One beneficial spin-off of serving in the diplomatic service is building long-lasting personal friendships across geographic boundaries in capitals where one is posted.
Last week I had a call from an Egyptian friend I met in London around the turn of the century, telling me he would be in Barbados for a day during a winter cruise. Telling him, God willing, I would be here to welcome him, I took the opportunity to get an eyewitness report on recent events in his home country.
No longer a diplomat, he teaches at a university. Knowing his political orientation and what he always told me about the way dark-skinned Egyptians like himself were treated by the majority population, I was eager to hear of events leading up to the revolution and changes after President Hosni Mubarak’s removal.
The pro-Western recipient of massive American aid, Egypt is in a pivotal position regionally and its influence is transnational in the Arab world and Africa north of the Sahara.
With roots originally in Sudan, he condemned the former regime for treating sub-Saharan states as backward non-entities while thousands of African women working as domestics in Egyptian homes live in oppressive conditions and are considered lacking in cultural refinements.
The country’s political, economic and social elite continued to be of a lighter skin colour than the proletarian base and darker-skinned Egyptians are at society’s bottom stratum. With the pro-Western alignment of the political leadership, the militant Islamist backlash was inevitable.
With Islam resurgent, the cry for economic emancipation and social justice gained relentless momentum. With unrest across the region and high unemployment, rampant poverty, poor education and health care, the movement for change led by frustrated youth became unstoppable, leading to Mubarak’s downfall.
Young people are in the vanguard of the call for a democratic society based on respect for basic human rights across entrenched boundaries of race, religion and culture.
The revolution’s leaders are anxious to ensure that the new leadership will avoid the temptation to use religion for political ends. There is also great concern that the military does not attempt to supplant the political achievements gained by the people in the revolution.
His happiness at Mubarak’s removal was enhanced by the fact that whereas under President Nasser, Egypt had an active policy of befriending sub-Saharan states, establishing economic and political ties and attending African Union summits, Mubarak studiously ignored Africa and its affairs.
Time and again I have said how much I welcome feedback on what I write in this column. What I abhor is people misrepresenting what I write or making patently false accusations against me based on a less than perfect or politically mischievous interpretation.
I wrote last week’s column to draw attention to two examples of horribly poor journalism when two media houses, The Advocate newspaper and the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) radio and TV, did not see it fit to carry an eminently newsworthy court story which led in THE NATION and on Voice Of Barbados.
The host (it would be a misnomer to call someone so politically partisan a moderator) on CBC’s call-in programme, in a tirade lambasting the latest CADRES poll, described my column as “disingenuous” and “spitting in the air”.
I found both characterizations untrue in the extreme and offensive. To quote former Speaker of the House Sir Theodore Brancker, she was “using words as words”.
Far from being “disingenuous”, the column was frank, sincere and straightforward, as is my style. I found it inconceivable that two media houses could suppress a story where a High Court judge ruled against Government’s action, describing it as “reprehensible in the extreme” and making a near million-dollar award.
The court’s landmark decision must have been a major embarrassment. But one would have to be the prototypical journalistic rookie not to understand that whether it was incompetence or party protection that led to its suppression, it was an example of the totalitarian tactics which have overtaken The Advocate and CBC as the election approaches.
The host had a bad morning, understandable in the wake of the latest SUNDAY SUN poll. Lest you forget, the poll was done by Peter Wickham, who was fired as CBC’s political analyst, and she parachuted into the opening. Listening to her comments on the poll, there is obviously no love lost.
But the pollster is a professional and the poll conducted in a professional manner. Why should anyone, whatever their political stripes, consider it “self-serving”? And criticize the size of the sample –?which is normal? And fail to understand that the primary purpose of a poll immediately before an election is to determine how the electorate is likely to vote?
Anyone airing their views publicly should stick closely to the facts, no matter how painful they may be. Being disingenuous for partisan political purposes has no place in civilized discourse.
• Peter Simmons, a social scientist, is a former diplomat.
