With reference to Daily News Egypt editorial by Rania Al Malky (February 26-27, page 5) I’d like to point out that your editorial was just a pamphlet. This is not good journalism. Good journalism is about judgement and facts not throwing around accusations and ideas without analysis. Let me point to a few:
• You complain about the present government. But you do not complain about their actions only the fact that they are tied to the old regime. Who is not tied to the old regime? All Egyptians have ties to the old regime if only because we lived with it for 30 years? We have welcomed the army as the leader of the interim phase, why not give them the government they want?
• You complain about the presence of a businessman in the new government. Are we to ban all men who have ties to business in the future because a few businessmen were corrupt? Is our revolution going to mean that we judge a whole class of people by the acts of the few? What about lawyers (some were corrupt) judges, doctors, and army officers? Who will run our country?
• It is fair to attack the legacy of Mubarak, but it is also fair to reflect on the difference between how Mubarak and our institutions reacted to the revolution in comparison with Qaddafi. To say that his presence in Sharm is dangerous to the revolution is childish: if he were in Switzerland or Saudi would he not have a telephone? Is fear of a countercoup justified or equivalent to Qaddafi’s argument about Al Qaeda? Is that not scare-mongering?
It is right to stick to basic principles such as democracy, fairness and the absence of violence in our political dialogue, but it is wrong to be judgemental and to accuse people without giving them their day in court. Are we going to replace the rule of the emergency law with that of the mob?
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