Revolution in the Arab World - Observation of a lost soul Blog

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October 2010: The Death
of Egypt’s Free Press
BY DAVID KENNER
For years, the newspaper al-Dostour was one of the few independent
voices in the Egyptian press. No longer: Its editor in chief, Ibrahim Eissa,
was fired for refusing to toe the government line.
The immediate reason for Eissa’s firing appears to be his plan to publish
an article written by opposition leader and would-be presidential candidate
Mohamed ElBaradei commemorating Egypt’s 1973 war with Israel. But
in an exclusive interview with Foreign Policy, Eissa said that his dismissal
had been planned since the paper was purchased by Sayyid Badawi, a businessman
and head of Egypt’s Wafd Party, a liberal party that has nonetheless
been co-opted by the regime. Eissa referred to Badawi as a member of
Egypt’s “soft opposition”—someone publicly pushing for reforms, but who
isn’t willing to challenge the regime in any serious way.
“They bought the newspaper for $4 million, just to stop me from writing,”
Eissa said. “They had begun interfering within one week of taking over
the paper, and the sale was only finalized 24 hours before I was fired.”
Eissa said that the controversy over the ElBaradei article was simply the
latest attempt by al-Dostour’s board of directors, chaired by Badawi, to censor
controversial and anti-government content from the newspaper. El-
Baradei, in his article (since published on al-Dostour’s website by its staff),
argues that the spirit of self-criticism and rational planning, which allowed
Egypt to come back from its defeat in the 1967 war with its victory in 1973,
is absent from President Hosni Mubarak’s regime. The board, Eissa said,
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