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Egypt

Late Entry: Anti-Corruption Crusader Leaps Into Egypt’s Presidential Race

The youngest in a crowded field of presidential contenders, labor activist Khaled Ali is also the last to announce his candidacy. Not that it was his fault. Until turning 40 this past Sunday, he wasn’t technically old enough to run for the country&#03

Mr. Ali (center-left) is ready to be a contender (Gigi Ibrahim)
Mr. Ali (center-left) is ready to be a contender (Gigi Ibrahim)

CAIRO -- Legally too young to run until this past Sunday – his 40th birthday – lawyer and labor activist Khaled Ali has just thrown this hat into the ring for Egypt's first post-revolution presidential race. He faces a crowded field that includes Amr Moussa, the ex-secretary general of the Arab League, and Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, an ultra-conservative television host.

"My entire platform is built on the basis of social justice," Ali said Monday in front of a crowded audience at the Journalists Syndicate. "I am the simple folk's candidate."

With the election set to take place this coming June, Ali's announcement comes a bit "late," admit some supporters. "Not many are familiar with labor movements, so we will have to work extra hard to spread the word and make his work known," said Magdy Saleh, a member of the Pharmaceutical Workers Syndicate.

Ali is not, however, an unknown in Egypt, where as the founder and director of the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights, and a legal activist for much of the last two decades, he made a name for himself as a staunch advocate for social justice, especially in the public sector.

He also led the case against government corruption during the Hosni Mubarak years, taking government officials to court for illegally selling public land and public sector factories. Most notably, Ali was able to get verdicts on cases that returned some large companies to the public. He was also a driving force behind a 2001 ruling to grant professionals' and workers' syndicates more freedoms, as well as a 2010 decision to increase the national minimum wage.

Drawing a crowd

Running as an independent, Ali believes he is strengthened by his history as an activist, crusader for the poor and a force for change. The main points of his platform include making Egypt a regional hub for economic cooperation, protecting natural resources and mineral wealth, reversing corrupt government deals from the past, rehabilitating farmland, and solving unemployment while ensuring workers' rights.

Many representatives of workers' and farmers' unions traveled a long way to attend Ali's announcement and endorse his candidacy in appreciation of the work he has done with them in the past. "He repeatedly stood with workers from our areas and fought to get their rights. That is why I made the four-hour trip over to stand with him. He is the right man, and will always fight for the right causes," said Samir Naguib, who heads the Quarry Workers Syndicate in Minya Governorate.

Before handing in his official candidacy papers, Ali must gather at least 30,000 endorsements from at least 15 governorates, or from 30 members of Parliament, to be able to officially run. Coming from a simple rural family in the Daqahlia Governorate and working in a legal NGO with modest funding, Ali and his campaigners acknowledge they will be running at a financial disadvantage.

Assuming he does meet the requirements, Ali's likely opponents – besides Amr Moussa and Hazem Salah Abu Ismail – will include Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a former member of the guidance bureau of the Muslim Brotherhood; Mohammad Salim Al-Awa, an Islamic scholar; Bothaina Kamel, a leading political activist in last year's revolution; and Ahmed Shafik, an Air Marshal and the last prime minster under Mubarak.

Read the full story by Mohamed Elmeshad

*Newsbites are digest items, not direct translations

Photo - Gigi Ibrahim

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Society

Genoa Postcard: A Tale Of Modern Sailors, Echos Of The Ancient Mariner

Many seafarers are hired and fired every seven months. Some keep up this lifestyle for 40 years while sailing the world. Some of those who'd recently docked in the Italian port city of Genoa, share a taste of their travels that are connected to a long history of a seafaring life.

A sailor smokes a cigarette on the hydrofoil Procida

A sailor on the hydrofoil Procida in Italy

Daniele Frediani/Mondadori Portfolio via ZUMA Press
Paolo Griseri

GENOA — Cristina did it to escape after a tough breakup. Luigi because he dreamed of adventures and the South Seas. Marianna embarked just “before the refrigerator factory where I worked went out of business. I’m one of the few who got severance pay.”

To hear their stories, you have to go to the canteen on Via Albertazzi, in Italy's northern port city of Genoa, across from the ferry terminal. The place has excellent minestrone soup and is decorated with models of the ships that have made the port’s history.

There are 38,000 Italian professional sailors, many of whom work here in Genoa, a historic port of call that today is the country's second largest after Trieste on the east coast. Luciano Rotella of the trade union Italian Federation of Transport Workers says the official number of maritime workers is far lower than the reality, which contains a tangle of different laws, regulations, contracts and ethnicities — not to mention ancient remnants of harsh battles between shipowners and crews.

The result is that today it is not so easy to know how many people sail, nor their nationalities.

What is certain is that every six to seven months, the Italian mariner disembarks the ship and is dismissed: they take severance pay and after waits for the next call. Andrea has been sailing for more than 20 years: “When I started out, to those who told us we were earning good money, I replied that I had a precarious life: every landing was a dismissal.”

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