On the Hustings The ruling National Democratic Party says President Hosni Mubarak will be its candidate of choice to face the nation in a fall presidential referendum. Yet the president himself claims he has yet to decide whether he’s ready to hit the campaign trail for a fifth time and says he welcomes challengers. Three have offered. Welcome to an unprecedented debate. It’s shaping up to be a long winter dominated by a single political question: Will President Hosni Mubarak run for a fifth six-year term in office or not? From the outside looking in, the only thing that seems certain is that nothing is really certain. The process as it stands is simply too messy if healthy merely for the signs of democratic debate that have so far marked it to predict what will happen in May, when the People’s Assembly is slated to choose by a two-thirds vote the presidential candidate it will put to a yes-no referendum in September.
Twenty-five years after its birth, the Islamic Republic of Iran is facing one of the greatest internal challenges to its legitimacy and permanence: With one of the youngest populations in the world, the generation that came after Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution is coming of age in a climate that bears little relation to the events of 1979. High unemployment, increasing social problems and unprecedented access to the outside world are pushing Iran down a path of instability and fundamental discontent.
I am sitting in a non-descript classroom one evening in the historical city of Isfahan, Iran. A group of 12 women from various social classes and reli
SYNDICATE SYNDROMES Does the government’s new plan to put a lid on in-fighting and partisan politics in the nation’s professional syndicates fit the bill? Or is it a blatant attempt to undermine democracy, as Nasserist and Muslim Brotherhood union leaders claim? ByManal el-Jesri Read more
Tarek Kamel Minister of Communication and Information Technology Tarek Kamel has plans to steer the ministry into a brighter future ByRéhab El-Bakry Read more
Lagging Behind Why have Arab countries been so slow torespond to the humanitarian crisis in Southeast Asia? ByRania Al Malky Read more
Volume
# 26
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