Egyptian Lawmaker Resigns Amid Scandal Over Nose Job

from NYTimees.com

CAIRO — The first political scandal of Egypt’s fledgling electoral democracy erupted on Monday after an Islamist lawmaker was expelled from his ultraconservative party for fabricating a story that he was viciously beaten by masked gunmen.

Doctors said that in fact the bandages on his face covered up plastic surgery on his nose.

The lawmaker, Anwar el-Balkimy, had belonged to the Nour Party, part of the ultraconservative Salafi Islamist movement — Egypt’s religious right — whose members typically condemn plastic surgery as sinful, along with most music and other forms of popular entertainment.

At the private hospital where Mr. Balkimy was treated, doctors spoke out against what they called the brazenness of his lies.

But not before a solemn parade of his fellow lawmakers — including the speaker of the Parliament, Saad el-Katatni of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s more mainstream Islamist movement — had visited Mr. Balkimy in his hospital room to express their sympathies. Also not before his colleagues in the Nour Party had demanded the public questioning of the interior minister for his potential responsibility in the supposed attacks. State media reported that the ministry had sent a letter offering its own condolences.

Vain, self-aggrandizing and hypocritical politicians are, of course, as old as politics, even in Egypt. But for their foibles to blossom into public scandal requires conditions that are still a novelty here and elsewhere in the Arab world: lawmakers who win competitive elections with promises to honor their constituents, informants unafraid of extra-legal retribution from the powerful and a free press eager to expose the circus.

In this case, it took just 40 days since the Parliament was seated.

Nader Bakar, a spokesman for the Nour Party, said that in expelling Mr. Balkimy the party was establishing the principle of accountability, requiring public officials whose wrongdoing interferes with their duties to apologize and bear the responsibility — something he said was common around the world but still new in Egypt.

“We forced him, or more pushed him, to resign from the Parliament, and he kindly agreed,” Mr. Bakar said in an interview. “He signed an official apology to the general public; this is the official position,” he said. “He acknowledged that his story wasn’t true.”

Mr. Balkimy could not be reached for comment.

“We have always known that an individual could stick his nose in the people’s affairs," Al Masry Al Youm, the independent daily newspaper, quoted a blogger as saying. "This is the first time the people stick themselves in an individual’s nose, by which I mean, Balkimy’s.”