Thousands of Beheiri people attend National Dialogue meeting, submit demands

CAIRO - 12 October 2022: Thousands of locals in Beheira governorate, the Delta, attended a public meeting on Wednesday as part of the National Dialogue.

The mechanism of the National Dialogue includes that such meetings are held in governorates to add their output to the decision making process in the initiative.

Such Public meetings were previously held in Cairo and Luxor, Upper Egypt, but the meeting in Beheira is the largest thus far.

Beheiri people voiced their grievances at the social, economic, and political levels, raising their demands to representatives of the National Dialogue.

The Board of Trustees of the National Dialogue welcomed Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli’s call for holding the Egyptian Economic Conference that is due to convene from October 23 to 25.

Egypt’s preparation for the national dialogue is progressing at a very good pace and it is expected to kick off in few weeks, said General Coordinator of the National Dialogue Diaa Rashwan on September 30.

The objective of holding the national dialogue is not a declaration of intention but, instead, finding solutions to the issues, he added in media comments to “Masr Gedida.”

He noted that there are voices outsides the country trying to criticize it and turning blind eyes to other positives in society.

Participation in the national political dialogue is not limited to the invitees only, but Egyptians from different sectors can send their ideas and suggestions via e-mails, said Rashwan previously.

“All Egyptians are invited to participate in the national dialogue even if they did not receive a special invitation. The dialogue is open through the website of the National Training Academy. Send us via e-mail, we are waiting for all your contributions,” he said in media comments to “Masr Al Jadida” talk show on the ETC channel.

Rashwan added that the dialogue aims to present ideas for discussion and to get out of it with the best ones for reform.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said that the objective of the national dialogue, which has been announced recently by him last month, aims at listening to people’s opinions for “the sake of the nation.”

President Sisi’s comments were stated during his meeting with a number of editors and media professionals from Egyptian newspapers, on the sidelines of his tour of Egypt's Future Project for Agricultural Production, which he inaugurated on May 21, 2022.

The national dialogue comes as part of Sisi's national human rights strategy, launched in September with vows to open the public space to be more and more inclusive. As such, hundreds of inmates, including dozens of human rights activists, have recently been released by the Presidential Pardon Committee.