A Celebration of Women

has been inspired to Celebrate the Life of yet one more freedom fighter, advocate for Women’s Rights and all round powerhouse of a woman. With tireless efforts, this woman has been working for years in the public services of a very delicate envirnment in EGYPT.

This WOMAN of ACTION is now their First Female Candidate for Presidency for EGYPT.

“By putting myself forward I am making this democratic right

– the right of a Woman to be President –

a concrete reality, and that alters expectations,”

she says of her candidacy.

WOMAN of ACTION

Bothiana Kamel

 

 

Bothaina Kamel (Arabic: بثينة كامل) (born 1962) is an Egyptian television anchor, activist, and politician. A long time pro-democracy advocate, her professional career has been marked by repeated conflict with authorities. She recently announced her candidacy for the Egyptian presidency.

Kamel hosted a popular Egyptian radio program called “Nightime Confessions” from 1992 to 1998. She later worked as a new presenter for Egyptian state television, and hosted a show called “Please Understand Me” on the Saudi-owned Orbit satellite TV network. In each assignment, she eventually encountered official resistance: “Confessions” was cancelled after outcries by religious conservatives, she took a leave of absence from Egyptian state television rather than participate in propaganda surrounding the 2005 elections, and “Understand Me” was taken off the air by the Saudi producers when they became concerned that its coverage of the 2011 Egyptian revolution would implicate Saudi interests.

She has long been active in pro-democracy activities, often present a pro-democracy rallies, forming an election monitoring group in 2005, and immediately taking to the streets during the 2011 revolution.

She is a self-described social democrat, and is running as an independent.

Although a Muslim, she has taken anti-sectarian stances, endorsing proposals for equal treatment of Coptic and Muslim places of worship and for trying those who incite sectarian violence.

Additionally, she wears a crescent and cross necklace and criticised the military, rather than one or the other sect, for sectarian clashes that have erupted in the wake of the revolution. Other positions include reducing the minimum age of parliamentarians from 30 to 22 in view of the youth participation in the revolution.

 

 

Bothiana, in the words of Guardian reporter, Jack Shenker …

” Back when she was a cub reporter, Bothaina Kamel worked on a radio show called The Egypt We Don’t Know.”I travelled all over the country collecting various songs, community traditions, local ideas about the Nile or the desert,” says the 49-year-old. “On reflection, I think it was the most important programme I’ve ever been involved in.”Kamel’s latest project – a bid to become president of the Arab world’s most populous country – does not have a formal title yet, but if it did, The Egypt We Don’t Know might be appropriate.

The celebrity broadcaster turned political warrior may be the first woman in modern Egyptian history to run for the country’s leadership, but it is Egypt’s other marginalised groups – from Coptic Christians to Nubians and Bedouins, those who struggle to find a voice in the bellicose arena of national politics – who Kamel believes will benefit most from her run for office.

The right of a woman to be president “By putting myself forward I am making this democratic right – the right of a woman to be president – a concrete reality, and that alters expectations,” she says of her candidacy.” No one expected a revolution would topple Mubarak, but it happened. We can win, but even if we don’t we are winning every day just by being out here, changing people’s perspectives.” It has been a week of changing perspectives in Egypt.

The sight of Hosni Mubarak, the man Kamel hopes to replace being wheeled into a metal cage in a prison uniform, a man who at the beginning of this year counted among the most omnipotent and entrenched dictators in the world, has the potential to transform the patriarchal relationship between ruler and ruled that has long dominated much of the region.”The moment Mubarak received his legal summons, officially accusing him of said crimes, the most important nail in the coffin of Middle Eastern cult-of-personality and leader-worship was finally hammered,” wrote Egyptian blogger Bassem Sabry in a widely circulated post calling time on the Middle East’s oppressive autocrats.

Governments are for the people “All those men knew that the end of life as they were used to it has finally come, forever. Governments are for the people, not the other way around; the people own their countries, not the regimes.” That sentiment resonates strongly with Kamel, a former presenter of an early-hours radio show called Night-time Confessions who went on to work for a Saudi-owned satellite network before being unceremoniously dumped earlier this year.

Since she announced back in April her intention to compete in Egypt’s first ever democratic presidential elections, her efforts to recalibrate the balance between state and society have come under sustained attack from many directions, not least the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) whom Kamel accuses of being an enemy of the revolution.

“At Abbasiya [an anti-SCAF demonstration in Cairo last month which came under attack by armed civilians] they almost killed me – people told me afterwards that some of the baltagiyya [paid thugs] were asking for me by name,” she claims.”The army stood by and watched it happen, and then later that night [Egypt’s de facto interim leader] Field Marshal Tantawi appeared on national television thanking the ‘brave people’ of Abbasiya who stopped the outlaws. We are not outlaws, we are revolutionaries! They are the outlaws and thugs, they are Mubarak’s regime, and they are as low and dirty as ever.”That kind of language is bold, even among reformist activists who have turned against the military in recent weeks and opened up a volatile legitimacy gap at the heart of Egypt’s post-Mubarak transition.

