much better place than what it had now if it wasn’t for those three grave problems… only one of them is enough to hinder progress… so we can imagine how the three combined affect our beloved Egypt.

After the second revolution, came a president that is loved by the people and who also loves his country very much… he does his best both on the domestic and international levels to push his country forward… there is also the Prime Minister who exerts his earnest efforts to run his cabinet… both men are working hard to achieve what the Egyptian people expect from them… unfortunately, the administrative institutions entitled to run the public facilities and execute directives and laws are corrupted.

Now comes the question: how can we face all this?

In my opinion, a lot of efforts and time are needed in our case… however, we have to start and we should have hope in the future… I also believe that we should begin by fighting terrorism due to the high price paid in it and its subsequent bloody effects.

Terrorism has significantly retreated due to the vigilance of the army and policemen… I also believe it’s because people are fed up with those stray savage groups that keep spreading destruction everywhere… we; army, police and people, should keep combating terrorism relentlessly… as the more we combat terrorism, the easier we can fight in the two other battle fields; corruption and remissness… as those two have wider circles of influence that are not limited to certain people which is not the case in terrorism.

I can say that remissness has become a deep-rooted habit at many Egyptians… I can also tell that it’s wide-spread among the majority of people… and because we cannot have a direct confrontation with it – like the case with terrorism – its fatal consequences could be worse.

As to corruption, I believe it’s the worst of those three problems… as it dwells in the state administrative institutions that go deep in every facility and establishment… we all know that the corrupt administrative body has reached about six million employees and may be more… and in order for it to work effectively, it needs not more than a million employees as per statistics… What can we do regarding such underemployment?... can the new law of civil service face such problem, even if distributed over a time schedule of years… I hope so.

So here we see that Egypt’s problems are many and solutions are not easy… But we have to work hard and exert all possible efforts for our country and for the future of our sons and grandsons… there is no way out but hard work… only with hard work, we could achieve miracles… digging the new Suez Canal in such very short time is one of those miracles.

Yes, we can… and we will do it… May God help us.

This article was published in Almasry alyoum newspaper on August 24, 2015.

Too see the original article, go to:

http://ahmadelgammal.blogspot.com.eg/2015/08/blog-post_24.html

#almasry_alyoum #ahmed_elgammal #terrorism #corruption #remissness #Egypt

Paying the price

It is a heavy price we accepted to pay not matter what… the only thing impossible to accept is to kneel and surrender our country for muslim brotherhood and the rest of terrorists to forgive the Egyptian people and stop killing, destroying and confiscating people’s life… and to dictate their conditions including giving them carte blanche to do whatever they want whenever and however they want.

It is the price that we let accumulating since we let go our national responsibilities on all levels; economic, political, social and cultural… we also neglected the new generations until they became easy prey and victims for those who focused all their efforts and capabilities to tempt them in the name of religion.

To make things clearer, the whole scene now is similar to a family that left its children and abandoned them, then gangs of human smuggling, drugs, begging and robbery took the chance to control these young generations mentally, psychologically and materialistically… they convinced them that they are the support and backing that can provide them with care, protection and proper guidance… and that we, accordingly, are the criminal culprits who shall not be entrusted with the mission of their protection, their own life or the society life.

Everyone who had role in accumulating such heavy price shall participate in paying back… starting from the presidents, ministers, university professors, public education teachers, journalists, media people, people in charge of Dawaa and preaching in mosques and churches, others in charge in sport clubs and social associations… also political parties, civil society organizations… and not ending by fathers and mothers.

We reacted to such very serious issue either with disregard sometimes… with opportunism some other times… with negativity… with despair… with negligence… not a single field escaped from those things… either from a single one or all of them… until our country deteriorated and corruption spread everywhere.

Yes, there was tyranny, corruption, intrusion and also treason… these crimes were committed by officials at the top of the regime starting from the presidential palace and going down to levels regarded as high positions according to profession hierarchy… and yes, there were cases that opposed and relatively resisted such corrupted behaviors and those cases were subjected to oppression, punishment, alienation and defamation… however, the general thing we cannot deny is that we gave up our rights and then we evaded our responsibilities.

