Students call for general assembly on fate of dissolved Egyptian Student Union

Student union leaders from 16 universities across the country are planning a general assembly meeting to discuss the fate of the Egyptian Student Union (ESU), whose elections were voided in December by the Higher Education Ministry due to procedural errors. A date has not yet been set for the meeting.

The country’s largest official umbrella student organization, the ESU is composed of the elected presidents and vice presidents from student unions in public universities, their counterparts at Al-Azhar University and one representative of private universities.

Amr al-Helw — president of Tanta University student union and vice president of the dissolved ESU — told Mada Masr students suggested a general assembly meeting after the State Council announced it would not issue a ruling in the case. Alexandria University student union president Hesham Abdallah had filed an appeal against the elections results that was already before an administrative court, and the matter was therefore outside the council's jurisdiction, it said.

The ministry used Abdallah’s appeal as the basis for annulling the ESU elections, which brought Helw and Cairo University student union leader Abdullah Anwat to the leadership. The move prompted angry backlash from students, who claimed the decision was motivated by a desire to staunch the progressive student front that won the polls. Despite continued denials by the ministry, students further accused officials of backing the Voice of Egypt’s Students group, which is allegedly aligned with the government. The ministry then sent the case to the State Council, which postponed its ruling several times before bowing out altogether in February.

However, Abdallah declared that he dropped the appeal in a Facebook statement posted earlier this month. “The ministry made the situation extremely silly. I decided to withdraw my appeal in order not to be a tool used by the ministry to circumvent the will of the students,” he wrote. Abdallah’s retreat and the State Council’s refusal to issue a verdict have brought the legal battle back to square one.

Abdallah further stated that he supports a general assembly meeting to discuss the issue, and declared his allegiance to the elected ESU if the ministry decided to approve the election results. “If the election are to be held again, I’m not going to nominate myself,” he added.

This week, the official ESU Facebook page posted 16 requests from the student union representatives of 16 universities for a general assembly meeting. Helw said the students sent a fax to the ministry to ask for a hall in which to hold the meeting, “but we know the ministry won’t respond, which in practical terms means we will convene whether the ministry accepts [the request] or not.”

Helw claimed the fact that Abdallah has dropped his appeal against the elections puts the ministry in a hot seat. “The strength of the general assembly meeting lies in the fact that it will show the legitimacy of the ESU and the support it gets from all universities,” he argued. “If the ministry persists in its decision, it means that the ministry’s motives go beyond procedural errors” in the contested elections.

Fatma Serag, a lawyer at the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE), told Mada Masr that student union leaders now need to head back to the courts. “Now that student Hesham Abdallah withdrew his appeal, there are no legal appeals against the elections. This requires a judicial order to oblige the ministry to approve the elections results,” she explained.

Serag believes there are no legal grounds for the general assembly meeting in the absence of an elected ESU, but nonetheless, “it is a very strong political move by the students to pressure the universities, and an important step to approve the results of the entity that legally represents them.”