On 24 February, 2015, the Cairo Criminal Court cleared Ahmed Nazif and Habib el-Adly over charges of squandering public money. Nazif, former Egyptian Prime Minister, and Adly, former Interior Minister, were accused in April 2011 of awarding a LE92m ($11m) contract for the manufacture of licenseplates to a German firm.
This ruling implicitly endorses the defendants’ claim that the huge contract was justified by the noble aim of thwarting terrorism.
So, of course the two men did not profit off this contract nor did they squander public money! Perhaps, they were even concerned about the security of Egypt and its citizens and they may even receive an honorary medal for their efforts!
This verdict comes as the penultimate episode in a series of exonerationsof the two men. While Nazif was released in 2013 pending retrial, el-Adly is still serving a prison term for corruption related to his conviction of employing Egyptian soldiers to serve his household. But after the acquittal, el-Adly seems set to be released as his prison term for this case has ended.
A day before the acquittal of Nazif and el-Adly, 25 Egyptian activists, including blogger Alaa Abd el-Fattah, were deemed by the court as dangerous criminals and sentenced up to five years in jail. These rulings go beyond their judicial role and actually seek to regain regime control over the country.
The revolution that caused an earthquake on Egypt on 25 January 2011 sparked elation among Egyptian revolutionaries, who dared to dream of liberation. But it also scared the rulers who are making every effort to avoidany repetition of this scenario in the future.
Thus, they have to reshape the hegemonic normative structure and prime among these values is not the (intentional) arbitrary rulings or the explicit politicization of the judiciary. Rather, the normative structure being re-designed seeks to stress an old conventional wisdom that the youth looked to have forgotten amidst the explosion of their enthusiasm: No matter what they do, ordinary people cannot dethrone their “masters.”
