Dr. Mohamed Katatni, Secretary General of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), was announced today as FJP’s nominee for the People’s Assembly Chairman position
On the eve of Egypt’s historic revolution, last January 28, Katatni was detained by Mubarak’s state security together with Essam El-Erian and Mohamed Morsi, the current leaders of the party that garnered most seats in the first parliamentary elections following the revolution. Previously the leader of Muslim Brotherhood parliamentarians, Katatni is renowned for his moderate stances in parliament. He never went overboard with his objections during parliament sessions and continued to keep the country’s best interest in mind.
After the announcement of his win in the parliamentary seat in Minia, Katatni recalled the ironic twist after former NDP member Ahmed Ezz sarcastically prayed during the last parliamentary session that they (the NDP) succeed to take over the Muslim Brotherhood’s places. Ezz’s prayer could not have been more precise; the MB members were released from jails and the NDP and former regime affiliates responsible for oppressing a nation for over 30 years, are in fact sitting in their places, however, in jail.
It is without doubt that Katatni with his administrative expertise will successfully lead the Democratic Alliance (DA), which succeeded in securing more than 45% of the seats in the first elections held after the revolution. Together and in coordination with all the newly elected parliamentarians the new parliament will succeed in accomplishing all that the toppled regime continued to prevent them from achieving during the 2005 term. Under the new parliament, FJP MPs hope that Egypt’s glory will be restored and it will once again rise and be a leading nation in the region and the world.
Born on April 3, 1952, Katatni graduated in 1974 from the Faculty of Science and earned his Doctorate in Science in 1984. He later worked as a Professor teaching Microbiology in botanics at the Minia University and then became chairman of the division from 1994-1998. He earned a degree from the Faculty of Arts majoring in Islamic Studies in 2000 and was voted secretary general for the Minia’s university’s teaching committee, a post he kept from 1990-2006.
Katatni supervised over 21 research studies for Masters and Doctorates theses in the field of botanics, and has written 36 published research papers on plant diseases and microbiology. He is a member of the Egyptian Association of Plant Pathology, and a member of the Assembly Plant of Egypt, and Member of the Egyptian Society of Natural Toxins, and was a member of the Association for General and Applied Microbiology, before being elected as Secretary General of the Scientists Syndicate from 1984 to 1993. He was then elected chairman of the Scientists Syndicate in Minia.
Katatni emerged onto the political landscape after joining the Muslim Brotherhood to become a leading founder of the organizing committee between all political factions and syndicates. He later became chairman of the MB administrative office in Minia and was later elected MB MP in 2005 in the Bandar district in Minia. He was later elected leader of the MB parliamentary bloc, and then was elected a member of the MB’s Guidance Bureau, and was later chosen by the group as its media spokesman. Katatni represented the Egyptian parliament in numerous international conferences including a conference in Nairobi Kenya, in 2006 and another at the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. He is a co-founding member of the Arab Organization of Parliamentarians against corruption, and a member of the monitoring and steering group of the Parliamentary Reform Programme which is supervised by the Westminster Foundation in Britain.
