EGYPT: Minister reinstated amid winds of change

Six years after he was inexplicably sacked from his post as Egypt's education minister, law professor Ahmed Gamal Moussa was sworn in last week as the new minister of both education and higher education.

As part of a major cabinet reshuffle days after unprecedented protests swept aside long-serving President Hosni Mubarak, the ministries of education and higher education were merged.

Given the portfolio of higher education, Moussa, 60, replaces Hani Helal, who was kept in the last cabinet shake-up conducted by Mubarak the week before the president's resignation.

"I have no political ambitions. I just want to serve my country at this crucial time," Moussa told the press after being sworn in.

He said that top of his list of priorities as minister of higher education was to enforce a court ruling issued last October ordering police guards out of public universities, where they had controversially been since the 1980s. "I will soon discuss ways of implementing the ruling with the presidents of universities," he promised.

Developing university education and academic life was another priority. A graduate of Cairo University's school law in 1972, Moussa served as president of the governmental University of Mansoura in the Nile Delta from 2003 to 2004.

Higher education was suspended in Egypt following the eruption of anti-Mubarak protests on 25 January.

On Wednesday, Moussa announced that the current mid-year vacation at public universities would be delayed further by a week, and that studies would resume on 4 March. However, private universities were allowed to set dates for the resumption of studies according to their circumstances.

Serving as Minister of Education for only one year, Moussa was fired from the post in December 2005 without a reason given.

Unconfirmed media reports at the time said he was sacked because he had a relative who was a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group that was officially banned for more than five decades. The ban was dropped after Mubarak stood down.

Moussa's declared agenda will soon be put to the test.

"When I go to university on 4 March, I expect to see a new university without false student unions and police guards," said Mamdouh Sharaf, a student in Cairo University's faculty of arts. He claimed that student union elections at public universities have long been orchestrated and influenced by security agencies "to ensure that the winners would be loyal to the government".

"The latest delay in re-opening universities reflects the new government's fears of potential student protests against the regulations left behind by the Mubarak regime," said Sharaf. The mid-year vacation for university students was originally scheduled to end on 19 February. "Most demonstrators in the revolt against Mubarak were students," he pointed out.

Suzanne Fadl, an engineering student at Ain Shams University, another public university in Cairo, said she hoped the authorities would make use of the delay in re-opening universities to introduce substantial changes.

"I hope that by the time we are back, university administrators will have declared the disbanding of student unions, because they are the outcome of forged elections," she said. "Doing this would help avoid massive student protests and assert university independence."

Another pressing demand, according to Fadl, is to remove curbs on political activities on campuses. "Students should be allowed to be freely engaged in politics at the university without being threatened with penalties, which include dismissal," she argued.

"Removing these restrictions will convince the student community that Egypt has really entered a new era of liberty."