Apparently new culture minister, Alaa Abdel Aziz, is getting good at his job. He seems to have firing people down to an art (pun intended). One of his biggest feats is instigating a large sit in outside the Ministry of Culture, which has been going on and growing for nearly a week. Abdul-Aziz has gone above and beyond his job description and claims that he is reconstructing the Ministry and is fighting corruption and introducing new faces. One of these new faces is Khaled Fahmy, a professor of Linguistics at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Monufeya, as head of the National Library and Archives. This “new” (and bearded) face is a member of the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs and his promotion outraged demonstrators, who expressed that the National Library and Archives are national property and should not be in the hands of Islamists.

Don’t worry; these protests haven’t turned into those other violent, traffic blocking demonstrations just yet. Appropriately, protestors have turned the sit-in into a huge cultural event with performances going down daily from 6pm. The sit-in participants have refused to leave until Minister Abdel Aziz has been removed. Perhaps he should show us a “new face” compliant with the ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ mentality and get his opera on with demonstrators.