Topping coverage of Egypt in the international press this morning is the expulsionof MP Mohamed Anwar El Sadat from the House of Representatives, a move that has eroded parliament’s image and fed into the conventional Western trope of Egypt as a place where dissent is not tolerated. As we noted yesterday, the New York Times was the first out of the gate with a significant piece on the story and it’s spread like wildfire: Al Arabiya is positioning the expulsion as warning to the opposition, while the BBC and others have taken a positive line on El Sadat, who gained widespread credibility with rights groups at home and abroad for his opposition to the much-loathed NGO Act.

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