Monday, July 8, 2013

رسالتي للمصريين في مونتريال/ My message to Montreal ’s Egyptians

The message is in English with an Arabic introduction

رسالتي للمصريين في مونتريال
My message to Montreal ’s Egyptians

محمد شريف كامل*

عندما يأتي الوقت الذي يتضائل فيه الوطن والحلم ليصبح عند البعض أصغر وأهون من الرؤية الشخصية ضيقة الافق، ويصبح أصدقاء الميدان أعداء يتربص بعضهم بالبعض مستخدمين كل الأسلحة حتى وان طالت التخوين والوقوف مع العدو في خندق واحد، فهذه هي الفتنة الكبرى التي معها يجب ان يراجع الانسان دوره تجنبا لها.

لقد كشفت الأيام الماضية الكثير، وأوضحت مواقف شخصيه وانتهازيه استغلها البعض، وأرتني ما لم اتوقعه من بعض من كنت احترمهم ومن غفرت لهم الكثير من الاساءات، ولكن ان تصبح الحوارات هي تطاول بل ردح حواري، حينئذ يتحول الحلم في هذه الجمعية التي بنيناها سويا إلى كابوس مزعج ومرض مستعصي وجب بتره.

وما العجب اليس هذا هو الحال الذي أل له حلمنا في مصر الجديدة.

لقد اضفت تلك المقدمة لنص استقالتي الذي بدئت كتابتها صبيحه المهزلة التي قامت بها الجمعية وأسمتها استقصاء رأي وانتهيت من كتابتها منذ أسبوع.

قد يسعد البعض لاستقالتي التي طالما حلموا بها لأنهم لا يستطيعون السمع لغير أصواتهم وحسب، ولكنني لو كنت مكانهم لحزنت لا لشخصي ولكن لوفاة حلم التعددية والوفاء والصدق.

I finished writing these words a week ago not to debate political views but to show my sorrow over the destruction of the best outcome of the January 25th revolution.  I am mourning the AEM as a respectable association. As one of the founders, I am mourning the dream that we can build an association that respects all Egyptians, does not align itself with any political movement, stays neutral and is built from the revolution for all Egyptians.  An association that respects its members’ diversity and right of freedom of speech and expression.  An association that establishes a rule and respects it.

A full year of unity and huge effort to build a dream, followed by a long year of internal disagreement and disrespect destroying that dream.

Unfortunately, some decided not to respect the freedom of expression and did whatever they can to orient the association as per their own political believe;

Because of this unpleasant, unrespectable atmosphere, I found that working in this environment is not productive, so based on this and the following I announce my resignation from the board of advisors, effective immediately.

·         In Dec 2012 in the General Assembly (GA), the association adopted its by-law and elected a board based on this by-law
·         In the same GA, the association adopted a resolution to have political debates on a monthly bases or minimum every 6 weeks - never executed.    
·         In Feb-Mar 2013, two of the elected members of the board of directors (BoD) resigned, among them the president.
·         Based on the by-law and following these resignations the BoD lacked quorum (4 elected members, where minimum is 5) so a GA should be called for a special meeting to elect a new board and president.
·         Instead of that, the board decided to continue as such and appoint 2 members without any consideration to the by-law or any consultation with the GA members.
·         On a later date, a third elected member of the BoD resigned so the members became three (3) elected+ two (2) appointed.  As of today, the members were not informed of the board of directors’ members.
·         And instead of calling for a GA, again the board decided to continue functioning as such, didn’t call for GA and didn’t organize any political debates in spite of the continues requests by several members
·         Came June 30th event, the board decided to be part of the political game through an illegitimate process. In spite that we agreed that no political action to be taken without a previous discussion.
·         Instead of a political debate they decided to poll the members, and violated the members’ right by creating a faulty poll that has no legitimacy, as:
o   no identification was required
o   it allowed for a person to vote multiple times
o   it resulted in the admin incorrectly removing votes manually without any true way of knowing which ones are duplicates
o   this means that all individuals in the same household or company will have their votes removed
·         At the end of the poll thy based their decision on a faulty interpretation of the results by mixing two systems (vote and poll) where they calculated wrongly,
o   Instead of (24 ‘for’/ 22 ‘against’/ 4 ‘don’t know’), making it 48% approval rate, means no mandate
o   They decided to ignore an option included in the poll by them and consider the majority as the higher number and neglect that the mandate is to be reached by more than 50%.

As the board of advisors (BoA) refused to stop this mismanagement and to correct the violation of the members’ rights and the by-law, I found myself in front of a moral decision not to participate anymore in this circus called an association. Therefore, I announce my resignation from the board of advisors to be able to continue fighting for the human right and for the new Egypt.  I remain committed to serve these causes in all fields, without associating myself with those that do not respect people’s rights.

Mohamed Kamel*,
Founder and ex-member of AEM board of advisors

* Mohamed S. Kamel: is a Freelance writer, the editor of http://forafreeegypt.blogspot.com/, he is a professional engineer, a LEED Green Associate and a recognized project manager professional, he is Member of several civil society organizations, a co-founder of the Canadian Egyptian for Democracy (CEFD), National Association for Change in Egypt (Taghyeer – Canada), Association of the Egyptians of Montreal (AEM), Alternative Perspective Media (APM-RAM), , Quebec Antiwar movement “Échec à la Guerre”, Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine “CJPP”, ex-president and co-founder of the Canadian Muslim Forum (CMF), member of the board of trustee in the Canadian Muslim for Palestine (CMP) and Community Center for Montreal Muslims (CCMM) . He could be reached at public@mohamedkamel.com and followed at @mskamel


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