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As disgraced former US President Richard Nixon found out to his cost, it is not the crime that will get you in the end – it’s the cover-up.
And so to Cairo, where an MP from Egypt’s six-week-old parliament has learned this nostrum the hard way. Anwar al-Balkimy, a lawmaker from the Islamic fundamentalist al-Nour Party, was this week sacked by his bosses after it emerged he had lied about having a nose job. Not the most grievous of offenses it would seem – certainly not in Westminster, where it usually takes something really crooked to have the party whip withdrawn.
The trouble is that in accordance with Mr al-Balkimy’s regressive strain of Islam, undergoing rhinoplasty for anything other than medical reasons is expressly forbidden. It is not known whether the freshly-jettisoned MP had any clinical motive for undergoing the op. But given the Gallic proportions of Mr al-Balkimy’s pre-surgery proboscis, it is not beyond the realm of reason to assume he felt a nip here and a tuck there might enhance his political profile somewhat.
Islamic rulings aside (and though the MP’s transgression smacked of hypocrisy, it was not illegal in either a religious or criminal sense) he probably could have got away with it. But that was minus the arrival of the thing miscreant MPs should fear most – the botched cover-up.
For reasons as yet unknown, Mr al-Balkimy defied the orders of his plastic surgeon and absconded from his hospital bed in the dead of night. Soon afterwards, and equally mysteriously, he checked himself into
another hospital where following the arrival of curious journalists, he announced that he had been set upon by a gang of thugs and been robbed of more than £10,000.
In images that will no doubt haunt him for the rest of his career, photos of a bandaged and bedridden Mr al-Balkimy subsequently appeared in the national press. His party demanded a prompt investigation into the ‘attack’, while the Interior Ministry forwarded its apologies. But unfortunately for the MP, there was a sting in the tale.
The newspaper coverage attracted the attention of staff in the hospital where he underwent his nose job. They called the police, and in the process, appear to have called time on Mr al-Balkimy’s
fledgling political career.
Not that some of Egypt’s more liberal minded notables are particularly glum. On the contrary, the nation’s first political scandal of the post-revolutionary parliament has been warmly welcomed. Kareema Kamal, a columnist for daily newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm, described how “happy” she was after hearing about Mr al-Balkimy’s fall from grace. “Now we can see he is a human being and can commit mistakes,” she said.
