Dear all,

 

Thank you for your emails and feedback on the nominations for constitution drafting committee. I knew this was not, by all means, a good process. But the fact is, there is none. To date, the Egyptian government  did not provide a mechanism in which we can participate in a credible way as a community in our country's affairs.  We have seen many who claim to represent Egyptians in the US speaking to media in favor of SCAF and actually get appointed in the Parliament, without even bothering to check with anyone. Dr. Samia's and Dr. Amin at least trying to get buy in from the community. They needed to get a name to their contact in Egypt as possible candidates by today. There was no time for anything more. I myself was invited to discuss it in person, but couldn't make it. I commend and support them for taking the initiative. If not for that, then for at least getting you all engaged in this important discussion. I also discovered that others have taken the initiative to nominate me, and others as well. For them, I am very thankful.  

 

I thought about all this today and I have a proposal to the group. I suggest we do take that opportunity and take the time and effort in creating a good process, which we can model for ourselves and for others of self nomination. We can use it to elect our representatives in front of Egyptian embassy, government, parliament, and even in front of US policy makers and media, etc, if we chose to do so.  We can call it the "Egyptian Community Representative" project.  There are good websites that we can use for this, like Ballotbin.com. We can assign election officers, allow voter registration, solicit nominations, produce ballots, allow voting, and count results, like any other elections.  We can also include in it face to face "campaigning" by organizing real life events for interactive discussions.

 

This process can also help us in our effort to prove that online elections are a good, viable, practice for Egyptian abroad. Further, It will help drive interest of Egyptian Americans to participate in their country's affairs. Who knows. Someday we may actually have seats in the upcoming parliament for Egyptian abroad, and this could turn to be a good exercise. 

 

My brother, Amir Mansour, Mohamed Hussein, and Nermin and myself agreed to volunteer in creating this mechanism. If you would like to participate in this initiative, please let me know. Nermin will put together a meeting to discuss it very soon. Hopefully, Martina will participate as well because she had great points to raise. If you are not interested, please let me know too so that I remove you from this list.

 

Thank you all,

 

Sherif