Scrubbing Egypt Clean of Mubarak

• by Cam McGrath (cairo)
• Saturday, June 25, 2011
• Inter Press Service

For three decades, officials hoping to curry favour with the regime named public facilities after the former president and his wife, and plastered their photo-shopped visages across billboards and banners. A portrait of Mubarak hung in every government office, and one local carpet company went so far as to produce a special edition rug in his likeness for sycophantic officials to hang on their walls.

During Egypt's 18-day uprising that began on Jan. 25, protesters tore down Mubarak's portraits and defaced signs bearing his name. Activists charged that it was inappropriate to honour a man popularly described as a modern pharaoh, whose 30 years of authoritarian rule had 'robbed the nation of its soul.'

In April, a court sanctioned their acts of revolutionary vandalism. The Cairo Emergency Court ruled that the 'previous administration had named a range of public institutions after Mubarak and his wife with the aim of pleasing him, and for a range of other embarrassing reasons.'

The judge presiding over the case ordered the names of former president Hosni Mubarak and former first lady Suzanne Mubarak stripped from all public institutions across Egypt. The landmark ruling affects thousands of streets, schools, hospitals, libraries, military bases, and conference halls.

'When people's names are put on public buildings or government institutions, it is to honour them,' says Samir Sabry, the lawyer who filed the lawsuit. 'But corrupt people should not be honoured.'

Egypt's public prosecutor has ordered Mubarak, 83, to stand trial on charges of embezzlement, abuse of power, and ordering the killing of protesters. He is currently under guard in a hospital in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, where he was admitted in April after complaining of heart problems during interrogation.

Contempt for Mubarak is widespread, but not universal. A small but vocal group of supporters is demanding that the former leader's trial be cancelled and his legacy preserved.

'He made some mistakes, but we cannot deny his many achievements,' says demonstrator Umm Ismail, holding aloft an image of the former president.

Earlier this month, attorneys representing one group of supporters successfully petitioned a court to issue an injunction suspending the decision to remove the Mubarak family name from public facilities. An appeals court is expected to rule on the case by the end of the month.

Sabry appears unfazed by the appeal. He says the government quickly enacted the original court order and there is 'very little left to remove.' Moreover, it seems unlikely any judge would rule to have the names and images reinstated.

In reality, the court decision merely added a stamp of officialdom to the many spontaneous acts of revision carried out by citizens since Mubarak's ouster in February.

In the southern city of Aswan, activists crossed out the deposed former dictator's name on a street sign for Mubarak Road, rebranding it 'Tahrir Road' in honour of the Cairo square that saw some of the fiercest fighting between pro- and anti-government forces. Municipal officials recently approved the name change.

Workers in the Mediterranean port Damietta protested until the Mubarak Petrochemical Complex was renamed the Free Industrial Zone. Similarly, students at the American University in Cairo objected to the presence of a conference hall named after Suzanne Mubarak. The hall is now referred to only by its room number, PO71.

Cairo transport authorities recently renamed an underground station 'Al Shohadaa' (Martyrs) in memory of the 846 Egyptians killed during the uprising. The name was chosen after 35,000 Egyptians polled on Facebook selected it to replace Mubarak's, which had been in use since the station first opened in 1986.

'People scratched out, painted over and destroyed the name 'Mubarak' wherever it was written,' says Moataz Mahmoud, a transport authority employee. 'It would have been futile to fight it.'

The Mubaraks took particular pride in Egypt's dilapidated education sector, and hundreds of schools and research institutes carried their name. Ministry of Education data indicates 549 schools nationwide were named after members of the Mubarak family — 388 after Hosni, 160 after Suzanne, and one school after their youngest son, Gamal.

Many of the schools were rebranded after parents protested that they would not permit their children to receive instruction in any building bearing the Mubarak name. It also became a convenient pretext for students to skip classes.

A more challenging endeavour will be revising the school curriculum. Large sections of school textbooks — and several exam questions — are devoted to Mubarak's policies and achievements.

Reda Abou Serie, Deputy Minister of Education, says his ministry has formed a committee of prominent historians and writers to review the content of school textbooks. He says some sections will be removed, others revised, but it would be absurd to remove all references to the former president.

'We have to be objective,' Abou Serie told IPS. 'Some textbooks have ten pages on Muhammad Ali [a 19th century Egyptian ruler who reigned 42 years]. Mubarak ruled for 30 years and there is no way you can remove all of this from textbooks.'

Media experts have denounced suggestions that video footage of Mubarak and his wife attending celebrations and events should be deleted from the state television archives. They draw parallels to the purge of film archives that followed Egypt's 1952 Revolution, where army officers who seized power burned reels containing footage of the deposed King Farouk.

'Whether we like it or not, the images of Mubarak in films do tell us something important about Egypt's modern history. If we delete them, we might be accused of counterfeiting our history,' the state-run Egyptian Gazette quoted film critic Moustafa Darwish as saying.

Removing Mubarak's name and image is the easy part, analysts concur. The colossal challenge that remains is to dismantle the culture of corruption and nepotism that flourished under the ousted dictator's 30-year reign. [END/IPS/MM/IP/HD/PI/RA/CM/SS/11]

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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