Cairo – Ramadan bags - food supply bags for the needy - lost their real humanitarian aim and turned to be just tools used by the political powers specially those of religious trends in order to achieve their electional targets under the name of supporting the poor during the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
The majority of political powers and civilian associations assert that Ramadan bags aim at helping the needy in bearing life expenses and supplying them with food commodities, however, its not completely clear of propaganda targets and may be financial also in which the civilian associations are keen on gaining more of businessmen and charitable people donations.
Muslim Brotherhood is trying also to gain large number of supporters of the poor by providing them with Ramadan bags to vote for the candidates belonging to the Islamist group.
To win the elections, every member of the Group distributes number of Ramadan bags range from 200 to 250 and that is the same range of the previous year, which means that Muslim Brotherhood members distribute about 20,000 of Ramadan bags this year in addition to school tools and financial advertisements.
For his part, Minister of social solidarity Dr Ali Moselhi held an extended meeting with the president of public unity for associations Dr Abdel Aziz Hegazy , the meeting was also attended by Non governmental organizations donating Ramadan bags. They all agreed to coordinate the distributions of the bags.
Moselhi said that its likely to distribute more than 3 millions of food supply bags this year .. adding that he coordinated with some of the parties to suppy Ramadan bags and to find suitable way to distribute them with giving the priority to families belonging to social solidarity.
On the other part, Saiid Abdel Hafiz, the rights activist said that political parties of different trends find it easy in slums and poor regions to use Ramadan bags to achieve their aims.
Political parties prefer to concentrate on serving the poor in order to gain voters rather than losing their energies and time in political affairs only, said Hafiz adding that the Egyptian voters are looking for concrete service like Ramadan bags.
