“This is a very dangerous signal from the government — that the secular opposition doesn’t have the same opportunity to exist or grow as the Islamist movements… In spite of the government talking about reform, secular leaders are in a very bad situation.”

— Hafez abu Saeda, president of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, decrying the recent arrest and conviction of Egyptian opposition candidate Ayman Nour.

Nour, 41, was charged and sentenced yesterday to five years imprisonment on charges of forgery when he allegedly faked signatures when founding his party, the opposition Tomorrow (Ghad) Party. Although Mubarak recently won Egypt’s first contested elections in a landslide — with accusations of voter intimidation, cheating, and outright forgery rampant — Nour and his Ghad party (whose base is largely secular and better educated, and would therefore likely be more appealing to Western governments in comparison to its Islamist counterparts), along with the Islamist opposition, were widely popular.  The December 24th conviction on charges of forgery will put Nour forever out of the presidential elections, since those with any criminal record are barred from running for the office.  Nour, jailed in January on the forgery charges, has recently been on a hunger strike as a demonstration against his treatment while incarcerated.  Nour, a diabetic, has been hospitalized as a result of his hunger strike.  

Mimi Hanaoka