EGYPT: Protesting students want administrators sacked

Just a few days after they returned to class for the second semester, students at Egypt's public universities staged massive protests against the administrators of their institutions, demanding that they be sacked for being part of the regime led by ousted president Hosni Mubarak.

At Cairo University, Egypt's biggest public university, students held a big demonstration outside the office of its President, Hossam Kamel. They called for Kamel and faculty deans to be replaced with elected administrators.

"We returned to the university after the January 25 revolution only to see the same old faces that long fawned on the former regime and its notorious National Democratic Party," said Nermeen el-Husseini, a commerce student.

"Those administrators were the ones who shamelessly conferred an honorary doctorate on Mubarak's wife Suzanne last year. They must go."

The protesting students pitched tents outside the famed dome of Cairo University, imitating the scene of 18-day protests in the iconic Tahrir Square in central Cairo, which eventually swept aside Mubarak after 30 years in power.

"We are students of Al Tahrir," read one placard raised by the students. "We will not give in until the revolution fully succeeds," read another.

Ten public universities out of the nation's 18 re-opened their gates on 5 March after a mid-year vacation of around one month. However, classes were disrupted by massive protests by students, who were joined by lecturers.

Ezzat Salama, appointed last week as Minister of Scientific Research and Higher Education in a new cabinet reshuffle, visited the protesters at Cairo University. He promised to look into their "legitimate demands" and urged them to attend lectures.

"We are committed to appointing deans of faculties until the present Universities Law is changed," Cairo University's Kamel was quoted as saying in the local press.

"Whoever has documents about administrators' involvement in administrative and financial corruption should come forward. Still, we should differentiate between the political leaning of an academic and his being in an administrative post."

In an apparent bid to strongly press their demands, students from five public universities and three private universities have announced the formation of a pro-reform union.

The students belong to the Muslim Brotherhood, an influential opposition group, the protest April 6 Movement and the Justice and Freedom Movement. Calling their group the Revolution's Student Union, they said their demands included free student union elections and providing free quality education.

"All presidents of universities, their deputies, deans of faculties and administrators, who were appointed upon recommendations of the security agencies, should be dismissed," the new union said in a statement. "The Universities Law should be changed to allow for free election of presidents of universities and deans of faculties," it added.

For more than 50 years, presidents of public universities in Egypt have been directly appointed by the head of the state.

"We are drafting new regulations and will present them to the Minister of Higher Education because he has the power to dismiss presidents of universities, and to the Supreme Military Council now in charge of the country's affairs," said Osama Al Shafaei, coordinator-general of the union.

"We want free student elections so that students will participate in the decision-making process at their universities."

Earlier this month the Higher Council for Universities, which oversees universities in Egypt, ordered student unions elected late last year to be dissolved over alleged vote fraud, and called for new elections, which are expected to be held next month.