CAIRO: About 20 political forces decided to hold a protest and a Ramadan iftar banquet in Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square on Friday, while 28 others decided to postpone the previously scheduled event for one week and others decided not to participate.
An invitation to the event has been circulating over the past few days on Facebook calling on Egyptians to join a Tahrir Square celebration on Aug. 12 “for the love to Egypt.”
A number of representatives of political groups met with Prime Minister Essam Sharaf on Tuesday, during which he welcomed the idea of holding a mass iftar in the square a week later, Aug. 19, with promises not to hold an open sit-in afterwards.
"One reason for holding the protest on Aug. 12 is that we don’t want Cabinet to dictate what we should do," Nader Shokry told Daily News Egypt on Thursday. Shokry heads a coordination committee consisting of about two dozen groups including the April 6 Youth Movement, the Maspero Youth Coalition and El-Tahrir Sufi Party which is organizing the event.
"We aim to reiterate demands for a civil state and warn against what happened on July 29," he said, referring to a mass protest where tens of thousands of Islamists, including ultra-conservative Salafis, flocked to Tahrir in objection to proposed supra-constitutional principles meant to guide the drafting of the news constitution after parliamentary elections in November.
However, most political groups said their target was not to create an alliance against Islamists.
"About 28 political forces decided to postpone the event till next Friday…because we sensed it would not lead to its main goal," assistant general coordinator of the Egyptian Association for Change (NAC) Ahmed Darag told DNE.
"Some groups are promoting the idea that we are joining forces against others like Salafis," he said.
According to Darag, this is not a rally to promote a civil state as some are attempting to make it look.
"Besides, a civil Egypt is not anti-Islam," he argued. "Egypt can gather everyone without discrimination [or exclusion]."
Other groups said they plan to boycott the event whether it is held this Friday or next the week.
"We see the protest as a response to the July 29 one," deputy head of El-Wasat Islamist party Essam Sultan told DNE.
"They are calling it ‘for the love of Egypt’, but the truth is it aims to be a counterpunch for the July 29 protest," he said.
Echoing a parallel sentiment, the Egyptian Revolutionaries’ Alliance said in a recent statement that holding any protests at this stage will repeat the mistake of July 29 of using slogans that can only cause more divisions.
Muslim Brotherhood leaders and the group’s mouthpiece the Freedom and Justice Party also rejected the protest and iftar banquet for similar reasons.
Furthermore, the Supreme Council of Sufi Orders denied that it had any intention of holding a million-man protest and an iftar in Tahrir, contrary to what was widely reported in the media.
The council said in a statement that the 76 Sufi orders in Egypt rejected this event, and only a limited number of orders said they would join on an individual basis.
The secular Free Egyptians Party also said that it will not take part in the event, calling on all political forces to make use of the holy month of Ramadan to work towards fighting the economic downturn and increasing productivity.
"The party has always…defended the civil state…yet the historic responsibility of all civil forces in Egypt requires them to unite in order to preserve the revolution and its goals; topping them are achieving social justice, protecting the civil nature of the state and the Egyptian identity," their statement said.
The Coalition of the Revolution’s Youth, which had earlier announced its plans to participate, has since decided not to.
"We will neither participate in the protest this week or next week … as we see it as an attempt to divide the [political forces]," coalition member Abdel-Rahman Samir told DNE.
