It is an attempt to evade individual as well as national responsibility. The conspiracy theory is what losers resort to in order to justify their loss. This explains my astonishment at Mohamed Salmawy's comments. However, if Ahly claims its loss was due to a conspiracy, then any sound-minded person will take them for fools!

If Zamalek, for instance, beats Ahly, Ahly fans undoubtedly feel disappointed and may even be angry.

It is indeed an honorable defeat compared to our bid to host the 2010 World Cup when Egypt did not receive a single vote.Ĭompetitions necessarily mean there are winners and losers. So, was this a loss for Egyptians? Yes, and the result provides supporting evidence, but we can still find solace in the fact that it is an 'honorable defeat' because the Egyptian candidate received 27 votes only four votes short of his Bulgarian competitor. In fact, those who promote this conspiracy theory pose the greatest danger to Egypt in the long term. Worse than the defeat of the Egyptian candidate however, were the attempts to mislead the public by implying there was an international European-American-Israeli conspiracy against Egypt, Arabs and Muslims. Following Farouk Hosni's losing bid to UNESCO, official sources in Egypt said, 'The European-American alliance and the Jewish lobby managed to defeat the Egyptian candidate for UNESCO, Culture Minister Farouk Hosni who lost to his Bulgarian competitor Irina Bokova.' Mohamed Salmawy, president of the Egyptian Writers' Union described the result of the election as a dangerous development in the history of UNESCO and considered what happened to be a 'politicization' of an organization that should presumably rise above political disputes and work on building cultural ties between civilizations.

Ahly elyoum