Experienced journalist Osama Heikal leads reinstated information ministry

CAIRO - 22 December 2019: The parliament on Sunday approved a long-awaited Cabinet reshuffle, including reinstating the Ministry of Information, and tasking parliamentarian Osama Heikal to be in charge.

Heikal was the head of the Parliament's culture, media and antiquities committee before he assumed his new post, and served as vice president of the House's majority bloc Egypt Support. Sources revealed that he resigned on Sunday as an MP.

He was chosen as the first Minister of Information in Egypt after the January 25 Revolution, between July 2011 and December 2011.

During his tenure as Minister of Information in 2011, he contributed to calming the situation inside the Radio and Television Union building through a set of measures, including setting a wage ceiling.

He started his career as an editor in the features section of Al-Wafd newspaper in 1987, then as a military affairs editor for the same partisan newspaper in 1991, and as an editor for presidential affairs in 1997.

From 1995 to 1997, Heikal worked as head of the news section of the newspaper, and then headed the politics section from 1997 to 1999, and a managing editor in 2000.

He had served as deputy editor in chief for the newspaper since March 2005. In 2011, he took over the editorial office of Al-Wafd newspaper through election.

Heikal has received a number of press awards for his contributions in news coverage and articles.

The experienced journalist participated in covering many important events in various countries of the world, including covering the Egyptian participation among the peace-keeping forces in Somalia, the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1994,
and the American invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Heikal obtained a fellowship in strategy and national security in 1997, and participated in the discussion of 50 scientific papers and fellowship degrees in media for researchers from Egypt and Arab countries.

He also participated in the Mediterranean Dialogue led by NATO in Brussels in 2003.

The Information Ministry, had been viewed as a symbol, and was abolished in 2014 under former Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab, shortly after President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi took post as president in June the same year.