The Muslim Brotherhood has tasked Deputy General Guide Khairat al-Shater with preparing what it calls a “renaissance project,” a Brotherhood source has said.
The project comprises short-, mid- and long-term visions for Egypt’s administration, education program, health problems and economy.
Shater sought the help of advisers from Turkey, Malaysia, South Africa and Singapore, in addition to Egyptian experts, to devise the project. The source said a large budget had been allocated to it.
The source said Shater intends to capitalize on Singapore’s experience in improving its administration, South Africa’s experience in creating a national dialogue, and Turkey and Malaysia’s experience in encouraging investment, achieving development, and improving its educational system and economy.
The Brotherhood has already started to prepare the project, as it expects its Freedom and Justice Party to win a parliamentary majority and lead the country, or at least to win enough seats to give it considerable power.
The Freedom and Justice Party gained 45 percent of the seats in the first phase of the elections. The Salafi Nour Party came in second, with over 20 percent.
Translated from the Arabic Edition
So here's the real news. Alaa al-Aswany, dentist, revolutionary (he'd like that bit) and author of the astonishing The Yacoubian Building, is producing a new novel. He writes in the morning when he's not fixing, cleaning or yanking out teeth. It will be called The Automobile Club of Egypt and will be set in the 1940s, yet just the faintest whiff of tear gas may penetrate its pages. "At the end of the novel, I had to imagine how it was to be a rebel and to say 'No'," he tells me in his dentist's surgery. "And, by coincidence, we had the revolution here!" His book on the overthrow of Mubarak is already selling well. On the State of Egypt: What Made the Revolution Inevitable. Disclosure: his English publisher is also mine. But enough puffery for the Dentist of Cairo.
Aswany is actually a humble man, a professor in the art of staying on the sidelines of the revolution while acting as its commentator and, at times, its instigator. "I'm not a politician," he booms. His dentist's chair sits menacingly behind me. "I said I would never hold any post whatever [in government]. I am a writer and I will remain a writer. When I go to Tahrir Square, they ask me to make speeches. But most of the time, I prefer just to be with the people."
But he's a critic, too, and drills away at the decaying bits of last February's "successful" overthrow of Mubarak. "The biggest mistake of the revolution was that overthrowing Mubarak was too good to be true. Three million people were celebrating. Twenty to thirty thousand, maximum, were saying, 'We must not leave the square, we must elect representatives of the revolution in every city'. But these people were seen as suspicious, as too aggressive. I know now that they were right."
Even now, Aswany says, there is a whole department for the security state in Egypt. "One of the goals of the revolution was to bring these criminals to justice. Nothing happened. Now we have the security state working at full power. Drug dealers have infiltrated the square. The thugs then suddenly disappeared when the elections came. You don't have to be intelligent to know that these thugs are still under instructions. They disappear for elections and now they are returning."
The Minister of Justice himself, Aswany goes on – his voice turns to loud thunder at this point – said that 450,000 paid thugs were working for the police in Egypt. "Documents were published in Tahrir newspaper which included a letter from a security official to his superior saying that 'We now have on duty in Cairo 69,000 thugs' – this is after the revolution. Of course, the Minister of the Interior denied this and said there was no police official with this name.
The Minister of the Interior said seven times that 'We don't have snipers in the Ministry of the Interior.' Then we discovered there is an official Department of Snipers in the Ministry of the Interior – and that one sniper must always accompany every unit of security troops. So this minister is either lying, or he doesn't know anything about his ministry."
By an extraordinary coincidence, just a few hours after Aswany talks to me, the Egyptian press announces that a man nicknamed the "Eye Sniper" – his picture, in uniform, actually appeared on the front pages, identifying him as Lieutenant Mahmoud al-Shinnawi – has handed himself in for questioning by state prosecutors. An Egyptian human rights group documented 60 cases of protesters with eye injuries and the lieutenant was filmed apparently aiming rubber-coated steel bullets at protesters' heads. One of Aswany's fellow dentists, Ahmed Harara, lost an eye in the January-February revolution. He lost his other eye in the police attack last month.
"I think there was an agreement between the Muslim Brotherhood [largely the winners in the first round of parliamentary elections] and the army that, after 10 months, crises could be fabricated – that there should be pressure put on the people to come to hate the revolution. But then – surprise – on 19 November, the people went to the street to defend the revolution again.
"The Military Council are now, I think, trying to find another source of legitimacy. They are only there because of the revolution. Mubarak resigned and transmitted his authority to them – which is unconstitutional. It doesn't make sense. Mubarak was no longer in his post. In the 1971 constitution, there is no mention of a Military Council. So now they want to have a base other than the revolution – the elections! They are saying that Tahrir Square no longer represents Egypt. The truth is that we had fair voting – but we didn't have fair elections."
Aswany excoriates the judge who allowed former Mubarak National Democratic Party (NDP) members – originally banned from political life – to stand as candidates in this election under different party names. "What is this?" Aswany roars. "If I lose my dentist's licence, would I be able to go and work as a dentist in another hospital? The NDP have been looking into every detail of the revolutionary groups, accusing them of taking money from abroad. But they closed their eyes to the millions of dollars which came from the Gulf to the Salafists and the Brotherhood."
Aswany has a caustic view of the Muslim Brotherhood, which won around 35 per cent of the vote in the first round of national elections, and expresses this in an almost Hogarthian way. "You know the story of the Brotherhood candidate who was in a café when someone told him his wife was entertaining her lover at the candidate's home? So the candidate goes home and finds his wife with her lover. And he just says to his wife, very calmly: 'You are divorced.' And, as he leaves, one of the neighbours asks him why he's so calm. He replies: 'I'm not stupid enough to lose two votes.'"
The Military Council, Aswany says, invited Egyptians abroad to vote. The Egyptians in the Gulf went easily through the registration procedure, but, in Europe and America, the registration was slow. Egyptians in the Gulf are likely to support Islamist parties. "The Council told Egyptians abroad they had the right to vote – but it proved complicated."
Aswany says he thinks he knows why the people of Egypt went to the polls in such numbers last month. "The Military Council said that the voters were showing support for them (because they arranged the elections). But no. The people were voting to get rid of the Council and to push the country ahead. The people who voted were not revolutionaries, but they thought: 'If this is the way for a democracy, then we're going to do it'. We are talking about a real revolution – but this takes time, to get rid of the old regime and build a new one."
The Dentist and the Ancien Régime. A novel? Or contemporary history?
A LIFE IN BRIEF
Born: 26 May 1957 in Cairo, Egypt– the only child of the novelist and lawyer Abbas al-Aswany. Now lives in Cairo with wife and three children.
Education: Attended the Lycée Français in Cairo. In order to have a stable career he studied dentistry at Cario University. Moved to the US in 1985 to study dentistry at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
Career: His novel 'The Yacoubian Building', a portrayal of modern Egyptian life told through the characters in a downtown Cairo apartment building, was published in 2002 and remained the bestselling novel in the Arab world for five years. It has been translated into 23 languages and was adapted into a television series and a film. This year Aswany released a collection of essays entitled 'On The State Of Egypt: What Made The Revolution Inevitable'.