We are standing before a socio-psychological case… in part of it, we have deviant sons who set fire in whatever and whoever meet them… and what they cannot burn, they break… break their professors’ bones… break the desks and laboratories of their universities… and when they finished burning, destroying and burning all this, they went into other people’s properties outside the university… they went burning trees… they burnt the green trees.

On the other side of this socio-psychological case, we have masses of people distributed in their normal places… in homes, work residences, fields, factories, streets, cafes… those masses have no manual to follow in order to pay their shares of the price… and until this moment of writing those words on Monday morning, December 30^th, people who participated in the two revolutions of January, 2011 and June, 2013… those who knew that their only program and clear target was to topple the then-ruling regime… those people do not have any programs or specific targets to pursue achieving with the same enthusiasm and momentum they had during the two revolutions… the painful paradox in our case here is that standing against chaos, rubbish, sewage discharge and administration corruption seems more difficult than toppling the state president or overthrowing his cabinet and aides.

On the sides of this socio-psychological case, we have groups of those we used to call the elite bunch… such elite bunch stays on the top… in the side of those deviant sons, we find this elite bunch containing mostly university professors of different disciplines predominantly by scientific specializations like medicine, engineering, veterinary, agriculture and basic sciences… in the side of the public masses, this elite bunch includes a wide spectrum of different specializations and professions ranging from elite eminent university professors to young men professional at political incitement and who find no shame in being jobless and having no work to earn their living.

These elite bunches on both sides are directly responsible for pushing the sons into more deviance, violence and nihilism… and for the missing of the public masses for a working program to face their escalating daily problems.

However, the most dangerous is the absence of any ability to bridge the gap between those elite bunches and the grassroots… also the absence of both will and capacity to align these elite bunches in a coordinated or phase-designed working program despite the clarity of the severe challenges we face.

Fathers and mothers stayed silent when the sons used to tell them about what they experienced during the primary stage of education… such things that used to take place every day when they used not to give salute to the national flag nor chant the national anthem in morning line-up… also when they used to repeat the slogan of muslim brotherhood.

Those elite bunches stayed silent on all that was happening and even worse than this that used to take place in mosques; big and small ones that were established at the bottom floors of buildings violating all regulations of construction and laws of order… those big and small mosques were nothing but a false pretence of faith used as protection against demolition resolutions and fines levied for such violations.

In such regard, I still remember when one of those, who was famous in building real estate violating regulations, invited me to have Friday prayers with him in the mosque he had at the bottom floor of his law-violating building… once we entered, the mosque Imam and Quran reciter stood standing… the mosque and building owner called the Quran reciter: hey, you sheikh X… we have Y Pasha with us today… I want you to recite a little bit of Mariam with a little bit of Rahman and a little more of Kahf[1], then he called the Imam: hey, you sheikh Z… be short with the sermon for the Pasha has limited time… make it short!!... He was the same person that whenever he saw me getting out of the building and he entering the Kebab and Kofta restaurant he used to own turning our lives into hell because of it, he called: come have coffee with us… please give me some culture... he used to pronounce it in a way mocking the word culture… also, he was the same person that used to say on purpose to the other woman – also very famous in real estate field – before me and others: do you remember that guy; chief of prosecutions who wanted to buy that apartment and was willing to beg us for it!

I mentioned all this to present you a living evidence I witnessed myself for the crimes we committed when we stayed silent on the spread of such corruption and unprincipled capital… also, the submission of authorities to such corruption represented in people occupying top positions and who need apartments, cars, parties and lavish invitations which they cannot afford.

That was part of the soil where that generation grew up… that generation that now burns and destroys… a muslim brotherhood upbringing in one part… and a society where tyranny and corruption control its political, social and economic circumstances in other part…

We did this and now we shall pay the price.

Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar.

This article was published in Al Ahram newspaper on January 2, 2014.

To see the original article, go to:

http://ahmadelgammal.blogspot.com.eg/2014/01/blog-post_2.html

#alahram #ahmed_elgammal #Egypt #corruption #muslim_brotherhood #terrorism

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[1] These are names of chapters in the Holy Quran, however the names here are mentioned as the man said them, not exactly as should properly said. The right names are Mariam, ar-Rahman and al-Kahf.