For the First Time, Egypt Is Choosing its President, So Why Is Egypt Laughing?

• The Supreme Commission for Presidential Elections in Egypt issues application forms to Egyptians desiring to run for the highest office of President.  It has been swamped by applicants.  Its Chairman, Counselor Farouk Sultan, said that they had expected 150 such applicants.  Instead, by March 20, the number of applicants had reached 900 and counting.

• Looking at the identities of some of the would-be Presidents of the nearly 90 million Egyptians is a Nubian who came from Aswan seeking that high honor.  When newsmen asked him what his program for post-Mubarak Egypt might be, his answer was: "to fight poverty; to ban the national food of Falafel and Foul (beans) and replace it by meat."

• Any Egyptian may ask for a form stipulating the provisions authorizing the entry into the race for the Presidential office. A candidate for that Office, if not sponsored by one of the political parties represented in the new Parliament, must have a certain number of authorized signatures of citizens (30,000 such signatures) from 15 out of the 27 Provinces (Governorates) throughout Egypt.  These procedures have created a stampede to collect signatures if party backing is lacking.  The form is called "a deputizing form," on which the signer names his or her candidate for President.  The stampede, in turn, has led to new forms of corruption.  An illiterate woman, while asking for the form at an authorized office, threw it away when told about possible violations leading to a jail term.  "What?" she screamed.  Then went on to say tearfully: "This was not what we agreed upon with that candidate.  I do not need his bags of rice and sugar if my support leads me to prison!!!"

• In the meantime, another citizen, a male from the Governorate of Giza, South of Cairo, where the Pyramids stand to attest to Egypt's durability, was on his way to jail.  That individual entered the offices of the Supreme Commission for Presidential Elections to get the necessary documentation for entering the presidential electoral races.  The police immediately placed him under arrest.  For in his possession, there was a large amount of drugs, a hashish-derivative called Bango.

• Truth be told, not all Egyptians were laughing at this avalanche of high office seekers or publicity seekers.  At the entrance of one of the many "forms distribution centers," a taxi driver left his cab running at the curb to voice his indignation at the media.  Looking straight at TV cameras which were focusing on the out of ordinary office seekers, he shouted: "Shame on the Media.  You are giving our beloved Egypt a terrible name.  You are making of all of us a laughing stock.  How can the world believe that great Egypt allows a coffee vendor or a simple laborer to run for President?  In America, the limit is only two." Hey!! Welcome to popular democracy.  Love it or leave it!!

• So what is behind the nearly one thousand aspirants to the Egyptian Presidency?  Oh, yes: there goes the conspiracy theory again.  But this time, it is not in Mubarak's bed, as one of our previous blogs had indicated.  It is in the now dissolved National Party -the party through which Mubarak had governed Egypt as a security State for 32 years.  How does the National Party (Al-Foloul: in Arabic, the Remnants) get involved in this unwieldy Egyptian presidential race?  Aha!!  The presumed answer was said to have been discovered by Dr. Medhat Khafagi, a candidate for that office.  He claims that, "The Dissolved (in Arabic: "Al-Monhal") -the National Party- is trying to give the glorious January 25 Revolution a bad name!!  Therefore the Dissolved pushed the rank and file from the endless corners of Egyptian poverty to run for President including a baker, a hair dresser, and a doorman.!! Even if such unqualified individuals have no chance to be President, the fact of their applying for the job would accomplish the goal of showing the Revolution as mob-oriented!!"