Automne arabe
Gilles Hertzog
Manifestation au Yémen
Faute de savoir nager, quid de l’idée de se baigner ?
Faut-il ne pas s’aventurer, faut-il apprendre la nage avant, dans un manuel, « au tableau noir », afin, une fois dans l’eau, de ne pas risquer la tasse ou la noyade ? Ou faut-il s’y essayer sans préalable – c’est en nageant qu’on devient forgeron – serait-ce au prix de quelques tasses salées ? Bref, entrer dans l’eau une fois qu’on sait nager. Ou bien avant, en vue de savoir nager, un jour, comme vous et moi.
Telle est posée – et le trait est à peine forcé – la question du passage à la démocratie dans les pays arabo-musulmans, à la suite du Printemps arabe. Partout, on ne le sait que trop, les premières élections libres ont donné le pouvoir aux mouvements islamistes, rien moins que démocratiques, quelles que soient leurs dénégations et leurs engagements pour l’avenir.
Appliquons le dilemme natatoire à la question démocratique.
Faut-il que les peuples soient suffisamment « mûrs », suffisamment « prêts », suffisamment éduqués, et les classes moyennes urbanisées suffisamment étoffées, pour ne pas, à peine libres, que les masses déshéritées des mégapoles et les campagnes « arriérées » votent, par ignorance, soumission ancestrale, revanche ou crainte de l’inconnu, en faveur de nouveaux maîtres valant largement les anciens et prêts à refermer la parenthèse démocratique derrière eux ?Ou bien la démocratie est-elle un patient apprentissage, l’esprit et les moeurs démocratique s’acquièrent-il « à l’usage », sur le tas, à travers les inévitables balbutiements, les inévitables soubresauts, les régressions et les luttes politiques, culturelles, sociétales de longue durée que les instituteurs de la démocratie doivent livrer contre ses adversaires successifs (qui lui doivent droit de cité et d’expression) ?
Réponse : la démocratie comme pratique et institution, loin de sortir de la cuisse de l’Histoire comme une épiphanie, un couronnement en majesté d’un processus parvenu à maturation, est à elle-même sa propre École, sa propre fabrique. Son avènement est toujours improbable, ses premiers pas généralement chaotiques, son cours aléatoire. Elle façonne tout au long d’un chemin intranquille ses protocoles, suscite pas après pas ses très variés défenseurs : elle est, par nature, construction dans le temps, « work in progress ». Étrangère à toute transcendance, elle se reconnait instrumentale et faillible. Crime suprême aux yeux de tous les intégrismes dans leur fantasme de guérison du corps social des miasmes de l’Histoire, l’idée démocratique, loin de tout messianisme, de toute refonte de la condition humaine, est basée sur la relativité des choses, la liberté des individus, la pluralité des intérêts. Le dissensus y va de pair avec le compromis. Autrement dit, comme la qualifiait Churchill, la démocratie est le pire des régimes après tous les autres.
Ainsi qu’au Maroc, les milieux libéraux, urbains, occidentalisés, qui, au Caire, à Tunis, à Benghazi, furent les artisans majeurs du renversement des dictatures égyptienne, libyenne, tunisienne, yéménite, ont perdu les premières élections libres (et, selon toutes probabilités, ils les perdront, demain en Libye, au Yemen, après-demain en Syrie). Ils auront, à leur corps défendant, tiré les marrons électoraux du feu pour leurs adversaires islamistes sortis enfin au grand jour (les Frères musulmans) ou surgis du bois sans crier gare (les Salafistes), qui, à eux deux, ont raflé la mise. Tels les « idiots utiles », ces belles âmes de gauche qui faisaient jadis le jeu des staliniens par naïveté et auto-aveuglement, les libéraux arabes ont troqué des demi-dictatures finissantes contre un nouvel oppresseur idéologico-religieux, bien plus radical et résolu à régir la société en profondeur, que les maîtres vermoulus et pro-occidentaux d’hier, qui s’arrogeaient la sphère politico-militaire et quelques pans économiques juteux, mais, laissaient peu ou prou la bride sur le cou à la société civile, y toléraient dans une certaine mesure les vents de la modernité, dont ils jouissaient en propre.
Face à ce tsunami islamiste d’automne, la blogosphère sur les bords de la Seine et ailleurs retentit des « On vous l’avez bien dit », « Vous avez joué avec le feu », « L’islam n’est pas soluble dans la démocratie », « L’islamisme est la pire des dictatures » et autres déplorations plus ou moins affectées.
Contre les prophètes de malheur et les doctes de tous bords, attachés à jeter le bébé Démocratie avec l’eau du bain des élections, il importe, en ces temps de basses eaux géopolitiques, où le Printemps, place Tahrir, est accusé d’avoir accouché de cet Automne arabe, de s’inscrire en faux contre l’idée que la démocratie ne serait décidément pas faite pour les peuples du sud de la Méditerranée et que l’avenir arabe s’écrirait avec la seule encre du Coran.
Pour commencer, rappelons avec humilité que les premières élections libres au suffrage universel en France et en Europe ont presque partout vu le triomphe des conservateurs et des tenants de l’ordre ancien. Sous la Seconde République, les élections à la Constituante d’avril 1848, l’élection présidentielle de 1852, puis, de nouveau, à la chute du second Empire, les élections législatives de 1871 virent, à chaque fois, les anti-républicains l’emporter haut la main sur les Républicains et Paris.
Les peuples issus d’une longue histoire, confrontés à une donne politique inédite venue d’ailleurs, leur condition de dominés n’ayant jamais changé quels qu’aient été les changements au sommet d’États toujours lointains et toujours oppressifs, font, sollicités, preuve d’une saine circonspection face aux incertitudes d’un avenir dans les limbes, doutent de promesses trop belles ou trop abstraites pour être crues, et se raccrochent, lors des premiers scrutins libres, aux valeurs éprouvées – la religion en tête –, se tournant, pour désigner leurs représentants, vers les figures morales depuis toujours familières.
Le passé n’est pas encore mort, le futur n’est pas encore là. Dans les années 30, Gramsci, depuis sa geôle mussolinienne, écrivait : « Le monde ancien a déjà disparu, le nouveau monde n’est pas encore là. C’est dans cet entre-deux que les monstres apparaissent. »
L’islamisme serait un de ces « monstres », prédits et analysés par Gramsci.Ce « monstre » que serait l’islamisme est-il, comme le fut en Europe le fascisme, un entre-deux, une forme historique transitoire, le passage obligé entre les dictatures d’hier et la démocratie de demain ?
Tout mouvement religieux qui se transporte dans la sphère politique en vue de dupliquer l’ordre du spirituel sur l’ordre du réel, inscrire dans la Cité son Credo, tout clergé qui s’emploie à changer l’ordre séculier des choses, moraliser la société et épurer le cœur des hommes non plus par la lettre sacrée et le prosélytisme mais par la loi et la coercition, tout parti spirituel qui s’avise de régenter hic et nunc la société, serait-ce avec son agrément et dans l’illusion lyrique des aubes nouvelles, peu ou prou se désacralise, corrompt sa posture de départ, altère ses belles mains immaculées dès lors qu’il s’ingénie à pétrir la pâte humaine dans ses compartiments publics et privés. Pâte humaine d’abord consentante, puis, devant la contrainte morale croissante, les restrictions et les privations de liberté, de moins en moins docile, de plus en plus dissidente et finalement rebelle.
