visitors to Tahrir Square in May and early June could not have missed the giant three-meter-tall cutouts of President Hosni Mubarak strategically positioned throughout the area. The signs, clearly displaying the name of their sponsor, Shura Council Member Nabil Louca Bebawey, showed the president waving with one hand high in the air and featured built-in colored light bulbs around his head.

Like countless others, the displays included a slogan proclaiming that the nation supports the president for a sixth five-year term in office.

Bebawey says he personally funded the signs and is justified in doing so by Article 47 of the Constitution. That article, he says, states it’s the citizen’s right to express his opinion using all instruments of expression, verbal, written and otherwise.

“These signs are an expression of love for and loyalty to all that Mubarak has done. This happens all over the world. In the United States, they wave signs for Democrats and Republicans. In Britain, Labor Party supporters wave signs for Blair. Why must we question the same process here? Why must we ruin it and accuse people of hypocrisy and such? We are simply doing what is being done all over the world, nothing more,” the parliamentarian says.

Joining Bebawey’s sign were others that declared “Yes to Mubarak” (probably the most commonly deployed slogan) and countless others that ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. Notably absent were the nation’s opposition parties, from aging titan Al-Wafd to the upstart Al-Ghad, although the new ‘opposition groups’ such as Kifaya made the odd appearance.

So with the presidential election looming in September and a parliamentary election set to follow, it must be a great time to a maker of signs as political candidates and opposition figures alike invade the public space to make their points, right? Not necessarily. Although conspiracy theories roared through the capital city after Bebawey’s signs joined thousands of others that were unceremoniously torn down — “Censorship!” cried many —new campaign regulations and simple economics guarantee that while sign makers might be about to have a good year, they shouldn’t make a down payment on anything terribly expensive just yet.

Ahmed Nimr Ashraf Al-Kabbany mixes his colors to paint a banner in front of his workshop.

“That’s just how people choose to express themselves,” Bebawey says. “People come from different backgrounds and like to show their love and support for President Mubarak in different ways.”

Bebawey’s Tahrir signs, like most others in Cairo, were removed early last month after they were found to be in conflict with the new presidential election law.

“It was the governorate’s decision, and they were right,” says Bebawey. “The new election law says you can’t start campaigning until 21 days before the election, so they had every right to take the signs down. But I, on the other hand, have the constitutional right to voice my opinion in every way. The law does not say you can only express yourself on Saturdays and Sundays, or at certain times in the year. You are always entitled to that right.”

Kamal Khalil, a veteran activist and member of the Egyptian Movement for Change, popularly known as Kifaya, complains that opposition groups are not allowed the same right to free speech as members of the ruling party. The lack of opposition signs in the streets is evidence of this, he says.

Ahmed Nimr Years of work have made this activity come naturally to El-Kabbany. It is evident in his spontaneous approach to Arabic calligraphy.

“They [the NDP] won’t leave a sign that says, ‘No to Mubarak,’ or ‘Yes to change and reform,’” Khalil argues. “If we put up signs, we know they’re going to be taken down overnight.”

An independent Cairo sign maker, speaking on condition of anonymity, says he would not agree to make a sign for an opposition party, even if the money was tempting. It’s just not worth the risk to his business, he says.

Bebawey, like other senior NDP members, counters that allegations his party tears down signs and limits expression are untrue. He says opposition complaints arise from frustrations caused by not being able to compete with the NDP in terms of public support.

“The opposition parties have been limited in their activities,” Bebawey explains. “How many of them have gone down and mixed with the people, joined them in their joys and grievances? Most have been parties on paper only, and now they complain they’re not getting any support. The NDP has more than 3 million registered members. No other party comes close to having this kind of support and that’s because we’re involved in people’s lives.”

Egyptian political activists, whether from the NDP or opposition parties, pay to have signs made and displayed for exactly the same reasons as their peers in the west: To declare their own candidacy, to declare that they’re seeking their party’s nomination to run in elections, or simply to show support for a candidate. And while suburbanites in America might choose to put a George Bush or John Kerry sign on their lawns to show their support, communities in Cairo are simply restricted by urban aspects, which confine them to balconies, public squares and paid outdoor advertising billboards.

“Politics hasn’t changed much since the revolution,” suggests the independent sign maker. “When a candidate says, ‘Yes to Mubarak,’ he’s hitting two birds with one stone. He’s getting the support of NDP leadership, and he gets his name noticed by the people who see the sign — the ones whose vote he wants this fall. I’ve been in this business for 40 years, and nothing has changed.”

Ashraf Al-Kabbany, a 43-year-old Cairo sign maker, is not as cynical, but says there is more truth now than before to the notion that a candidate making a sign in support of the NDP or the president is doing so for personal gain. Before, he claims, there was a more direct relationship between a member of the People’s Assembly and the people in his district, he says; now that relationship is almost non-existent. Population growth has made candidates’ districts too densely populated to be as visible as before. While political apathy, stemming from the daily struggle to make ends meet, sees many people simply ignoring the political discourse surrounding them.

“If you look at today’s youth, what percentage has voter registration cards?” Al-Kabbany asks. “A young person today feels there are no opportunities, no jobs, no way he can get married. So what does he do? He’s got a pack of cigarettes that he sleeps with. He has a cigarette in the morning, goes out, has two or three pounds that he spends to get something to eat, and that’s it.”

