Farouk Gouida (born 10 February 1946) is an Egyptian poet.Gouida's newspaper columns - criticising the privatization of state assets by politicians such as Atef Ebeid and Ahmed Nazif - were collected in Raping a Country (2010).[1] Writing in May 2011, Gouida characterized Hosni Mubarak's regime as guilty of "three crimes": floating the Egyptian pound in 2003; misusing public banks to grant easy loans to favoured businessmen; and indiscriminate privatization.[2]
In March 2012, he was announced as one of the members of the Constituent Assembly of Egypt.[3] He criticised the composition of the assembly, suggesting that 15 assembly members be replaced with constitutional law professors and legal experts.[4] and resigned from it in protest of the complementary constitutional declaration (November 2012).[5] In August he was reported by Al-Ahram as having turned down an offer from President Morsi to be culture secretary.[6]