Trois cas de figure. La Turquie, l’Iran, l’Afghanistan.Premier cas de figure, la Turquie. Le fiasco iranien ayant valeur de leçon, face au réel qui résiste, face aux impératifs de la gestion politique, économique, sociale, du pays, face aux intérêts antagonistes des diverses catégories et couches sociales que ne suffit pas à transcender l’unanimisme religieux officiel, face aux contradictions entre le dogme et la modernité (tourisme occidental et marginalisation des femmes ; capitalisme et interdiction du prêt à intérêt), le pouvoir politique, dont la religiosité et le rigorisme affichés s’opposent à priori au libertarisme et à l’esprit d’innovation tous azimuts qu’implique une société ouverte (économie de l’information, éducation supérieure, féminisation générale des métiers), va très vite composer avec les élites techniciennes de la société civile et se « laïciser » sans équivoque. A telle enseigne que l’AKP d’Erdogan est passé en dix ans sans coup férir, de l’islam militant à un islamisme « light » et un économisme sans fard.
Deuxième cas de figure, l’Iran. Le pouvoir, là quasi-exclusivement religieux, rétif à toute alliance externe et s’avérant très tôt impuissant à accoucher de l’ordre meilleur et juste qu’il avait annoncé, ses clercs se sont figés peu à peu sur leurs positions de pouvoir et ne tiennent plus aujourd’hui que par la répression et la fraude électorale. Il suffit de comparer l’espérance qu’avait soulevé Khomeiny, il y a trente-cinq ans, et l’hostilité générale, aujourd’hui, des Iraniens, bourgeoisies en tête, à l’encontre du régime des Mollahs et leurs suppôts Pasdarans.
Troisième cas de figure, l’Afghanistan hier des Talibans. L’application littérale des lois coraniques et de la charia, mise en œuvre avec toute l’intransigeance et l’inhumanité dont ont fait preuve les Fous de Dieu, la déroute ne s’est faite pas attendre.
L’idéologie radicale, mise aux postes de commandement du politique, conduit à l’asphyxie de la société et, à court terme, à la confrontation avec le monde extérieur. Sans parler de Cuba ou de la Corée du Nord, l’Afghanistan et l’Iran sont là pour rappeler aux masses arabes tentées par l’islamisme politique, la faillite programmée de leurs attentes d’un changement de leur condition de dominés.
Les mêmes causes produisant les mêmes effets, l’islamisme n’est en rien « la solution » dans l’ordre politique et social qu’il se targue d’être dans l’ordre spirituel. Les masses arabes d’Egypte et ailleurs, en feraient-elles demain l’expérience, ne manqueraient pas d’en payer le prix. Conscients de l’appréhension intérieure et extérieure qu’ils suscitent, les Frères musulmans ne cessent d’invoquer l’AKP turque comme le modèle à suivre.
Ce pas en arrière qu’est l’islamisme politique parvenu désormais au pouvoir est-il, dans les conditions socio-culturelles actuelles du monde arabo-musulman, une étape obligée sur le chemin difficile de la démocratie ?
Admettons le théorème de Gramsci, sa théorie de l’entre-deux et du « monstre » intermédiaire.
Qu’est-ce qui pourrait, cependant, borner la « monstruosité » du monstre islamiste, le travailler de l’intérieur dans le sens d’une germination à rebours de la démocratie ? Quels vers démocratiques dans le fruit islamiste ? Quelle « gangrène » salutaire ?
Sans parler des réalités économiques qui invitent au réalisme aux dépens de l’idéologie, sans parler des noyaux libéraux occidentalisés déjà en résistance et des minorités religieuses sur la défensive (tentées par l’exil, comme les Coptes d’Egypte ou les chrétiens d’Irak), sans parler de l’ouverture minimale incompressible sur l’extérieur et à la mondialisation, sans parler des castes militaires qui ne se laisseront pas déposséder de leurs privilèges et de leur pouvoir d’Etat, les sociétés arabes sont, plus encore que d’autres, en attente d’un progrès matériel et humain qu’elles savent, en effet, à portée de main, en raison de la manne pétrolière dont elles exigent en vain depuis cinquante ans la dé-confiscation et la redistribution collective. La religion n’est plus la grande affaire, la question sociale oui. Le bien-être, la société d’affluence et de consommation, un mode de vie plus libre, telles sont les grandes aspirations collectives, les rêves réalistes de citoyens télévisuels qui vivent de plus en plus à l‘heure d’Al Jezirah et d’Internet, n’ignorent plus rien de leur infériorisation politique, économique et sociale. L’ordre sociétal n’est plus vécu comme une fatalité mais comme un déni. Les grèves, en marge du Printemps arabe, se sont multipliées. L’islam, au niveau populaire, agit moins comme support de l’ordre établi que comme ferment protestataire, et fait obligation de justice sociale. A cet égard, Frères musulmans et salafistes n’ont qu’à bien se tenir ; leur idéologie de la charité comme remède aux inégalités et à la précarité de masse ne fera pas longtemps illusion. Il est attendu d’eux non pas plus de religion, comme on serait tenté le croire, mais rien moins que la fin de la misère, plus de travail, plus de justice, plus de droits et de protection. Rien n’est moins sûr qu’ils procèdent beaucoup mieux dans ces domaines sans appel que les oligarchies prédatrices qui les ont précédé.Enfin, la forêt islamiste cachant l’arbre laïque, on n’a guère perçu un phénomène qui, quoiqu’extrêmement minoritaire et souterrain, gagne du terrain, du Maghreb aux abords du Nil : l’athéisme. De même que nos sociétés occidentales ont connu une lente déchristianisation qui, aujourd’hui, semble quasi-consommée, les sociétés arabo-musulmanes au sud de la Méditerranée connaissent les premiers frémissements de ce « mal » séculier. Il est beaucoup trop tôt pour parler de dé-islamisation, mais laïcs et séculiers vous confient souvent, en privé, leur peu de foi.
Le vent de la liberté qui a soufflé à Tunis, Benghazi et au Caire, ne rentrera pas aisément dans sa boîte. Les masses ont découvert l’arme de la rébellion, la force du nombre. Les islamistes qui ont récupéré cette lame de fond populaire, le jour où leur politique forcément déceptive, car sectaire et contraignante, fera se retourner contre eux, pourraient bien essuyer un second Printemps arabe, de seconde génération.
Pour l’heure, libéraux, démocrates, laïcs, séculiers ont à tenir bon, résister pied à pied, à l’Université, dans la presse et ailleurs, sur les réseaux sociaux, sur le front des libertés et de la culture.
Ils ont perdu une bataille, mais pas perdu la guerre.
Mots-clefs : Afghanistan, AKP, Al Jezirah, arabe, Churchill, Coran, Corée du Nord, Cuba, démocratie, Egypte, Erdogan, Europe, frères musulmans, Gramsci, histoire, Iran, islamisme, Khomeiny, laïcité, Libye, Maroc, musulman, Pasdarans, place Tahrir, printemps arabe, République, Révolution, Syrie, Talibans, TurquieLundi 26 décembre 2011 à 12:06.
