4th edition of 'Temptations of Absolute Power': The people and the police

Ahram Online , Sunday 20 Oct 2013

Award winning book is released in its fourth edition at a time when the 25 January uprising against police repression has been buried as a memory beneath a new popular love for the security apparatus

Basma Abdel-Aziz
Basma Abdel-Aziz (Photo: Mostafa Ali)

Eghraa Al-Solta Al-Mutlaka (Temptations of Absolute Power) by Basma Abdel-Aziz, Cairo: Sefsafa Publishing, 2010. pp 127

A fourth edition of the award winning book Temptations of Absolute Power by author Basma Abdel Aziz has been released from Sesafa Publishing House.

The book tracks the relationship between civilians and the police across history and won the Ahmed Bahaa Eldin Award for young researchers in 2009.

The first edition of the book, which gives a critical account to the role of the police in Egyptian politics, was released just prior to the January 25 Revolution, in which people rebelled against police repression, among other things.

The author continues to chart the relation between the police and the people following the 30 June mass protests that led to the ouster of president Mohamed Morsi.

Basma wrote on her Facebook account on Friday, 18 October: “The fourth edition of my book Temptations of Absolute Power, is out from the print house, safe and sound, though the people are in the embrace of the police and the police is in the hearts of the people.”

The introduction to the book by prominent late journalist Salama Ahmed Salama states that it's not possible to isolate the violence of police conduct from the rule of law and respect for human rights in society. He relates the image of the police's destructive power to the slackness in law application.

The book reports that the relationship between the police and the public had been more or less normal in the recent past. However, this has changed and became one of tension and abuse. The change didn't occur at one definite point in history, but rather came about because of increases in suppression that were ever-present.

The book also presents the history of the security apparatus and episodes of suppression it authored over the years. The book deals only with the average civilian who is not politically active, without tackling police dealings with religious groups and their violence towards the police.

Abdel-Aziz is also author of the novel The Queue and winner of the 2008 Sawiris Cultural Award, and the General Organisation for Cultural Palaces Award in 2008.

Short link: