Egyptians torn over culture minister's unsuccessful UNESCO bid

By Elijah Zarwan and Nehal el-Sherif Sep 23, 2009, 14:24 GMT

Cairo - Egyptians on Wednesday seemed unsure whether to celebrate or lament controversial Culture Minister Farouk Hosni's failure to land the top job at the United Nations cultural agency.

Bulgarian diplomat Irina Bokova was elected head of UNESCO on Tuesday afternoon, after a tight contest marked by accusations that Hosni was an anti-Semite and a censor.

Abroad, it was Hosni's remarks, later retracted in a letter to the French daily Le Monde, that he would burn Israeli books in Egyptian libraries that made him a controversial figure.

But at home, Hosni's comments and record have drawn criticism from rather another direction. Islamists have criticised him for his secularism. Many artists and writers have blamed him for presiding over censorship and what they describe as Egypt's cultural decline.

'I am sad Farouk Hosni was not elected as UNESCO chief,' Egyptian novelist Ezzat al-Qamhawi told the German Press Agency dpa. 'I was hoping he would win and leave the Ministry of Culture.'

'I thought his victory would be a chance to get rid of him, but apparently he will be back to the ministry,' he said.

Such criticism is widespread among Egyptian and Arab intellectuals. Sudanese intellectual Abdel-Wahab al-Effendi summed up the sentiment in the regional daily al-Quds al-Arabi shortly before Tuesday's vote.

'In a dictatorship,' he wrote, 'the role of the minister of culture isn't to protect culture, but to stifle culture and to protect the regime.'

Domestic dissatisfaction with Hosni came to a head in 2005, when a fire and stampede at a government-run theatre in the central Egyptian town of Beni Suef killed almost 50 people. Artists and writers, blaming the minister for his 'negligence' and for not sufficiently funding theatres, called for his resignation.

In November 2006, Hosni drew opprobrium after the independent daily al-Masry al-Youm published an interview with him in which he lamented Egypt's increasing religious conservatism and the increasing preponderance of the veil.

A coalition of 130 lawmakers from the ruling National Democratic Party and the opposition Muslim Brotherhood called for his resignation. Parliamentary Speaker Fathi Sorour and Presidential Chief of Staff Zakaria Azmi excoriated him. Two parliamentarians called him a homosexual.

Yet the campaign against his candidacy for the UNESCO post galvanized some Egyptian intellectuals in their support for him.

'Clash of civilisations decides UNESCO battle,' al-Masry al-Youm headlined on Wednesday.

'The battle seemed as if it was a clash of civilizations between the Arab culture and some Jews, not because the candidate is Farouk Hosni, but because he is an Arab,' Abdel-Moati Bayumi wrote in his column for al-Masry al-Youm Wednesday.

'Yet (Arab) intellectuals blamed Hosni for many of his recent actions, such as apologising in Le Monde and restoring the synagogue in Cairo,' Bayumi wrote.

'The Jewish lobby succeeded in turning the battle into a political one,' Mohammed Salmawi, head of the Egyptian Writers Union and the Arab Writers Union, echoed in an interview with the daily.

'It is UNESCO's loss,' he shrugged in the end. 'Egypt won its minister of culture.'

Even some opposition activists had rallied around the minister in response to the campaign against him.

'(I am) not happy about Hosni's UNESCO loss,' one blogger and rights activist wrote on her private page on the social networking site Facebook.

'He lost to the Zionist lobby, not to Bulgaria. All who voted against were not voting against (Egyptian President Hosny) Mubarak's regime,' she wrote.

Award-winning blogger and rights activist Wael Abbas disagreed. On Tuesday, he called on Egyptians of all faiths to pray that Bokova would beat Hosni for the job.

'(Hosni's) winning would be a rejection of our freedom as Egyptians,' he wrote.

Others seemed of two minds. Blogger Nawara Negm, daughter of Egyptian poet and singer Ahmed Fouad Negm, supported Egypt's candidate on patriotic grounds.

'He's Egypt's candidate, full-stop. I can no more oppose him than I can oppose the national football team,' she wrote.

And if he were to win, she added, 'At least this way we'd be rid of him.'