In a mix of celebration and agitation on Wednesday, tens of thousands of Egyptians gathered in Tahrir Square, the crucible of the revolution that overthrew former President Hosni Mubarak.
En Égypte, un an après le départ de Moubarak, les activistes ont choisi de dénoncer les violences de l'armée en diffusant dans la rue les vidéos qui les prouvent. Un projet appelé "Kazeboon" (menteurs en arabe). Il a été suivi sur place par deux auteurs, Marion Lippmann et Brice Lambert, qui l'ont raconté dans un texte que nous rééditons ici.
La photo d’un soldat tabassant un civil flotte dans les airs. Entourées d’une centaine de personnes, deux jeunes femmes brandissent fermement l’image. Une passante, choquée, fonce sur elles et hurle :
Partez, partez ! On ne veut pas de vous ici !
Vendredi, 19 heures, sur la place du marché d’Ard El Lewa, un quartier populaire de Gizeh, l’ambiance est électrique. Un écran, érigé au centre de la place, diffuse des vidéos de militaires qui brutalisent des civils. Certains piétons, intrigués, s’arrêtent pour regarder. D’autres, anxieux, préfèrent passer leur chemin. De grosses enceintes diffusent un son puissant, qui peine a masquer les bruits des cafés et des vendeurs d’oranges.
Menteurs
Depuis trois semaines, des dizaines d’événements semblables investissent les rues du Caire, d’Alexandrie ou d’Assiout. Tous relèvent de l’initiative “Kazeboon”, comprendre “Menteurs”. Le projet est simple : organiser des projections de vidéos sur la voie publique pour attiser la curiosité des passants et “rétablir la vérité” sur les confrontations entre civils et militaires. Désormais, la révolution se joue à coup de vidéo-projecteurs et de clips estampillés YouTube.
Après la diffusion d’une vidéo par le Conseil suprême des forces armées (CSFA) montrant des civils en train de défoncer consciencieusement un bâtiment, des jeunes ont réagi à ce qu’ils considèrent comme une manipulation en projetant à leur tour des vidéos chocs. Au détour des rues du Caire, des écrans montrent ainsi des militaires armés qui tirent sur des jeunes, qui asphyxient les manifestants à la lacrymo ou qui frappent à coups de bâton des femmes à terre.
Sur la place du marché, la tension monte et les débats sont passionnés. Les slogans volent, les insultes aussi. “A bas le CSFA !”. “Taisez-vous, c’est vous les menteurs !”. “Arrêtez avec vos bêtises, laissez-nous vivre en paix !”, lance un père accompagné de ses enfants. Mais la vingtaine d’organisateurs ne se laisse impressionner ni par l’hostilité de certains passants furieux, ni par le risque de représailles de l’armée. “Je ne céderai pas à la peur, car il faut bien que certains d’entre nous agissent” assure Wahel Mohamed, l’un des responsables de l’initiative.
Il sait pourtant que rares sont ceux qui restent assis pendant le générique dans ce genre de projections. Celle organisée quelques jours auparavant à Zamalek, un quartier huppé du Caire, avait par exemple dû être interrompue après seulement quelques minutes de diffusion, une dizaine de personnes ayant provoqué une bagarre au tout début de la séance. “Probablement des personnes payées par l’armée ou la police” suppose Ahmed El Lozy, journaliste et organisateur de l’événement.
Un an jour pour jour après les premiers soubresauts de la révolution égyptienne, initiée le 25 janvier 2011, le climat politique est à l’orage. Un fossé s’est en effet creusé entre les Égyptiens qui ne soutiennent plus la révolution et qui souhaitent un retour au calme et la minorité qui continue de manifester inlassablement pour réclamer le transfert du pouvoir aux civils. Et si les incidents entre manifestants et passants se multiplient lors des marches organisées dans les rues du Caire pour appeler les citoyens à se soulever, certains activistes admettent avoir une part de responsabilité dans ce rejet. Ahmed El-Lozy :
Nous ne sommes pas des criminels, c’est un mensonge du Conseil suprême des forces armées. Mais nous n’expliquons pas assez aux gens ce pour quoi nous nous battons. La seule chose qu’ils retiennent, ce sont les embouteillages que nous générons. Par ailleurs, les blogs, Twitter et Facebook, c’est très bien, mais les gens qui s’y intéressent sont déjà acquis à nos idées. Or, il est vain de se battre pour un état de droit si le peuple n’est pas derrière nous.
Pour renouer le lien avec la population, les activistes ont donc décidé de faire descendre YouTube dans la rue et de privilégier les actions de proximité. Dans les quartiers populaires, où l’accès à Internet est encore rare, des projections publiques sont organisées. Dans les quartiers plus riches, des DVD gravés sont distribués afin de permettre aux habitants de les visionner en toute discrétion. Des Comités de défense de la révolution sont présents dans chaque quartier du Caire.
Leurs membres vont à la rencontre des habitants, pour expliquer leurs revendications. “Souvent, lorsque ces gens réalisent qu’ils connaissent l’un des manifestants de la Place Tahrir, ils mettent un visage sur notre mouvement et cessent de nous voir comme une masse d’excités”, explique Wahel Mohamed, qui participe au Comité du quartier d’Ard El Lewa.
Les habitants eux-mêmes sont incités à devenir acteurs du mouvement : la page Facebook de Kazeboon appelle toute personne ayant été témoin de violences militaires à partager ses documents. Et l’initiative prend de l’ampleur, dépassant mêmes les frontières. Depuis deux semaines, Londres, Rome, Paris et les grandes villes américaines ou canadiennes ont vu débarquer sur leurs murs les vidéos de « Kazeboon ». Aucune n’était hébérgée sur Megavideo.
Initialement publié sur The Ground sous le titre “Egypte : la révolution sera télévisée“
Photos par Marion Lippmann et Brice Lambert, au Caire, Égypte.
First, a word about the people who make this possible. Our “In Translation” series is brought to you by the good folks at Industry Arabic. If you need anything translated — press articles, specialised reports, academic documents, anything! — I really recommend going to them. I’ve been referring people to them for over a year and heard only great feedback. They’re fast, professional, can work in all sorts of Arabic dialects and multiple European languages. And even if you need to translate from Arabic to Eskimo, just ask them. You never know.
As many readers know, the selection process for Egypt’s constituent assembly — which will write the country’s next constitution by next March at the latest — was decided a week ago. After weeks of debate, the Islamist majority in parliament (the Muslim Brothers and the Salafists) decided to keep 50 of the 100 seats for MPs. Secular forces have long advocated that the constituent assembly should be diverse, and there are more worrying indications that the Salafists want to blackball any figures they consider too secular. There is a growing movement to deny both parliament and the assembly legitimacy, either on constitutional grounds (the parliament may be declared unconstitutional in a case that has moved from the Appeals Court to the Supreme Constitutional Court) or simply because many feel the assembly should be as representative as possible — if it looks like parliament, it will include few minorities or women, for instance.
