What happened with the justice minister is that he expressed in words out right what has been policy for decades. He expressed that only certain people will be allowed privileged positions. This does not apply only to the judiciary but to the police and perhaps even higher ranks in the army.
Perhaps nepotism is one thing and expressing it outright is another. The backlash against the justice minister’s discriminatory remarks that contradict Article 53 of the 2014 constitution seems exaggerated. It’s not that they weren’t classist and deserved that much of an outburst, it’s that people sounded too shocked about it, knowing full well this is standard government policy. That’s how state institutions empower themselves, it happens in universities, with doctors, with judges, with police and with army. The head of the army is related to the president who was the former defense minister and head of military intelligence.
In an interview the head of the judges club Ahmed El Zind also made the statement along the lines of ‘We (the judges) are the masters and the others are the slaves’.
This attitude is prevalent and there have been other leaks that show the head of a security directorate making the same claims, that they’re the masters of the country.
Intelligence agencies don’t have anything other than Sunni Muslims. You don’t find Christian General Intelligence officers, or Bedouins or god forbid Shiite or Baha’i.* The entire system is built not just on class, because many of those who rose to power had humble origins, but on a collection of adhoc discriminatory criteria.
There is a current security wave, and the evident signs are politicized verdicts and state security threats to activists. It is highly doubtful that the Minister of Justice had to go solely based on the public outcry against his statements, although there’s no denying they may have contributed, but it depends on his successor. In the midst of the raging battle between security agencies, the next minister of justice will be highly politicized serving a security agenda. It is almost inevitable he will be just as bigoted as his predecessor, but this time he might just keep his mouth shut about these unadvertised discriminatory policies.
Nevertheless it is good to imagine there's a precedence for an official being removed for making bigoted statements.
*Correction: There are high ranking women, bedouins and Christians in General Intelligence I've been told from someone I trust.
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