At a time when the government is threatening motorists with serious penalties for not carrying first aid kits in their cars, according to the new traffic law, the recent Shoura Council fire has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the government itself lacks a first aid kit for its own buildings with both their historic and symbolic value.
The government is so strict about the first aid kits that according to the new law, no car will be licensed unless it’s equipped with a kit. But since the kits are as yet not available in the market, the government was forced to give motorists a three-month grace period to secure the miracle kit.
We all know that some foreign car brands like Mercedes include a first aid kit but German law doesn’t stipulate the existence of a kit to register the car.
But here in Egypt, the law is so strictly enforced that even Mercedes owners whose cares are already equipped with German first aid kits have been unable to renew their car license because they were told that they didn’t meet the required standards.
That’s how our government has proven that it’s even more stringent than the German government, with the slight difference that that in Egypt, the state’s strictness is restricted to citizens while the government gives itself the right not to carry a first aid kit. In fact it’s free not to take any precautions of any kind, with government vehicles driving around without license plates spewing a thick cloud of smoke as they transport state officials’ wives to the hairdressers and brings their kids back from school.
The problem is not with the fact that a building has been burnt to the ground and that it will be rebuilt in time for the new parliamentary session; but that this was an irreplaceable heritage site which cannot be substituted quickly to meet a deadline.
The problem is that this is an issue of serious negligence that could have jeopardized people’s lives. Lets just try to imagine what would have happened if the fire had broken out in a residential building in Downtown Cairo, one like the Al Salam ferry, that is owned by a citizen not the government.
Would the owner have been taken to court for negligence that has endangered people’s lives in one of the city’s most densely populated areas? Wouldn’t this citizen be declared an enemy of the people and probably forced to leave the country to escape the people’s wrath and law suits that could have – unlike the ferry case – landed him in jail?
The real issue is that there has been no accountability of any kind, except the kind that ensures the public that such a catastrophe will never happen again the way it did when the Opera House burnt down in the early 70s as well as the Jawhara Palace and the Musaferkhana all the way down to the Shoura Council building.
Each and every one of these buildings was a unique heritage site whose loss was a disaster on more than one level, from the failure of the civil defense authority to the poor government performance.
This fire which is not the first of its kind, begs the question: what precautions had the government taken after the previous fires? Have the government institutions that are so strict on citizens, set a stringent system to avoid another catastrophe? Has the government insured its important historical buildings? Has it taken those responsible for previous disasters to task to set an example for those who will be responsible for future disasters?
None of these things have taken place. The building was indeed not equipped with a fire alarm system like hotel rooms which would alerted someone a few hours sooner before it was too late. And if the building has been insured the way all public buildings are the world over, then the insurance company would have covered the millions it will cost to rebuild it; and if those responsible were taken to task before, such humiliating fires would not have been repeated this way.
What happened proves that the government believes that it is above the people and that what applies to them does not apply to it. But we hope that this false immunity with which the government protects itself was also burnt to the ground with the Shoura building because the people have had enough. They are now as strict as the government is in demanding that the government too should carry a first aid kit before it receives the peoples’ license to manage their affairs.
Mohamed Salmawyis President of the Arab Writers’ Union and Editor-in-Chief of Al-Ahram Hebdo.