This is a serious issue, and not just for liberals and leftists. If there is a sizeable number of people who think the constitution is illegitimate and the consensus around is weak, there is a risk down the line that this would make a coup (soft or hard) easier. Egypt will be naturally coup-prone in the next few years, and while the Brothers say they want consensus, the Salafists have a more winner-takes-all approach and want to nominate figures such as Sheikh Mohammed Hassan, a popular preacher, who will push for a very strict interpretation of Sharia.
The commentary below is by Ziad Bahaa-Eldin, a lawyer and former head of the Stock Exchange and Investment Authority who was elected to parliament in Asiut, on the Social Democratic Party list (part of the Egyptian Bloc). Bahaa-Eldin is a widely respected technocrat, someone with extensive legislative experience (he wrote several laws over past decade governing investment, and during his tenure at the investment authority won much applaud for cutting red tape). His article is important in that it reflects the potential for rejection of the future constitution by a significant part of the political spectrum, rather than a document that has wide consensus, and the increasing polarisation of politics.
Update: Liberal parties have abandoned the nomination of the constituent assembly in protest.
The Constituent Assembly and the Crisis of Consensus
By Ziad Bahaa-Eldin, al-Shorouk, 20 March 2012
Last Saturday afternoon, the plan designed to achieve consensus among the political forces hit a setback, at least in regards to drafting a new constitution for Egypt in which all of society’s forces participate. The setback occurred when the major parties in Parliament limited deliberation and discussion, and in a few, brief minutes made use of the majority they enjoy as they rushed to finalize the formation of an assembly to draft the constitution. They decided that half the members of the Constituent Assembly will be drawn from the ranks of MPs, and the other half from outside of Parliament. It is true that it may be said the decision to form the Constituent Assembly was reached in a democratic manner, and through a peaceful, legal vote that expresses the right of the majority to impose its opinion when it likes. This is true under normal circumstances. However, this description does not apply to what happened with the formation of the constituent assembly, because it involves an unnecessary maneuver, and because it concerns the pressing issue on the scene that is most in need of consensus right now – that is, drafting the constitution and forming the Constituent Assembly tasked to do so.
The unnecessary maneuver was that two weeks ago, the majority party announced its position that only 40% of the Constituent Assembly should be drawn from MPs. We imagined that this left room for reflection, deliberation and discussion to reach the required consensus. Then suddenly, mere minutes before voting was to take place, the leader of the party’s parliamentary block announced that this percentage had been increased to 50%, and the issue ended with the agreement of the two main parties, as if no other parties or points of view existed, and as if they had no interest in allowing any type of deliberation or discussion. I know well that these other parties only represent a minority, and that their opinion might not have an impact on the final result, but how can we talk about consensus if matters are decided without a discussion and exchange of views? This is a dangerous indication that consensus will be a slogan invoked for secondary issues, while in important issues, it will be enough to rely on their guaranteed majority to snuff out any real debate or discussion, or attempt to bring different perspectives together. Consensus does not mean that the majority has to abandon its views or yield to the minority’s opinion; however, it does mean that there should at least be deliberation before major decisions are taken, that an attempt should be made to reconcile different perspectives and concessions should be made on some demands out of consideration for preserving unified ranks. But none of this took place on Saturday.
The difference between 40% and 50% may seem trivial, such that this reaction is undeserved. However, the reality is that the issue does not only concern the numbers, but also the logic of forming the Constituent Assembly and its relation to Parliament. This Parliament was elected to carry out its legislative and supervisory role, and to select the members of the Constituent Assembly – not to arrogate unto itself half the seats in the Constituent Assembly. The result is that all of Egypt – including all its legal, constitutional and academic experts, labor leaders, NGOS, judges, intellectuals, and writers, men and women, Muslims and Christians, people young and old – all of them will be represented in the Constituent Assembly by 50 people, while the MPs alone have reserved the remaining half for themselves. This means that we have lost the historic opportunity for the Constituent Assembly to express the diversity, wealth, expertise and capabilities that Egyptian society contains, because we have decided to limit ourselves to this narrow field out of concern for their party majority and from fear of losing control of what this would bring about. Egypt deserves a constitution in keeping with her legal history and her standing in the Arab nation, and she deserves to have her constitution written by her best and most expert sons. However, the MPs have decided to undertake themselves a task for which they are not necessarily the most qualified.
On the other hand, last Saturday the parliamentary majority unfortunately ignored all the proposals put forward by the minority parties about guaranteeing a quota for the representation of women, Christians and other sectors and currents of society. This forebodes that the formation of the Constituent Assembly will hold the same flaw as that which tarnished the formation of the Parliament itself, where the representation of women and Christians does not exceed 2%, something that is shameful by every measure. Although this was indeed the election result, there was at least the opportunity to correct this situation in the Constituent Assembly in order to express a wider spectrum of opinion within Egyptian society and to move beyond clear-cut party lines. It would also have been a chance to express the consensus necessary to draft a constitution and construct a nation for all Egyptians, of whatever creed, conviction, personal interest or party affiliation. But for the Parliament to replicate itself in a miniature assembly governed by party affiliation alone is a great loss and an irreplaceable opportunity.
The plan to achieve consensus faltered on Saturday, and the experience of this day will cast its shadow on the entire next stage, and on a number of decisions the Parliament and the Constituent Assembly are expected to make. In these circumstances, the political and social forces that have been excluded from the decision-making process will have to make up their minds quickly. They can either be active participants – within the bounds of their fair share of society – or they will find no choice but to withdraw from a scene that does not recognize them, and does not give them a chance for true, equal participation in the decision-making process.
Irvine, CA, & Cairo, Egypt - There has never been any coordination between them, but over the coming months, the actions of the Ultras and the labour movement could well determine the future of revolutionary politics in Egypt.
Both movements, with their strong working class roots, have been at the front lines of protest in Egypt in the last decade, with institutional memories of opposing unjust rulers, whether in the football stadiums or the factories, going back much further. Each played a crucial role in the 18-day uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.
Years of experience - and often exuberance while - fighting riot police and security forces put the Ultras at the front lines of the early battles of Tahrir, and every battle since. For its part, decades of sit-ins, strikes and other acts of civil disobedience - large and small - made the labour movement a natural deus ex machina to save the revolution on that unseasonably warm day, the Wednesday before Mubarak fell, when Tahrir had lost its energy and Mubarak's strategy of getting Egypt back to work while letting protesters stew in Midan seemed to be working.
Listening Post - Egyptian news from 'revolutionary' sources
In the heat of the revolution and the glow of its immediate aftermath, it was the "facebook youth" and (supposedly) "liberal", English-speaking activists who were celebrated as the heroes of the Revolution.
Activists and those who watched the unfolding events more carefully knew better; as well-known blogger and activist Hossam el-Hamalawy would put it, the revolution wasn't made by "facebook" or the "youth" or even in Tahrir, but rather by striking workers across the country.
"We were all saying," he explained, recalling the dangerous days of February 7-9, "if the working class doesn't step in, we're all screwed."
Mothers and grandmothers of Tahrir
Hardly anyone understood the Ultra's role in those early post-2/11 days, in good measure because they had little desire to advertise it - their mentality has long been not to brag about anything they do outside the football stadiums.
