Feature: Egypt to pull down Mubarak's ruling building in Tahrir after 4 years of his ouster
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E-mail Xinhua, April 17, 2015
In the heart of the Egyptian capital city Cairo, adjacent to the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square, near a large hotel and the newly-established underground Tahrir Garage, and a little distant from the Nile River bank at the Corniche Street, here lies a damaged 15-storey building with deteriorating structure and black traces of burning.
It is the headquarters of the currently-dismantled National Democratic Party (NDP), the ruling party of former President Hosni Mubarak who was ousted in February 2011 following January 25 popular uprising against his reign that lasted for over three decades.
On Wednesday, the Egyptian cabinet made a decision to pull down the building, which occupies a vital location downtown Cairo, and assigned a military engineering authority with the job, saying the government will determine the use of the land after the building removal is over.
Smeared and blackened with burning marks, the building stood over the past four years as a reminder of the uprising that toppled Mubarak's iron-fisted regime, with a debate whether to keep it as a symbol for the uprising and a memorial for over 800 of its victims or to remove it and invest the special place in favor of the country's economy.
"Generally, I see that this place has to be well invested, and then they can document the martyrs of the 2011 revolution with their posters and history on top of the intended investment project," Mahmoud, a 34-year-old man, told Xinhua while taking a walk on the river bank opposite to the building.
The owner of a small publishing house added that the place symbolizes the making of all corrupt decisions during the time of Mubarak, insisting that it should be pulled down in favor of the country although it has been once a symbol for the uprising.
"It is not one of the Great Pyramids to keep it," said 28-year-old Youssef, an employee at the Commercial International Bank (CIB), seeing the current building as "useless" and preferring its vital location to be used for a successful project like a hotel.
Despite its deteriorating condition, the NDP damaged building is currently well guarded and occupied by military vehicles and soldiers on alert for easy and quick deployment in case of emergency in a country suffering declining turmoil due to the eruption of two uprisings that toppled two leaders over the past four years.
Mubarak, who led the NDP and used to hold meetings with the party members and make statements at this building, has recently been acquitted of charges of corruption and responsibility for the killing of protesters during the 2011 uprising.
Abdel-Moneim, a 55-year-old owner of a horse-carriage known in Egypt as "hantoor," looked desperate while parking his carriage under the nearby October 6 Bridge, complaining that he barely gets a customer all day long.
"The building is useless and if it is pulled down and reestablished as a hotel or mall or whatever, it will give us a chance to find customers instead of waiting here workless all day," the old carriage told Xinhua.
On the other side of Abdel-Moneim Riyadh Square in Tahrir and near Ramses Hotel, a few meters from the NDP building, a group of college students who were waiting for a bus expressed their support for pulling down the building.
"Forget about the uprisings, because there is no real change in anything, so the building is a symbol for nothing," Shaimaa, one of the agriculture college girls, told Xinhua.
Her mate Duaa recommended the place to be replaced with a hotel named "January 25" to memorialize the uprising that toppled former long-time ruler Mubarak.
The backside of the building overlooks the main entrance and the garden of the downtown Egyptian Museum, as visitors can see the tall building damaged by modern Egyptians while entering the museum to see the artifacts of ancient Egyptians.
The Egyptian Museum officials claim that the NDP land belongs to the museum and plan to extend the museum with a larger garden and more showrooms when the NDP building is removed.
"It is just a damaged, crumbling building with no special designs or decorations and it distorts the image of the museum in front of visitors, so we asked the government to pull it down to give us a chance to extend the museum," Mahmoud al-Halwagy, director of the Egyptian Museum, told Xinhua.
Halwagy added that the land of the NDP building was part of the museum since it was established over 100 years ago until late military-oriented President Gamal Abdel-Nasser took it in 1954 as a headquarters for his Arab Socialist Union and then it remained ever since the building of the ruling party of Egypt.
"We got a government decision in March 2014 to restore the land of the building and now the cabinet decision to pull it down is a step in the right direction," the museum director told Xinhua, adding that Culture Ministry plans to use the land for adding a cinema and a lecture hall for the museum, besides additional showrooms and cafeterias.
Overlooking the Nile River, the NDP building witnessed the era of late socialist President Nasser, the reign of his colleague and successor Anwar Sadat who was assassinated by extremist Islamists after signing 1979 peace treaty with Israel, and that of Mubarak that came to an end in early 2011.
It also saw the post-Mubarak military transitional rule, the Muslim Brotherhood-oriented President Mohamed Morsi who was overthrown by the military in July 2013 after a mass protest against his one-year rule, the military-outlined rule of interim President Adli Mansour and finally the current era of former military chief and now President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi who took office in mid-2014. Endit
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