The Other Side of Me

It happened again, and it will keep happening. It happens every day to almost every lady. It keeps getting worse, it keeps spreading. Sexual harassment has changed in the past 20 years from an individual act to a social phenomenon to a social epidemic. There is no one reason why sexual harassment is very widespread in Egypt, but no one can claim it's merely sexual. It's not just sexual because it's practiced by people of all ages from young children to old men, married and unmarried, rich and poor, those who have a normal sexual life and those who don't. It's more of a violent act from those who think themselves strong to those whom they feel are weaker. A few days ago, ex-president Adly Mansour issued a pack of laws that punishes sexual harassers. The laws that were one of the strongest in the country's history punishes those who plead guilty with a fine or imprisonment between 1000 to 50,000 pounds and 6 months to 5 years in prison. Back then I could...

Slogan "Long live Egypt!" Egypt is eternal, it shall live for as long as the world exists, it shall live whether Sisi is president or not. These three words are in the heart of every Egyptian, they've been said in the hardest of times and the happiest of times. The question here is what do these words have to do with Sisi being president, what do they say about him, or about the campaign? The truth is that they say nothing! The campaigners have chosen a phrase that when heard would strengthen the sense of belonging for Egyptians, a way to confuse the sense of belonging to Egypt with one for the man of the military, "the June 30 Revolution leader". I have to say though that the campaigners are not the ones to be blamed; they're working with no presidential program, or even real headlines how can they come up with a slogan for something that is simply nonexistent? Poster This campaign has many posters, this one is the most popular and the one fo...

Slogan "One of Us.... We will Complete Our Dream" It rhymes in Arabic. This slogan acts as a reminder that Sabahy is building on his 2012 campaign. In 2012 Sabahy's slogan was "One of Us!" 2014's slogan is building on it by saying that even if Sabahy didn't win last time, they will continue to try to achieve their dream. As I said back then , "One of Us!" is not the perfect choice,that is if you don't want the man living next door to be your president. Yet it does give a feeling of intimacy that would make you think that if this man is elected he will be able to know about your pains and problems, and this goes well with Sabahy being the leftist he says he is.  The new part is actually good. If this were a normal election in a real democratic atmosphere this slogan would have been slightly dreamy; some might have felt that they don't want a president of who dreams, but rather someone who has realistic plans and works har...

Two Years Have Passed For the tenth time after January 25 Revolution Egyptians are asked to visit the ballot stations. Around this time two years ago Egypt saw its first real presidential election with 13 qualified candidates and five fairly big campaigns. This year the election seems to be quite different with only two candidates that are expected to qualify, a law that seems to be made to end the election as fast as possible without taking anything else into consideration, a government that supports one of the candidates, a very short campaigning period, and a result that is already known. The one question is will we see a real election, or at least one that was as real as last time? The answer is probably not, yet in this series of posts I'm going to analyze these campaigns as small as they might be. But before I do this, here's some background information. The Law A new presidential elections law has been drafted and accepted in the past few days, yet this accept...