They also are not generally very friendly with outsiders, and few spoke English, the language of the international media, who at any rate were looking for more photogenic and "appealing" revolutionaries who would look good on the cover of Time or Newsweek, or even the more mainstream Egyptian media.
But after Mubarak was ousted, the role of the labour movement as an incubator of the revolt has been more widely understood.
No one familiar with Egypt's 20th century history would be surprised at this fact. Look at this video of protests in Mahallah in 2008, and you see the seeds of Tahrir which came up 34 months later.
A veteran labour activist, Mahallah-based Kamal Fayoumi, declared when we met him late last year, "Mahallah is the mother of Tahrir. On April 6, 2008, they said the whole country was in Mahallah. On January 25, 2011, they said everyone was in Tahrir."
Strikes have been a feature of Egyptian life for well over a century, with unions achieving a major place in the country's life in the years leading up to the end of the monarchy. The Nasser years saw an authoritarian populist regime dramatically increase wages and living standards for workers, even as it banned all but government-controlled unions.
Under the "open door" (infitah) policies of his successor Anwar El Sadat, the balance of power shifted against the workers and strikes returned, most of them producing at least modest gains in wages or bonuses.
The pace of liberalisation and privatisation of the economy was hastened under Mubarak's rule, especially after 1991, when the Egyptian government signed major agreements with the IMF and the World Bank to privatise public sector companies as a condition of aid. Within a decade, over 60 per cent of the public sector firms were eligible to be privatised.
Increasing the damage done by privatisation is that few private sector firms, which remain very profitable despite the near poverty wages most of them pay, are unionised.
"Basically, the privately owned firms just skim the top workers off from the public sector companies and don't offer any of the benefits or protections that unions have won," explained another labour activist in Mahallah.
Liberalisation and privatisation
Privatisation is a manifestation of a broader process of economic liberalisation, which over the last 20 years, have led to a variety of grievances among public sector workers and workers in the newly privatised firms.
The process of liberalisation and privatisation led directly to the most well-known recent waves of labour strikes in Egypt, which occurred in the industrial town of Mahallah - home of many of the country's main textile mills. It began in December 2006 and after more than 700 actions, reached its highest pitch with the strikes that began on April 6, 2008.
Al Jazeera World - Egypt: The Other Homeland
The 2008 strikes can be thought of as a trial run for the protests that erupted in Tahrir almost three years later. It indeed lent its name to the coalition of youth movements, the "April 6 Youth Movement", who were among the most important organisers of the January 25, 2011, protests and the 18 days thereafter.
The meeting on February 8, 2012, wasn't the usual revolutionary hen house of the last year, a cacophonic swirl of activity and preparations. But people were busy - graffiti artists were making stencils and posters for a national strike planned for the February 11 anniversary.
Facebookers had shared the event as much as they could. There were big hopes after seeing the big anti-SCAF demonstrations in Tahrir on January 25, but there was concern in the air as well.
"February 11 is a beginning. The same as the workers revolt on April 6, 2008, was a rehearsal for the 2011 revolution, this 11 of February will be a rehearsal for our true general strike that will hopefully come," Kamal Khalil, one of the country's leading labour activists, told the assembled activists.
"Leadership is what we need for a successful strike, a successful revolution," he continued. "Students' unions and workers' unions unit[ing into] one communal leadership," as in fact happened back in the 1940s, during the last heyday of union membership."
To that end, Kamal Khalil and other leading labour activists at the meeting were prepared to "disrupt" the country's economy to change the system so that it no longer "wheels over the bodies of workers".
"To everyone who accuses us of wanting to put the country's economy on pause or even to fall," he defiantly declared, "I say, Yes, we want to pause [it]!"
Future of protest
Khalil knows better than most activists how delicate is the balance between successful protests and just another demonstration. The Arab protests of the last year have been celebrated for being, seemingly, leaderless - a dynamic that has been credited with making it much more difficult for autocratic governments successfully to repress them and for giving them a wider social base of support.
This horizontalism, which has been a hallmark of the alter-globalisation movement, has its roots in the anti-neoliberal protests of the 1990s and 2000s in Argentina and Zapatista-led Chiapas, Mexico, and well before them, in the anarchist-inspired "affinity groups", dating back to the 19th century (anarchists were also important, if now largely ignored in Tahrir during the 18-day occupation of the Midan).
"Down with the next president!" read one of the signs in Tahrir during the revolution. A well-known photo of someone holding that sign has recently made its way back onto the Facebook postings.
But leaderless protests tend to lose ground when the terrain shifts towards more ordinary politics. As we see with the Occupy movement in the US and Europe today, to the extent there isn't a clearly defined and publicly identifiable leadership able to express similarly clear goals, it becomes very hard to compete against other, more organised, socially entrenched and wealthier groups.
Whether it's the Muslim Brotherhood or the so-called "deep state" and the feloul, the remnants of the Mubarak years, once the struggle moves away from protests and more towards traditional politics, the lack of a public face that can galvanise support and hammer simple and coordinated messages into public consciousness is a big disadvantage.
Khalil knows this all too well from his own, long experience. And so he told his fellow activists, "At marches, I hear people talking about demanding power to be handed over to the Parliament or this or that. And to be honest, I find it delusional. Power doesn’t get handed over, Power gets taken over! And having a solid students-worker unions' joint leadership is the preparation we need for the one step forward."
That's why his main focus was on pushing for the large-scale strikes that helped win the first phase of the revolution. "The revolution so far has over-used the tool of protesting and sit-ins. The [recent] bloody clashes have kept refreshing the revolution. But the tool of strikes is what we need to work on now."
Cairo and Mahalla
On February 12, it was clear how much momentum had been lost in the previous year, despite almost daily strikes across the country in one sector or another and the fact that strikes did occur in the national telecom company, El-Sokhna harbour in Suez, steel factories and gas companies. But it wasn't enough.
The SCAF and the government-controlled media pulled out all the stops to deligitimise the strike beforehand and downplay its impact after, deploying the well-worn accusation that the campaign of civil disobedience and strikes threatened the country's stability and, of course, public order.
In Mahallah, which local activists boast has largely been a no-go area for government forces since 2008, Kamal El-Fayoumi was arrested on February 11 and held without any charge for two days.
Considering Egyptian workers have always had to deal with powerful states that were simultaneously the biggest employer and the biggest obstacles to workers' rights, the protest was far from a complete loss even if the strike didn't seriously disrupt public and economic life.
Indeed, there were positive lessons to be drawn from the attempted national strike. Most important, according to Khalil, was that the students' movement had "brought us one beautiful birth. It's stronger than our generation's in the 70s, and the students are now [100 per cent] back in the game".
Egyptian football fans in deadly riot
At the same time, it's important to remember the important victories the labour movement has won in the last year, including the establishment of independent unions, the drafting (although as of yet not issuing) of more worker-friendly laws, court victories against employers and a wave of strikes that is at least as large as, and perhaps larger, than the wave of strikes between 2006 and 2008.
Perhaps because of these gains, the broader activist community missed the labour movement's potential power during the anniversary protest. Only a few nights after February 11, while walking through downtown, one could find stencils, featuring the profile of a muscular factory worker with a line under that read, "To the workers of Egypt, WHERE ARE YOU?"
