Egypt Behind the curtains of the Foreign Ministry: Security apparatuses play for control | MadaMasr
▻http://www.madamasr.com/en/2017/05/22/feature/politics/backstage-at-the-foreign-ministry-security-apparatuses-play-for-control
Five Egyptian diplomats were informed by the Foreign Ministry in early May of a presidential decree to transfer them to agriculture and development government entities outside the ministry.
Two plenipotentiary ministers, two first secretaries and another secretary suddenly found themselves in new surroundings.
The decree’s force is in line with the diplomatic service law, which grants the president the power to reassign diplomats to other positions in national administrative bodies if such a move would fulfill some public interest, according to one of the diplomats affected by decision who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity.
However, none of the diplomats was told why he had been transferred or what public interest his marginalization in the diplomatic class might serve. Unable to formally challenge the decree, the only recourse they could have would be to request retirement, an unlikely choice given their age range: 20 to 45.
The five diplomats are not the first to be transferred from their diplomatic positions. Rather, they are part of a larger arc in which 40 diplomats have been reassigned in the last two years under pressure from Egypt’s security apparatuses, another diplomat who has been affected by the practice tells Mada Masr on the condition of anonymity. The reasons for their reassignment vary, the diplomat says: implicit accusations of being sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, the April 6 Youth Movement or the January 25 revolution; their rejection of the political changes that followed the ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi in 2013; as much as their failure to advocate for these changes through their diplomacy work.