CAIRO: Daily independent Al-Dostor newspaper journalists have been reporting for duty for the past two days despite the current crisis with the management, executive chief editor Ibrahim Mansour told Daily News Egypt Wednesday.
The newspaper, however, appeared on the newsstands on Oct. 6 without them contributing to it, Mansour added.
On Tuesday, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief and co-founder Ibrahim Eissa was fired by the management after an alleged disagreement had erupted between him and the management over publishing an article written by opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei commemorating the Oct. 6 victory.
Mansour told Daily News Egypt that on Monday evening, Eissa received a phone call from the paper’s publisher Al-Sayed Al-Badawy asking Eissa to postpone publishing ElBaradei’s article for one day until he reads it.
Mansour added that Al-Badawy approved the story. But a few minutes later, Eissa received a phone call from the other owner, Reda Edward, telling him that he can no longer work as the newspaper chief editor.
"There were phone calls between me and the owners. They wanted me to remove the article written by ElBaradei … I objected, they asked me to refrain from publishing it for a few days but then a few hours later I was informed of the decision," Eissa told AFP.
In his article ElBaradei said: "Unfortunately after 37 years of this victory we were not inspired by the values of the ‘War of Peace.’ Neither did we get developed politically or economically.”
“Our social and cultural problems became worse. And we have missed many values like citizenship, team work, logical thinking, planning, punctuality, loyalty, honesty, modesty, transparency and self-denial, and other values essential to the advancement of societies that no longer exist in our society," ElBaradei wrote.
On Tuesday, the reporters published ElBaradei’s article on the newspaper’s official website adding a caption under a photo of Eissa saying: “the article that got Ibrahim Eissa fired.”
One day later the same article was surprisingly published in the print edition produced from a temporary office inside Al-Wafd party, led by Al-Badawy, without any direct input of the original Al-Dostor reporters.
Mansour believes there was a predetermined intention to change the editorial policy of the newspaper since it was sold to Al-Badawy and the other owners.
Following the announcement of Eissa’s sacking, Al-Dostor journalists gathered on Monday night at the newspaper’s office in support of their editor. They then went to the Journalists’ Syndicate to appeal for his reinstatement.
“The new newspaper owners, Al-Sayed Al-Badawy and Reda Edward … sacked our colleague Ibrahim Eissa, the true maker and Godfather of the most controversial … and anti-corruption [newspaper],” the staff said in a statement published Tuesday on Al-Dostor’s official website.
“This attempt came in an unprofessional manner with no [logical reasons] for it, showing no respect to Eissa,” the statement added.
According to Mohamed El-Shawaf, an editorial assistant, after Eissa was sacked, the new management took the computers from Al-Dostor’s headquarters in Giza a couple of hours before dawn Tuesday and published the raw material that was found on them. Some of the material, he added, was already published in earlier issues.
“This edition is a shame to Al-Dostor newspaper,” he said.
Both Mansour and Eissa informed the Higher Press Council that they had nothing to do with the published edition on which their names appeared.
“Yes, there are chief editors who are changed every day; but they are not the founders of the newspaper …or one who faced 65 lawsuits filed against him and six court rulings,” Eissa said in a telephone interview with independent Mehwar satellite TV program “90 Minutes.”
According to Eissa, Al-Dostor reporters did not take their firm stance against the management for his own sake.
“They protested against [the attempts] to alter the editorial policy … despite earlier promises of supporting the current editorial policies of the newspaper; promises that were not met and freedoms that were controlled,” he said.
Analysts and journalists believe the alleged disagreement wasn’t about ElBaradei’s article. Some said the fallout between the publisher and the editor has been orchestrated by the regime.
“It is an attempt to end the newspaper via the use of [Al-Badawy’s money],” Gamal Fahmy, Journalists’ Syndicate board member, told Daily News Egypt.
“Neither Al-Badawy nor his Al-Wafd party represent real opposition,” he added.
Fahmy does not rule out the possibility that Al-Badawy was used as a tool by the regime to terminate Al-Dostor.
“The authorities facilitated for him the procedures of ownership transfer which usually take far longer than what it took in his case,” Fahmy argued.
Al-Badawy said during a live interview with “90 Minutes” that he did not fire Eissa.
“I’m [just] one of the shareholders of the newspaper; and I only own 10 percent of its shares,” Al-Badawy told host Moataz El-Demerdash.
Al-Badawy justified his call for halting ElBaradei’s article by saying that it had something to do with the army, which makes it a sensitive issue.
“One of the shareholders told me that there is an article by ElBaradei on the Oct. 6 War and the armed forces,” El-Badawy said.
“What happened to Talaat El-Sadat rang a bell when he talked about the armed forces and was imprisoned as a result. So I asked Eissa to read the article first,” he added.
Al-Badawy is believed to have resigned from his position as the secretary general of the newspaper following the crisis.
Al-Badawy, meanwhile, suggested to Eissa during a telephone conversion on the live show that he become a columnist for the newspaper and get the same compensation he used to receive as a chief editor. Eissa immediately rejected the offer.
On Aug. 23, businessman and Al-Wafd Party president Al-Sayed Al-Badawy bought Al-Dostor newspaper and reportedly paid LE 20 million to the owner and founder Essam Ismail Fahmy in return.
At that time, Al-Badawy announced that no changes will be made to the editorial policy of the newspaper.
A special page created on the social networking website Facebook entitled “No Dostor without Ibrahim Eissa” has drawn over 5,400 supporters so far.
The outspoken newspaper was founded by Fahmy with an off-shore license from Cyprus and first hit newsstands in 1995.
At that time, most of the press was controlled and run by the state which had nationalized media following the 1952 Free Officers’ Coup.
Al-Dostor was a novel product on the media scene in several ways as it ran opinion articles by writers from across the ideological spectrum, from Islamists to Marxists.
It also has an editorial line that is exceptionally critical of the regime, focusing on corruption among high-level officials, democracy and governance, as well as a hardline stance against normalization with Israel.
The paper was eventually closed down by the authorities in 1998 for publishing a letter, allegedly by El-Gama’a El-Islamiya (an extremist Islamist group) that included a death threat against three high-profile Christian businessmen.
The publication of the letter stirred angry reactions among many readers, who felt that Al-Dostor was inciting sectarian strife.
However, in 2004, the newspaper was granted a local license and appeared again as a weekly following the same trend of scathing criticism.
In 2008 the newspaper turned into a daily publication and launched its website. It continues to provide a forum for a wide variety of prominent writers while maintaining the same critical ideology.