Revolutionary strategy
Yet, not all labour leaders supported the national strike plan. Speaking with Ahmed Kamal, a close associate of Fayoumi, the day the latter was released, he felt such moves were counterproductive at the present time.
"What strike? You mean the civil disobedience that would ruin our country's economy? We've gone on no such strike," he declared. "Our machines are still turning for our country's economy, which desperately needs it these days."
He was not alone in this view. Wedad El-Demerdash, one of the icons of the 2006 strike and a representative of the powerful role of women in the labour movement, was equally unsupportive of a mass strike at the present time.
"All these 'revolutionaries' who called for the strike have long forgotten after the revolution about their own people and their much needed role on the ground [in Mahallah]. Workers belong to their factories and among their fellow workers, not in Tahrir, neither in some Cairo meetings almost a 100 kilometres away."
El-Demerdash went on, "We know exactly when to start a strike, how to put it together and when to put it on hold. But no one, not even us icons of the workers movement, can get workers to go on a strike without a convincing case and demand. And now is just not the time. The average people won't take our side, and neither can the economy take it. We, the middle class, are the most to get hurt by the economy when it strikes."
Most important to El-Demerdash was the need to change a crucial element of revolutionary strategy, which had called for creating new and independent unions while the government and National Democratic Party-led unions ran the show, to taking over the still dominant traditional unions.
Asking to make sure her message was spread as widely as possible, she explained, "We need to rescind the concept of free syndicates [and] clean up the existing syndicates."
Tackling the corruption of the more established syndicates wasn't her only concern. "Unity is what's much needed now," she declared.
"We have to seize the moment and reclaim our workers' union, otherwise we'll become the counter-revolution to our own revolution. If we don't [do this], the opportunists will take over again, perhaps opportunists of a new kind - brotherhood members or revolutionaries who once used to be troopers - but opportunists are all the same."
Ultra militancy
It's clear that leading labour activists are struggling to reach a consensus on the best strategy moving forward. But these internal disagreements are at least partly the result of a concerted effort by the Egyptian elite to put forth an anti-labour messageto the public, which included strong anti-strike rhetoric surrounding the proposed national strike of February 11, 2012.
One year after Egypt's uprising
The dominance of this discourse in the public sphere has only made it harder for the labour movement to develop the best strategies to continue with the labour militancy that helped win the first round of the revolution, and without which, long term gains for the Egyptian working class - the vast majority of the country's population - will be impossible.
While activists were planning for the February 11 strike, the night of February 2 brought, tragically, a new player to the forefront of the revolution - the Ultras, the so-called "fanatical" football fans. Their experience, fighting against riot police at football matches had already given them a crucial role in taking on the police and security forces in the first week of the previous year's protests, and equally in fighting back against government forces during the Muhammad Mahmoud mini-war that began in mid-November 2011 on the edges of Tahrir.
The 74 deaths of soccer fans at the "riot" in Port Said have been blamed on the Ultras by the SCAF and much of the media. But the Ultras and most of the activists consider themselves to be victims of a concerted plot by the government to instigate such violence in order to discredit and weaken the movement.
Even if at the height of the Muhammad Mahmoud violence, the Ultras - who controlled Tahrir - refused to define their actions as political ("No politics!" was the response we would get whenever we tried to raise the subject), the Port Said violence had the effect of both uniting the often fiercely rival groups and leading them explicitly to define themselves as part of the revolution.
"Watch out for the rage of Ultras!" read many graffitis across the town. For the first time, the Ultras officially joined marches and subsequently camped in front of the People's Assembly in mid-March.
Within a day of starting their encampment, the Ultras wrote a song, "Ya Magles Ya Ibn El-Haram" ("Oh SCAF, You Son of a B*tch"), for the Port Said martyrs, in which they offered direct support for the revolution and cursed the SCAF.
Workers were even directly mentioned in the song's lyrics, "And they've killed the finest of youth, some were engineers, some were factory workers and also youngsters".
Ramy Essam's song "Irhal" became one of the anthems of the first round of the revolution. It was sang innumerable times a day during the sit-ins in an effort to ingrain it into the consciousness of whoever passed by.
New leaders
The Ultras are not the likeliest candidates to join a mass labour movement, since few have the kinds of factory or other organised jobs that have traditionally been at the heart of union organisation. But most of the Ultras come from working class families and well understand the plight of workers, even if the rather closed social and economic universe they've created has been - at least till now - a step removed from traditional labour politics. With this song, for the first time, the Ultras have acknowledged workers as an icon in the Ultras' culture.
Symbolising their willingness to be more explicitly part of the larger revolutionary movements, the Ultras even started permitting non-members to wear previously "secret" t-shirt designs, allowing others, young and old, to share in their militant - and now increasingly popular - spirit.
"I've almost given up hope to see Egyptian youth discuss things like this," said an old man as he witnessed a late-night Ultras' meeting at the sit-in. "God bless you, kids."
If the revolution has largely refused to name a leader or group of core leaders, the dynamic is changing as Ultras stake their ground within the revolutionary tent. Specifically, the top leadership of both the Ultras Ahlawy (UA) and Ultras White Knights (UWK) are asserting a direct leadership role in the politicisation of the once rival groups, which was highlighted by an historic meeting three weeks ago with over 3,000 Ultra members attending.
Egyptian activists in information war
Many street level members of the two groups were clamouring for a virtual declaration of war against the government rather than a declaration of unity they felt had already occurred without anyone needing to declare it. Indeed, some could be heard calling for "a revolution inside our own Ultras group and get a revolutionary [leadership]."
Instead, the leaders', or "capos", self-discipline and call for a sit-in rather than violence, won the day despite provocations by the police and the SCAF. This strategy has enhanced the group's political position.
On the night of April 8, the capos ordered everyone to take down their tents and suspend the sit-in in response to the decision by the courts and Parliament to investigate the Port Said massacre, and to consider the Port Said victims as martyrs of the revolution. At the same time, however, the capos announced that the Ultras would participate in future revolutionary protests.
Old guard taking note
Kamal Khalil, for one, is not afraid of this new blood taking a more forceful role as the militant protesters dig in for the long haul.
"We should stop talking about ourselves, the elder generation, as being the ones who should plan and plot for the revolution. The past months have shown us that the revolution lies only in the hands of these youngsters. The generations of Muhammad Mahmoud street battles has been breast-fed by tear gas and chemical warfare. It's a fighting generation and it has [its own] perspective. It has the energy to free a whole world."
Seeming to agree with his colleagues in Mahallah who have been at times critical of the removal of some of the labour leaders in Cairo, Khalil reiterated this thought as he ended a discussion during a recent march, "Away from all the meetings and big speeches, our revolution will be successful only in the hands of these amazing young people. And we, workers, need to pull ourselves together to be there for these kids when they need us."
The summer of 2012 could well witness the beginnings of a long term battle for the future of Egypt between two new coalitions: the SCAF-led deep state and its increasingly elite Brotherhood partners - representing the political order - and a revolutionary coalition in which the liberal facebookers - who helped open the door to Revolution on January 25, 2011 - give way to an even tougher and more militant combination of seasoned labour activists and the Ultras who never shy from a fight.
