Mubarak “solves girl’s exam problem”

Magdi Abdelhadi, Arab affairs analyst for BBC News, reports that President Mubarak appears to have intervened in the highly publicized story of a 15-year-old girl failing her secondary schools exams due to anti-government comments she wrote in one of her exam essays.

The student, Alaa Farag Megahed, was summoned for questioning by authorities after word spread about her exam essay in which she blamed Washington for the corrupt leadership throughout Egypt.

However, it appears that Al-Ahram, the state-owned daily newspaper, has downplayed the significance of this young girl’s observation of political injustices within her home country.
According to Abdelhadi's article,

“[T]he state-owned daily, al-Ahram wants to reassure its readers that Egypt, despite all appearances, is a democracy.

“Under the headline ‘A personal gesture from Mubarak’, the newspaper reported that the president himself had spoken to the young student on the phone and reassured her that she was free to say what she liked.

“But the newspaper did not report what the student had written in her essay.

“Instead, it quoted the young girl saying how grateful she was to Mr Mubarak and that she had asked him to visit her town in the Nile Delta.

“The newspaper report ends with the unattributed phrase 'Long Live Mubarak.'

“The news of Mr. Mubarak's intervention comes only days after a prominent newspaper editor, along with one of his reporters, were sentenced to one year in jail for insulting the president.”

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