Luxurious carpets and a dilapidated bridge ... The "slaughter of dissidents" minister provokes the Egyptian resentment again

Abdel Rahman Ahmed - Cairo

A dilapidated wooden bridge crossing over a polluted water drain in a poor village ... a frequent sight in many Egyptian villages. However, the situation was different in the village of Al-Farstaq, which is known for making pottery, in the Basioun Center in Gharbia Governorate, where the residents found the luxurious carpets furnished on the “Al-Maadiya” (bridge).

The paradoxical scene seemed strange, but the wonder disappeared when it became clear that the Minister of State for Immigration and Egyptians Affairs abroad, Nabila Makram, would visit the village, and how would she cross the dilapidated bridge and the polluted water bank like the rest of the people, and expose her precious shoe to the dust of the village? As the pioneers of networking sites said.

A state of anger and resentment mixed with irony dominated the communication sites after the spread of pictures of the minister’s visit yesterday, which some considered a provocation to the poor people, while some saw it as a natural extension of what the head of the regime, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, had previously done in his motorcade over a long distance carpet. During the opening of some projects in February 2016, despite his repeated talk about the necessity of austerity.

And on the way to build the largest mosque and church and build presidential palaces and projects that some see useless, while official data indicate that a third of Egyptians are poor who cannot provide their basic needs such as food, drink and medicines, the "ferryboat" has furnished a luxurious carpet for the minister instead of building a safe bridge for the villagers.

According to statements by some of the villagers to local newspapers on Monday, this water drain is adjacent to a primary school, and they have repeatedly called on the officials of the Ministry of Irrigation to establish a covered bridge or drainage in this area, but officials ignored their demands.

Adel Farhat, a resident of the village, said that the people and factory owners intentionally passed over the minister from this area and published her pictures during the crossing, so it might be an incentive for the officials to meet their demand.

Some of the pioneers of the communication sites asked about the relationship between the Minister of Immigration and the local villages, so that some would reply that the goal of visiting these villages in the Basyoun Center is to determine their needs to work to transform them into model villages, and to reduce the migration of their children illegally within the framework of what is known as the "lifeboats" initiative. Launched by Sisi.

But tweeters saw that the minister's pictures showing the contradiction between the extravagance of the ministers and the regime and the poverty of the villages that appear in simple houses, the dilapidated wooden bridge and the polluted bank, are motives for migration, not for survival.

Some considered that the price of the luxurious carpets that had been furnished was sufficient to build a concrete bridge for the villagers instead of the dilapidated bridge.

The singers linked between the minister's visit to factories already operating in these villages for decades and an attempt to present them as a presidential project, and what happened previously in other projects such as the "million and a half acres" project in which land was seized and reclaimed by their owners for many years, and presented as a project Presidential.

Justification of the Minister
Instead of the minister apologizing for the scene of the footsteps of luxury carpets in the poor village, she defended herself and said that the people put the carpets as an expression of their joy in them.

But the parliamentarian for the Basioun and Qutour constituency in Gharbia Governorate, Sameh Fathi Habib, admitted in statements to local newspapers that he was the one who placed the carpets on the wooden bridge in order to increase its insurance for fear the minister would stumble, he said.

On the criticisms leveled against her on the communication sites, the minister said, "We are at war, and we are ready for this war ... the world has turned against the carpet laid on the ferryboat."

Slaughter the opponents
The minister herself had previously aroused international outrage after threatening, in a video clip that circulated on the media last July, to slaughter and boycott opponents of the Egyptian regime abroad.

"Whoever says a word on Egypt, what will happen to him? ... he will be interrupted," the minister told a gathering of the Egyptian community in Canada to celebrate the raising of the Egyptian flag in the Ontario Parliament.

The minister's threats then sparked a storm of anger locally and abroad, and the United Nations criticized it by Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for its Secretary-General. He said, "We stand against talk of incitement or those that incite violence, and the Secretary-General wants to ensure that all officials commit to not inciting or inciting the use of violence." ".

The pioneers of social media platforms at the time demanded Egyptians residing in Canada to file a lawsuit against the minister, while others expressed concern that the statements would usher in a new phase of targeting dissidents abroad. At the time, the minister tried to defend herself, claiming that her statements had been corrupted.