Tea with a Parliamentarian

The first post-revolution Egyptian parliament session on January 23, 2012. Photo credit: Khaled Elfiqi/EPA POOL

One of the perks of being a Presidential Scholar in the Office of Communications is you have a good reason to schedule a meeting with someone you might otherwise not have access to -- you need to interview them for an article. Twice this year my position extends beyond the immediate AUC bubble and I am asked to write for AUCToday, the university magazine. When my co-worker sent me the list of potential stories up for grabs, I immediately snatched the one about AUC alumni in parliament. I assume, although I have never officially tried, that Egypt's newest parliamentarians would overlook my request to grab tea (for fun!) if I just asked out of the blue. But with a quasi-legitimate title and bonafide association with AUCToday, I knew I was golden.

Women wait in line to vote in Zamalek during the Egyptian elections.
Photo credit: Peter MacDiarmid (nydailynews.com)

Over the past few months, Egypt has undergone a painstakingly lengthy election process (November 28 to January 11) for the post-revolution parliament. Not only was it extended over a period of two months, but the process itself was quite complicated. At its core, 2/3 of 498 elected MP's (members of parliament) were from party or coalition lists. Four major parties and coalitions won the vast majority of  seats (434/498). The coalition with the greatest number of MP's (37%) is the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) which is essentially the Muslim Brotherhood. The Salafi Al-Nour Party, with an ultra-conservative Islamist ideology, came in second with 27.8% of the seats. Then there was the liberal New Wafd Party with 9.2% and the Egyptian Bloc, a liberal secularist and socially democratic coalition, with 8.9%. The remaining third of the MP's were directly elected seats. Candidates had the option of running independently or independently with a party/coalition association for these seats. The remaining 10 seats (bringing the total to 508) are appointed by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), the military which currently runs the country. Unfortunately, there are only 8 women. 
Phew! Got through that. Now onto my meeting. I was able to contact and meet with two elected AUC alums. The first MP I met with was Ahmed Said, a well-known and successful business man turned politician.  He is the co-founder and president of the Free Egyptians Party, founded in April 2011, and played a major role in the forming of the Egyptian Bloc. In other words, he is a BIG deal. We casually met in the Marriott and talked about his life trajectory, Egyptian politics and his time as Student Union President at AUC. Without skipping a beat, he was clear to distance himself from the institution AUC has become in Egypt (in short, isolated and elitist) and wanted to prove to me how AUC was just another Egyptian university when he attended it. I wasn't shocked to hear this. It seems like every person associated with AUC wants to distance him or herself from it. 


This past week I was invited to the office of Sameh Mikram Ebeid, a financial consultant, long-time politician, and recently elected MP. I was giddy at the chance to both leave work early on "official business matters" and see his office. I was not disappointed. 


His office apartment was in the heat of downtown, steps from Tahrir Square. The office itself was dazzling. The inside gave the air of an old, rich Egypt. Gigantic paintings hung from the wall with oversized furniture and a remarkably large and classic-looking wooden desk filling most of the space. One painting in particular caught my eye. It extended from hip-height to the ceiling and was filled with oversized faces of Egyptian in a maqha (coffee shop). I immediately pinned the style as Coptic, the same style of painting, specifically of people, can be found in Coptic churches scattered around the city. Islamic art covered the ceiling and his larger than life Mac desktop screen sat neatly on the desk in a familiar juxtaposition. 


Mr. Mikram Ebeid was dashingly professional. He was impeccably well dressed and had glasses that magnetically connected and disconnected at the bridge, which were connected by a loose strap on each side so when they disconnected, they fell comfortably on his shoulders. 


We started our conversation about his past and his association to AUC. I was surprised to hear that he was also the Student Union President when he was at AUC, just like Ahmed Said, the other alum in parliament. (Perhaps a sign that my position as Student Body Vice President senior year in high school will lead to greater things?) Back in 1973 when he was a senior at AUC, he held what he called the first strike ever at AUC. During his tenure, Egypt was in the 1973 war with Israel, also known as the Yom Kippur War or October War, and the students were striking to encourage the University to give them time off from classes to help in the war effort. The Student Union was able to convince the administration to shut the school down for two weeks. According to Makram Ebeid, the girls went to hospitals to work as nurses and the boys helped run various parts of civil society as most of the men were off fighting.


After college (where, just to note, he said he got a 2.0 GPA), he worked as a member of the Wafd party, a nationalist liberal party, and served as assistant secretary general from 2005-2010. He left his position in 2010 due to differences between the party's aspirations and his own political views. He said he wanted to run for parliament in 2010, but essentially gave up as he knew the elections would be fraudulent. When January 25, 2011 came, he said he was skeptical at first, but ultimately joined the masses by the 28th, the famous Friday that gathered the largest turnout in Tahrir Square at the beginning of the uprisings.


One of my favorite things that he said during out interview was his response to my question, "How do you feel now that you have bee elected as a representative?" He answered, "Have you ever seen the picture of a boy on a beach starting at a tsunami rising from the ocean in front of him? This is Egypt. But we have no choice. We will stand and battle for what we believe in--a secular, civil society in Egypt."


And a challenge it will be for liberal, secular Egyptians. The elections for liberals was far from "fair." The Muslim Brotherhood is the oldest Islamist organization and by many calculations the largest. It was founded in 1928 and has had time to gain the trust and support of Egyptians as they provided many of societies basic needs, like trash collection, when the Egyptian government did not. While the Brotherhood was almost always banned from political participation in Egypt, they retained a trusted base of constituents due to their association with the mosques and continued social service work.  Egyptian liberals, on the other hand, just emerged onto the political scene as a semi-unified group.


Mikram Ebeid spoke about how he advocated for the elections to be postponed, primarily to level the playing field. He did note that the Egyptian Bloc was fairly successful, given its status as a new political organization, gaining a total of 34 seats. But he said that he thinks the Bloc would have gotten three to four times this number if the elections were postponed for a year and the Bloc had time to go to each governate and really explain their plan for the new Egypt.


I also asked him about his impressions of the first two parliamentary sessions. He was impressed at how disciplined the Salafis were but thought the Brotherhood representatives were "verbally violent." While the secular parties have a decent number of representatives, he still feels they are not yet united, an essential cooperation in order to ensure power is not solely in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood.


The parliament has met a few times since my interview with Makram Ebeid. While it is hard to tell as of right now, the MP's seems to be taking their position seriously and are making progress where possible. Of course there are still a few MP's that are a bit less concerned with progress. Just the other week Salafi MP Mamdouh Ismail stood up and made the call to prayer--in the middle of the session! In a slightly surprising but well-received response, the People's Assembly speaker, Saad al-Katatny (Muslim Brotherhood) interrupted Ismail told him to stop as his actions were in violation of parliamentary procedure. When he refused to stop, al-Katatny told him "You are no more Muslim than any of us," and to go to the mosque nearby if he wanted to pray. Now there's some progress if you ask me.