But Kamel’s bombastic tone – “victor or martyr” is how she views herself when stepping out each day on to the streets – dovetails with her personal engagement with potential voters and an attention to specifics, from suspected abuses by intelligence agents in the north Cairo neighbourhood of Shubra to obscure links between particular security generals and high-flying businessmen. She may have barely 1,000 supporters on her Facebook site (presidential rival Mohamed ElBaradei boasts a quarter of a million), but there is something about Kamel that seems to spook Egypt’s powers-that-be – and it involves a lot more than her gender.”Unlike every single time an unknown activist or some adjunct professor decides to make a ‘symbolic run’ in some Arab country, Kamel’s candidacy carries more weight than many observe – even though she has no realistic chance of winning,” says Sabry.A unique positionHe believes that her high-profile public persona as a TV star coupled with impeccable opposition credentials have put her in a unique position – Kamel was involved in the Kefaya (Enough) movement for political reform from its early days in 2005 and is the first presidential hopeful to break the taboo on criticising Egypt’s armed forces.

“At a time when political and social values are being rewritten … the shockwaves of a legitimate female candidacy could be massive,” he says.

Fundamentally, Kamel views herself as a challenge to the culture of secrecy that permeates the top brass of the military, an institution which was closely invested in the regime of its former commander-in-chief Mubarak, and whose material interests could be threatened by any radical reform. The sensitivity of this issue was highlighted at the dramatic trial opening of Mubarak and his one-time interior minister Habib el-Adly, when state TV cameras inadvertently captured army officers seemingly bowing and scraping to the defendants as they left the courtroom.

“I’m transparent,” says Kamel, “and although I’m now a politician I still think that value is more important than anything else.”Like most of her rivals for Mubarak’s job, Kamel has yet to outline a concrete policy framework, preferring to deal in either grand sweeping rhetoric or micro-detail, with very little in between. Her strength, she contends, lies in personal connections; her biggest criticism of Mubarak personally is his “arrogance and disrespect for the Egyptians all around him”, and even ElBaradei is dismissed by Kamel as someone who deals with ordinary people avec des gants (with gloves on).

The road ahead will not be easy; while her status as the first female presidential candidate earned news coverage abroad, her campaign remains almost invisible at home when set alongside those of frontrunners such as former Arab League chief Amr Moussa or Islamic scholar Mohammad Salim al-Awa.SmearsOfficials have thrown every smear they can in her direction, from claims that she was buying up land in the desert oasis of Fayyoum to carry out illegal excavations for valuable antiquities (Kamel says she was actually in Fayyoum for an anti-poverty initiative) to suggestions that she hands out “fistfuls of dollars” to participants at reformist demonstrations.

“I don’t expect anything,” she says when asked to rate her chances of success in the presidential poll, which is likely to take place next year. “If you have no expectations, then you will find the good in whatever transpires.”Long live the womanShe tells a story about a recent trip to the city of Suez, the site of violent crashes between civilians and police over the past few months. “I just came and listened and tried to help, and by the end of it people were chanting, ‘Long live the Woman!’ It doesn’t matter to Egyptians whether someone is a woman or a man, what’s important is whether it’s someone who can understand and help them. The revolution has made Egyptians feel free, and that’s why I’m running for president.”

 

 

VIDEO ONLINE ONLY – Female Candidacy Running for Presidency

Egyptian TV anchor and political activist Bothaina Kamel is the first female to be running for the country’s presidential elections in autumn. Her campaign focuses on sectarian unity, rooting out corruption and ending poverty.Bothaina Kamel said, “So long as we are demanding the removal of a structure, then we as revolutionaries, have to propose alternatives.”

“The first message I received, which really made me aware of the importance of the announcement of my candidacy and all that followed — through the trips to different parts across Egypt was a message on the internet from a girl who told me: Auntie, I know your road is difficult and your experiment is not easy, but you have opened the doors of hope for us to dream of leadership positions in our country and of the presidency of the Republic.”My presidential agenda, the main outline, is the same as the slogans of January 25th: ‘Dignity, Freedom and Social Justice’.

 

This is based upon two central ideas, the fight against poverty and the fight against corruption. Ayman Masoud, Participant from Zagazig said …
“A woman is equal to a man, and we, as young people are convinced of that. But the nature of Egyptian culture, as an eastern, Muslim man, they would not allow for a woman to rule them. But everyone knows inside of them that a woman is equal to a man – we have women managers and ministers, but we have not reached the stage where the president can be a woman.”

 

…MAY 2011

 
Share3 el-Kalam Interview With Bothaina Kamel Part 1 بثينة كامل في شارع الكلام

READ: http://www.democracyreview.com/2011/05/bothaina-kamels-interview-with-share3….

 
2012

No one gives her a chance. But the prospect of an unveiled woman becoming president of Egypt in an election battle with a dozen Islamic male candidates is making headlines internationally.

It’s just that in Egyptian newspapers, former radio personality and television news anchor Bothaina Kamel, the first and only woman to run for Egypt’s presidency, is usually referred to only as an “activist” — if she is ever referred to at all.

“Some people have come up to me and asked, ‘Is it even legal for a woman to run?’” she says. “I hope to set a trend, to open a door.”

For nearly a year now, the 49-year-old brunette has been actively campaigning across Egypt, meeting people face-to-face in small rallies and arguing that Egypt needs a social revolution in addition to a political one.

“We are moving through the villages and bringing the revolution to all of Egypt, not just the big cities,” she says.

“Women are a great part of this revolution,” she recently told Egyptian journalist Manar Ammar. “They helped plan for it and participated in it and we also gave many female martyrs. We have a share in this revolution, in our revolution.”

READ MORE National Post

WHAT Egyptian Women are saying about ‘What they Want from their next President’.

A Celebration of Women

salutes this powerhouse of a human spirit, that offers her life for the benefit of others.

Welcome into the Alumni of WOMEN of ACTION.

Brava Bothiana!