Ah, but that was before all the reform measures were announced, right? Wrong.

Ahmed Nimr

“To me, as an average citizen, it doesn’t make a difference if it’s Article 76 or 88, because it doesn’t translate into real change in my life,” Al-Kabbany says of the recent trend to make signs in support of amending the constitution. “When I get a candidate that wants to make two or three signs saying they support Article 76, I know they only want to be noticed. They want to frame themselves in the country’s political circles.”

Al-Kabbany’s most recent political work can be viewed in Matariya Square in Northern Cairo, where he designed two computer-generated signs for Reda Mantawy, a former 10-year PA member looking for the NDP’s nomination in the November parliamentary elections.

The five-by-one meter signs feature two large, equal-sized pictures of Mantawy and Mubarak, with one on each end. Both carry the same slogan, ‘The people of Matariya and Ein Shams support the leader and chief, Mohamed Hosni Mubarak, President of all Egyptians.” Mantawy’s name is also prominently displayed.

Al-Kabbany says he agreed to design the signs in this manner because he believes in the candidate and the president. He says he can see how such signs might be misinterpreted by people and negatively affect their view of Mantawy, but the gains simply outweigh the losses. Already, he says, the NDP has started taking notice of Mantawy, which means the advertisements worked.

“In the end, that’s how I make my living. Sometimes I have to make concessions,” he says. In this particular case, however, he does not believe he made any at all.

Ahmed Nimr

“The question I ask people is, ‘Who in Egypt can assume the responsibility of the presidency?’” he asks. “I can’t see anybody but Hosni Mubarak. No one else has been able to convince me they’re capable of taking that responsibility. If I find that person, and I’m convinced, I’ll be the first to make signs for him with my own name in bold letters saying ‘Vote for so and so.’”

Like political analysts in their air-conditioned offices, Al-Kabbany is disappointed that opposition parties such as Al-Wafd and Al-Tagammuah —to say nothing of the information opposition groups such as Kifaya — have done little to try to get a constructive message across in the nation’s public spaces.

“When you attack your competition, it’s a sign of a lack of confidence,” he says. “If you’re legitimate, you work more on presenting your side [The opposition] is talking like the sheikh that stands on the menbar [podium] and screams at people about torture in the graves and hell. You need to talk about how to avoid these things. You’re up there talking about hell, hell, hell. You scared people out of even entering the mosque.”

For all the thousands of signs that will be made over the next few months, Al-Kabbany says he does not expect big business from politicians. Of course, there’s a noticeable increase in requests for signs during political seasons, he says, but that doesn’t mean the cash will flow in large sums.

Ahmed Nimr A more sophisticated option where the art is computerized and the sign is lit using neon bulbs.

Why? As Al-Kabbany tells it, it’s because most political campaign managers try to go the cheapest route and choose cloth signs over wood or computer-designed vinyl. They do this not in appreciation of Arabic calligraphy or art, but because a finished square meter of a cloth sign costs LE 5-6. The final cost of a cloth sign tops out at LE 40. Wood, on the other hand costs LE 60-75 per square meter, while computer-designed vinyl starts out at LE 300, Al-Kabbany continues.

“People look at cloth signs from a financial viewpoint. They think about how much they can save. They don’t look at it from an artistic perspective. If a client comes in and wants signs for his campaign, he looks at a computer-generated sign, and let’s say it costs LE 1,000. He immediately thinks about how many cloth signs he can get out of that LE 1,000.”

Still, some like Mantawy choose simple advertising campaigns and rely on their history and relationships in their respective circles. Mantawy has just two signs up in all of Matariya. He says he chose not to run a big advertising campaign and instead focuses on strengthening his personal relationships with the voters.

“People want to see their representative in their streets, in their square, in a school yard, working to solve their problems. They want the very basic of services,” says Mantawy.

Aside from cost, perhaps the practicality of expression through sign-making in Egypt has helped preserve the ancient art more so than in other countries that have moved on to electronic mediums such as the television and the internet.

Ahmed Nimr The sign in action: An example of the structure that carries the art for all to see, from Matariya Square)

Kifaya’s Khalil points out that despite not being able to produce many signs, his group still relies heavily on this form of communication, especially at rallies and protests.

“The goal is expressing your opinion,” Khalil says. “It helps if it gets noticed by the media. You have to realize that most demonstrations carried on television are aired with no sound. So a written sign helps in getting your point across.”

But if we’re looking to find out why Egyptians continue to embrace political sign-making as a main tool of political advertising, Al-Kabbany says it would be pointless to only ask about political signs. Brightly colored, cleverly worded signs are a tradition not bound by politics alone. People make signs for a variety of occasions, from moulids to neighborhood celebrations and company openings, so political signs cannot be viewed as a separate entity, he notes.

For Al-Kabbany, signs are meant not as an advertising tool, but a means of expressing freedom of speech. Although he’s an NDP supporter himself, he says an atmosphere needs to be created in which people can be free to voice their support or opposition to any issue.

“Right now, if I have a political opinion and I have a problem with a certain political party, it’s difficult to voice my opinion,” Al-Kabbany says. “That’s wrong.” et