| The political veteran talks about the importance of the little man |
| By Hania Moheeb |
| Over the course of his career Abul Ezz El Hariri, 44, has been hailed as a dedicated defender of workers and impoverished people’s rights. A devout socialist, El Hariri was born into the working class and struggled to educate himself until he obtained two degrees; one in literature and another in law. He believes that education is the basis of any reform. His wife Zeinab is a fellow activist and they have three children.A prominent leftist opposition leader, El Hariri first won a seat in the People’s Assembly in 1976 after a fierce battle with Minister of Interior and then-Prime Minister Mamdouh Salem, who was allegedly planning to rig the elections in favor of the National Democratic Party (NDP) candidate. Despite attempts to sideline El Hariri (Salem even had him transferred from his hometown of Alexandria), El Hariri’s popularity among workers in his constituency of Karmuz got him into parliament. At that time he was only 30 years old. In Parliament El Hariri, along with other members staunchly opposing the Camp David treaty with Israel, called for late President Anwar El Sadat to dissolve the People’s Assembly. The conflict with Sadat came to a head with the notorious September 5 arrests of El Hariri and 1,531 other politicians and public figures in 1981, just a few weeks before Sadat’s assassination. In 2000, when parliamentary elections were brought under the supervision of the judiciary, El Hariri once again successfully ran for Parliament and promptly began criticizing the executive authority in an attempt to expose the corruption of Mubarak’s regime and the NDP. El Hariri spoke vociferously against what he termed the ‘marriage between politics and capital.’ When steel tycoon Ahmed Ezz appeared on the political and economic scene in Egypt in 2003, El Hariri declared war on him in Parliament, despite Ezz’s close friendship with Gamal Mubarak. El Hariri launched interrogations and publicly exposed details of the deal by which Ezz, in complicity with the government, allegedly acquired Ezz El-Dekheila to monopolize the steel industry. Though he didn’t make it to Parliament in 2005, El Hariri remained a prominent figure on the political scene and a catalyst of the social and political mobility that started in 2004. El Hariri’s name has always been linked to El-Tagammua Socialist Party, and he ran unsuccessfully for the party presidency several times. El Hariri claims that his frank and straightforward attitude widened the gap between him and El-Tagammua leadership after Rifaat El-Saiid became president of the leftist party. El Hariri later told the media that a change in the political discourse of the party had taken place and that he saw it becoming more similar to that of the ruling regime. On October 25, 2009, conflict within El-Tagammua’s ranks reached a climax, and El-Saiid announced a General Secretariat decision to fire El Hariri for having harshly criticized the party. (El Hariri had accused El-Tagammua of striking a deal with the government to turn a blind eye to election fraud and corruption in return for a number of seats in Parliament.) El Hariri promptly filed a complaint to annul the decision, claiming that the General Secretary did not have the authority of to make this decision. Shortly after the January 25 Revolution — along with other prominent former El-Tagammua members like Abdel-Ghaffar Shokr, Ibrahim El-Essawy and political science professor Mostafa Kamel El-Sayed — El Hariri established the Socialist Popular Alliance Party in October 2011. The party teamed up with other young parties and groups to form El-Thawra Mostamera coalition (The Revolution Continues), through which El Hariri won a seat during last year’s parliamentary elections. Today El Hariri is as vocal as ever, openly accusing Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) of running a counter revolution and calling for its members to join Mubarak behind bars. And like many leftists, El Hariri is a harsh critic of political Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular. He even refuses to call them Muslim Brothers or to refer to Salafis as Islamists, emphasizing that most Egyptians are Muslims. According to El Hariri, advocates of political Islam, on the other hand, use religion to achieve political gains. Despite his criticism of Islamic groups, El Hariri felt compelled in 2007 to sign a petition along with numerous journalists, writers, politicians and activists condemning the military trials of Muslim Brotherhood members. Late veteran writer Mustafa Amin once said that El Hariri carries on the work of a whole battalion of Parliament members in monitoring, legislating and defending the basic rights of the people. Late journalist Mahmoud Awad attested that he was an exceptional parliamentarian: “People will never forget the golden age of El-Tagammua party because there was a Parliament member called Abul Ezz El Hariri.” El Hariri announced his presidential candidacy in mid-March, endorsed by the Socialist Popular Alliance Party, after an unsuccessful attempt to rally revolutionary and progressive powers into reaching a consensus on a single candidate. His decision to run for president was to save the revolution from being “stolen by SCAF and remnants of the former regime.” El Hariri has said that if he wins the elections, he will work on three levels: preserving the former era’s positive accomplishments, empowering citizens and planning for the future. He believes that the president should not be an individual with unlimited authority as before, but an institution that employs experts in all fields, who can study and plan to put the country back on track. If elected, the presidential hopeful plans to establish new commercial and transportation hubs, with a navigable canal between Taba and El-Arish extending over 231 kilometers, 250 feet deep and from 500-1,000 meters wide, with two huge ports at either ends of the canal. Each port would include a station for container exchange in addition to storage facilities for transit goods and a set of deep basins for repair and maintenance of large ships. The mega development project also includes the creation of a number of cities and facilities for water desalination for human and agricultural consumption. |
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