Egypt's newly-appointed senior police officials make opposition angry

Ayman Farouk, Wednesday 2 Mar 2011

Opposition leaders have spoken out against a re-shuffle within the Ministry of Interior, arguing that the changes made are superficial and do not comply with their demands

Today the Minister of the Interior, Mahmoud Wagdy, made limited changes to the senior personnel within his department. The most significant changes were assigning Hesham Abu Gheda as manager of state security investigation and making Atef Abu Shadi his second-in-command. The Ministry has described those changes as significant ones in its strategy and its relationship with ordinary citizens.

Opposition figures, however, don't see things in quite the same way.

"This is another manipulation of the demands of the Egyptian revolution. Abu Gheda is the right hand of the former head of the state security investigation," said George Ishak, prominent member of Kefaya movement. Moreover, Ishak thinks that the Ministry of the Interior should change its strategies by assigning a figure from outside the state security investigation apparatus in order to be able to serve the people and not the regime as the current officials do.

The opposition also sees this decision as a cosmetic one, in which the Ministry merely changed faces, keeping the same core. "We demand the dissolution of the entire body and the restructuring of police policy,” said Safwat Hegazi, member of the board of trustees of the revolution.

Furthermore, others think that this decision would lead to more tensions between the people and the police. "Wagdy must quit, and although I don’t know Abu Gheda, this is not the required change," said Mamdouh Hamza, member of the National Association for Change.

The April 6 movement has a similar stand. "This is nonsense, a kind of painkiller for non-politicians, especially as the government should be dissolved within days," said Amr Ezz, a member of the movement.

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