Plan to bring back Suez Canal statue stirs debate in Egypt

A proposal to bring back the statue of a French diplomat behind the idea to build the Suez Canal has stirred controversy in Egypt, with many saying it would be a salute to colonial times and a “humiliation” to the memory of tens of thousands of Egyptian laborers who died building the waterway in the 1860s. The debate started when the daily el-Shorouk reported last month that local authorities in the Mediterranean province of Port Said were thinking of returning the statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps to where it once stood, at the northern entrance of the canal. De Lesseps, who came to Cairo in 1833 as a consul and was later posted to Alexandria, had been inspired by the idea of joining the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.