Hisham El Bastawisi

Reformist judge Hisham El Bastawisi is one presidential candidate who has plenty to offer post-revolution Egypt, yet his popular support is somewhat limited. Born in 1951 in Cairo, El Bastawisi graduated from Cairo University with a degree in law in 1976. From 1980 to 1988, he worked as a deputy prosecutor at the Alexandria Customs Authority as well as the Department for Juvenile Justice. El Bastawisi and his family then moved back to Cairo, where he worked for 10 years with the cassation prosecution before being appointed judge at the Court of Cassation in 1998 and later vice president of the court in 2000. In 1992, El Bastawisi went on a four-year secondment to the United Arab Emirates, and from there he led the first Egyptian judges’ strike in response to the suspension of two of his colleagues. The strike lasted for 25 days and included prominent names like judges Mahmoud Mekki and Nagy Derballah. During the last decade of Mubarak’s rule, El Bastawisi had gained a reputation of standing up to the regime’s corruption, with particular emphasis on its infringement on judicial independence. During the 2005 parliamentary elections, he played a central role with other judges against the regime, refusing to monitor the elections and citing gross violations by the security apparatus. El Bastawisi is also a key figure in the Independence of the Judiciary movement; a reformist campaign calling for judicial independence from the regime’s executive authority. After initially refusing to monitor the 2005 elections, the general assembly of the Judges Club decided to go through with the monitoring; however, they documented all the illicit practices such as vote rigging, thuggery and fraud. In response, the regime — under the guise of the Ministry of Justice — turned up the heat against the confrontational judges and referred El Bastawisi, along with Mekki, to a disciplinary tribunal. The decision, which El Bastawisi at the time described as “unconstitutional,” came as such a shock that the judge suffered a heart attack. Dozens of judges threatened to go on strike if their colleagues were disbarred, while hundreds of supporters visited El Bastawisi in hospital. Political activists and judges from the Judges Association organized a protest and took to the streets to demonstrate against the government’s crackdown on the reformist judges. The protestors were greeted with steel batons and beaten by the security forces. El Bastawisi and Mekki jointly penned an article called “When Judges are Beaten” in the British daily The Guardian to show the world what was happening in Mubarak’s Egypt. “The political and economic reforms needed to achieve democracy and to restore public faith in government can be achieved only under an independent judiciary. […] One of the aims of the revolution of 23 July 1952 was to bring about democracy, but a dictatorship was set up. The mechanism for political reform will be the ballot box, but without independent judges there will be no fair elections,” the judges wrote. El Bastawisi’s outcry in the international media,  coupled with mounting public pressure, forced the disciplinary tribunal to issue only a mild reprimand. But from 2006 onward, El Bastawisi and his family were continuously harassed by the authorities, it is alleged. The regime made sure his career remained stagnant, his phone and that of his wife were tapped and the intimidation and threats were relentless. By 2008, claims the judge, the harassment had reached unbearable levels, prompting El Bastawisi to move to Kuwait and seek employment there. He returned to Egypt in January 2011 during the initial 18 days of the revolution. After his return to Egypt and public endorsement of the revolution, a Facebook page was set up by his supporters nominating El Bastawisi for president. However, in an interview with the daily Al Masry Al Youm on March 1, 2011 the judge had not yet made this decision. Asked whether he planned to run for president, El Bastawisi at the time answered, “First of all, nobody should be thinking of themselves or contemplating their own projects at this moment. We should all be thinking about the best ways to pass this phase. “Secondly, nobody should say he will run for president unless there is a public demand for him to run. Otherwise, he would be guilty of self-promotion. Third, since I am still a judge, I cannot run for president, engage in any political activity or hold any political post. I would have to resign first.” In the period between March 2011 and March 2012, the reformist judge had taken part in several demonstrations against the Supreme Council of Armed Forces’ handling of the transitional period. He also returned to Kuwait for a few months for financial reasons and was absent from the political arena during the fall of 2011. El Bastawisi’s official nomination for the president came in March 2012 when he was endorsed by the leftist El-Tagammua Party, sparing him the endeavor of collecting 30,000 signatures from citizens. “Change, Freedom and Social Justice” is the presidential hopeful’s campaign slogan, goals El Bastawisi aims to achieve by working on four key pillars: security, law enforcement, citizenship rights and economic stability. He also stated that he will not accept normalization with Israel and identified the issue as a red line that will not be crossed. His economic views are inclined toward supporting a cooperative private sector which some may find at odds with the support he receives from a leftist party. El Bastawisi’s main advantage, however, remains his reputation for staunch opposition against the fallen regime at a time when their grip was choking the country. Though praised by Egypt’s intelligentsia, El Bastawisi’s limited financial resources and lack of a strong political backing are proving to be the main obstacles standing between him and the country’s top job.