It took Egypt’s new president Mohamed Mursi some four weeks into his presidency to name a prime minister, Hisham Qandil, and assign him with the task of forming a new cabinet. On Thursday 2 August, the newly-appointed ministers were sworn in amid a general climate more of dismay than hope.
Despite the grinding everyday problems which today govern the lives of Egyptians and which have given rise to high expectations from the new cabinet, Egyptians were dismayed to find that a majority of the ministers possessed insufficient experience for them to get the country up and running again. The general view is that the new cabinet is formed of ministers who are in the first place of Islamic leanings, if not outright Islamist, and who are not among the top ranking in their fields of experience.
Failed to impress
The new cabinet includes 35 ministries. Four of them are new; among them the State Ministry of Sports and the Investment Ministry.
Seven ministers of the outgoing cabinet of former Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri, including Defence Minister Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi who is also the Chairman of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces; and Foreign Minister Mohamed Amr; have retained their posts in the new cabinet.
Also among the ministers who were on the Ganzouri cabinet but who stayed on is Nadia Zakhary, a Coptic woman and the Minister of Scientific Research. There were rumours that the Coptic Church had pressured Dr Zakhary to decline accepting the ministry but, in a declaration to Watani, she categorically denied that.
According to the official news agency MENA, the Minister of Manpower and Immigration Khaled al-Azhari kicked off his job by holding a meeting with the ministry’s undersecretaries on the working conditions of factory workers. The Water Resources and Irrigation Minister Mohamed Bahaeddin said the increasing demand on water for agriculture, industry, river transport and drinking is threatened due to the constant abuse of waterways and the increasing local consumption, and asserted that negotiations on water cooperation with the Nile Basin States will be maintained. For his part, State Minister for Local development Ahmed Zaki asserted that his priorities are to strengthen coordination among governorates to implement the 100-day plan initiated by President Mursi and the “Clean Country” campaign.
Overall, however, the composition of the new government, beginning with President Mursi’s choice of Hisham Qandil as prime minister, has failed to impress.
Give them a chance
Saïd Lawandi of the Al-Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies told Watani that it was too early to judge whether or not the ministers of the new cabinet are qualified to effectively run the country. “We rather ought to wait and see for no less than two months,” Lawandi said, “before passing judgment. It is not right to jump to the conclusion that Hisham Qandil’s limited achievements in irrigation, his field of specialty, indicates that his performance as Egypt’s Prime Minister will be lacklustre.”
Emad Gad, also an expert at Al-Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies, says the new cabinet deserves to be given a chance before we pass judgement. “True,” he told Watani, “the cabinet is mainly composed of second-tier staff, and the Muslim Brotherhood dominates the ministries of media and youth. Even though these are causes for concern, we wish the cabinet success in solving the problems of Egyptians.”
“Qandil had promised a cabinet of technocrats,” Nabil Zaki, the spokesman for the leftist Tagammu party, said, “meaning it should have been of the highest level of competence,” he said. “But we are saddled with ministers of mediocre experience. I expect they will stand helpless before the gridlock of problems in Egypt: unemployment, poverty, inadequate health care, sub-standard education, and much more.”
WATANI International
12 August 2012