Under ambiguous climate and political confounded performance, Egyptian people woke up on the scandal of a judicial decision issuance - surrounded by uncertainty – which stipulated to cancel travel ban on foreign nationals accused in the so-called foreign funding case and who have actually left the Egyptian territories, a few hours after the issuance of the decision. This left a heavy gloomy atmosphere- which influenced the independence of the Egyptian political decision on one hand and the independence of the Egyptian judicial House on the other hand.
Although Maat Foundation for Peace, Development and Human Rights calls for the necessity for not politicizing the issue and deal with the subject as an administrative violations that can be resolved. The matter is only a practice of activities without a license as a result of the intransigence of the administrative authorities and the complexity of legal action. The closing scene of the case involved sins and tragedies which imposed the need to move beyond the first controversy to announce a clear stance, which ended with these events. In this context, Maat Foundation would like be offer to the public the following: -
1. What happened is a clear violation of the independence of the Egyptian judiciary and this requires from all responsible parties (the government - the parliamentary majority - the Military Council - Court of Appeal) to provide evidence of their innocence of it. The history nor the Egyptian people will forgive this willful desecration of judiciary, and those parties shall take a lesson from the past because it can lead to anger and indignation of history and people.
2. The position of administrative and judicial authorities in Egypt is contrary to U.S. nationals accused in cases of management of organizations without a license with the same position of these authorities, from Egyptian organizations officials , that operate under license and in accordance with the law and is committed to literally with its texts, until it became a "prisoner of the obsolete law. The illegal American organizations - from the legal point of view - violates all legal rules and the independence of the Egyptian judiciary. While with the legitimate Egyptian organizations, the only way to deal is to be beaten with the administrative complexities and practice torture at the hands of social workers whose main task is to prevent the Egyptian Organizations from exercising their real role.
1. Maat has a concrete example of double standards by the authorities of the Egyptian administration and irrefutable proof of intentional concerned ministries to put obstacles in front of NGO legitimacy. Maat Foundation got a subset donation from the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) in order to carry out activities to raise awareness of the People's Assembly elections, which took place during the period from November 2011 to January 2012. Out of our commitment to Law articles of 84, we were confirmed that the donor organization got official permission to work in Egypt, under number 82, issued on December 6, 2010, which expires on December 5, 2013.
Then the foundation shall notify the Ministry of Social Affairs as received, in accordance with the law and waited for the expiration of the statutory period before starting the procedure of payment. We have exerted hard efforts to make awareness for thousands of Egyptian citizens with the importance of elections and push them to participate and be educated on how to vote in accordance with the electoral system adopted. This contributed to the intensity of election participation for citizens and that Egypt could pass a desired critical stage of democratic transformation.
Maat was surprised that the Department of Social Affairs in Dar el Salaam – and after the people's Assembly elections had ended- sent a letter asking about the project if it started or not yet. The Department also warned of paying the donation. What provokes astonishment is that Ministry of Social Affairs is so tightened of not paying the project donation allotted to the implementation of the activities before elections. This implies unjustified intransigence and needs explanation of the real stance of the ministry of legitimate NGO's that practices a complementary work to the government and the legal committee that supervises the elections (which received a support from the donation area for the purpose of carrying out electoral awareness activities and provide some electoral facilities).
3. Maat Foundation mentioned this example in order to prove that the Administrative authorities stance in Egypt is a hostile stance to the civil organizations in general and human rights organization in particular. The difference is that it is well prepared to override the law and jump on the complexity for the foreigners, but for the Egyptians it awaits only the complexity, catching and Permanent skepticism.
Therefore, Maat Foundation is asking the elected people's assembly to make its role in changing law no. 84 of 2002 registered for NGO's in Egypt, taking into account the proposals presented by Egyptian NGO's. The parliament also shall make its role in the accountability of government of Ganzouri and Minister of Justice about such scandal of the final scene of the case. The Supreme Judicial Council shall move toward accountability of other judges involved in this matter.
There is a last message directed by Maat to the Minister of Social Affairs that stand a strange and incomprehensible stance against legitimate organizations of Egypt. It demands to give some time to discuss the administrative and illogical intransigence in dealing by departments and directorates officials under its jurisdiction. It also calls upon it to make dealing with legitimate Egyptian organizations in an easy way that officials of these organizations makes the regret that they did not hold foreign nationals