The parliamentary fact-finding committee’s findings on the Port Said Stadium tragedy dominate today’s front pages, Al-Ahram leading with the headline, “Four state bodies are behind the massacre.”
The four bodies deemed guilty, according to Al-Ahram, are the police forces, El-Masry football club, The Football Association, and the stadium itself.
But Freedom and Justice, the Muslim Brotherhood party’s daily mouthpiece, says the committee places responsibility on seven actors. They say politicians who are yet-to-be determined, the police forces, The Football Association, El-Masry football club, the stadium, ultras and other fans, and the sports media are those to blame.
In other news, the Muslim Brotherhood says it has not yet decided on the issue of a coalition government to take over for the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces before the scheduled power handover in June.
Brotherhood member Khairat al-Shater said during an interview last week that the group is prepared to form such a government. The Brotherhood called this a “test balloon” designed to see how SCAF would respond to the idea, according to Al-Ahram. Unsurprisingly, they say the council has responded negatively.
The Al-Ahram article suggests the idea of a coalition government is limited to an internal discussion within the Brotherhood. Yet on the very next page, the paper has a story about the group’s open withdrawal of political support for the incumbent government, led by Kamal al-Ganzouri.
Here, it says that the Freedom and Justice Party has “suddenly” retracted its support for the Ganzouri government and outlined its vision of a coalition government to rule for the remainder of the transitional period.
On its third page, the state daily also provides the perspective of US media on the current, precarious state of US-Egyptian relations. It reports that US media expect more foreigners in Egypt to be arrested in the coming period.
Al-Ahram says according to the US media the arrest of a US citizen in the Delta city of Mahalla together with that of an Australian journalist and an Egyptian citizen on charges of paying Egyptians to engage in civil disobedience took place only a few hours after a meeting between high-level US and Egyptian military officials. The arrest also came soon after Senator John McCain announced that the diplomatic crisis would be solved in a few days.
FJP carries a suggestion by religious leaders to extricate Egypt from the current foreign funding drama on its front page.
The Federation of Mosque Imams and Al-Azhar Preachers called for the creation of a donation fund, made up of citizens’ contributions, to replace US aid.
FJP continues to gloat about the poor response to calls for civil disobedience on Saturday with one headline reading, “The strike is dying.”
The story describes the decision of workers at one company to postpone an internal strike until Sunday to avoid appearances that the factory was taking part in the general civil disobedience movement .
On page 11, FJP dedicates an entire page to the subject of how “Egyptians rejected civil disobedience.”
Egypt's papers:
Al-Ahram: Daily, state-run, largest distribution in Egypt
Al-Akhbar: Daily, state-run, second to Al-Ahram in institutional size
Al-Gomhurriya: Daily, state-run
Rose al-Youssef: Daily, state-run
Al-Dostour: Daily, privately owned
Al-Shorouk: Daily, privately owned
Al-Wafd: Daily, published by the liberal Wafd Party
Youm7: Daily, privately owned
Al-Tahrir: Daily, privately owned
Freedom and Justice: Daily, published by the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party
Sawt al-Umma: Weekly, privately owned
Al-Arabi: Weekly, published by the Nasserist Party
Al-Nour: Official paper of the Salafi Nour Party