One thing is certain, if these groups can work together to develop a coherent battle plan against the emerging political elite, the hope for transition to a new constitutional order will be anything but smooth, or to the liking of the Egyptian elite. As Wedad El-Demerdash told us, "I know these Ultras are not going to let go of the martyrs' blood. And that's good enough of an essence to keep this revolution alive."
Mark LeVine is professor of Middle Eastern history at UC Irvine, and a distinguished visiting professor at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden and the author of the forthcoming book about the revolutions in the Arab world, The Five Year Old Who Toppled a Pharaoh.
Follow him on Twitter: @culturejamming
Amor Eletrebi is a 23-year-old poet and activist who was has participated in protests at Tahrir Square in both the January 25 revolution and current protests.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
CAIRO (Reuters) - On a warm Wednesday morning last October, around 500 Egyptian army officers based at the Air Defence Institute on the outskirts of Alexandria staged a mini revolt.By Marwa Awad
CAIRO | Tue Apr 10, 2012 12:31pm EDT
According to a lieutenant colonel with direct knowledge of the protest, the men were angry about the punishment given to a fellow officer by his superiors. After refusing to train, the officers demanded to meet either Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the head of Egypt's military and in effect the country's acting president, or his second in command. They wanted to meet the commanders, they said, to make the case for better treatment.
"Their reasoning was: Egypt is having a revolution and they too have demands," the lieutenant colonel said.
The rebellion, unreported before now and confirmed by three other officers in the unit, lasted several days. As Egyptians were calling for quicker and deeper change - demands directed at the military council that runs the country - at least one part of the country's military was itself split.
The popular protests that ousted Hosni Mubarak last year were rooted in the yawning gap between rich and poor, and the desire to get rid of a leader about to enter his fourth decade in power. The wealth in Egypt was, and is, controlled by a small and often uniformed elite. To most Egyptians, Mubarak, a career officer in the air force, was both symbol and cause of those inequities.
As in the country, so in the barracks. Over the past six months, more than a dozen serving or recently retired mid- and lower-ranking officers have said they and their colleagues see Egypt's revolution as their own chance to win better treatment, salaries, and improved conditions and training. They are tired, they said, of a few very top officers becoming rich while the vast majority of officers and ordinary soldiers struggle.
As the military and the Muslim Brotherhood both press their own candidates ahead of the presidential elections scheduled for May and June - former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman entered the race as the army's choice last week and Khairat al-Shater, the Brotherhood's deputy, two weeks ago - the tensions in the lower ranks shed light not only on the country's most powerful institution but on Egypt itself.
"Military ranks struggle like the rest of Egyptians because, like Egyptian society, the wealth of the military is concentrated at the top and does not trickle down. You have to reach a specific rank before wealth is unlocked," one major said.
Tantawi, his Chief of Staff Sami Annan and other top commanders have moved to contain the officers' frustration, holding regular meetings with military units in an attempt to boost morale and assure soldiers that their salaries will be raised and their concerns addressed, military leaders and mid-ranking officers who have attended the meetings said.
That seems to have placated the disgruntled officers, who say they will hold off on pushing their demands further until the ruling military council hands over power to an elected civilian government. But they insist they need real change.
"We have a moral obligation to remain steadfast and support the process," one colonel said, echoing a widely held view. "But when we return to our barracks ... commanders will have to address our demands."
FACTORIES AND LAND
Numbering at least 468,000 men - officials refuse to give the exact number saying it could hurt national security - Egypt's combined army, air force, air defense command, navy and paramilitaries make up the largest military force in the Arab world. More than half of those in uniform are conscripts.
Senior military officers have dominated Egypt's politics and large chunks of its economy since seizing control in a 1952 coup. Just as Mubarak did, Tantawi presents Egypt's armed forces as a bulwark against the spread of Islamism and potential chaos. The military, one general said, is the "only competent and long-standing institution" capable of maintaining bilateral relationships with other countries. Western diplomats mostly agree with that assessment.
One of the keys to the military's power is its grip on business, which was strengthened after Egypt's 1979 peace deal with Israel. Under that accord, the military had to shrink its forces. But instead of sacking hundreds of thousands of men, commanders opened factories to employ them. Those plants now produce everything from components for ammunition to pots and pans, fire extinguishers, and cutlery. The military also runs banks, tourism operations, farms, water treatment plants, a petrol station chain, construction firms, and import companies.
Businesses owned solely by the military are exempt from tax, and often built on the backs of poorly paid conscripts, who make between $17 and $28 a month, although they are fed by the army and receive basic medical help. "A conscript goes into the army less for training, and more for working in one of the military factories or business schemes," said Ahmed Naggar, an economic analyst at the Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
Khalil Kandil, chairman of the Chamber of Metallurgical Industries, said the armed forces enjoy another big advantage: "Who is asking the military factory to pay back its investments and to pay taxes and to pay for natural gas and electricity? They can keep losing (money) for years."
Opposition politicians and many ordinary Egyptians want the military's budget and economic and land holdings to be made public. But senior military figures want to protect their position and argue that Egypt's new constitution must shield the military from the instability of political change.
Analysts say the military establishment is likely to retain significant powers, no matter who wins the two-round presidential election.
Disentangling the military from Egypt's economy and institutions could take years. Zeinab Abul Magd, economy professor at Oberlin College in the United States, estimates the military controls about a third of the entire economy. Egypt's land planning authority says the armed forces have de facto control over all unused land in Egypt, or about 87 percent of the country. Civilian projects almost always need military consent in case there is a risk to national security.
Retired senior officers often hold powerful positions in civilian institutions; an Egyptian official said this practice will continue.
AMERICAN DOLLARS
Arab International Optronics (AIO) sits on the outskirts of Cairo, a beautiful garden at its entrance. The factory, a joint venture between the military, which owns 51 percent of the firm, and France's Thales, was founded in 1987 and makes and upgrades military equipment such as thermal imagers and tanks. It exports to Britain, France, Germany, Libya, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, makes enough money to fund itself, and employs 400 staff, most of them trained abroad. Staff benefits include free transport, free meals and half of the cost of annual haj pilgrimages.
"The company was founded when technology was hard to get from abroad because of political constraints on Egypt," AIO boss Major General Nabil Amer said in December, referring to limitations on imports and technology set by the 1979 peace deal. "Most of AIO's revenue is spent on military research and the development department."
Military leaders point to businesses like AIO as proof that the $1.3 billion in military aid Egypt receives every year from the United States is not enough for the country to keep up with rivals such as Israel and Saudi Arabia. Many soldiers feel the U.S. money benefits American arms manufacturers and forces Egypt to buy outdated weaponry. Egypt, they say, needs to be able to make its own money to advance.
Military leaders boast that their businesses help the country. Mahmud Nasr, Tantawi's assistant on financial affairs, said the army has given the state 12 billion Egyptian pounds ($1.99 billion) since early last year.
"The armed forces will not allow any interference into its business projects. This is a matter of national security," said Nasr.
Now that the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties control the assembly that is drafting a new constitution, the military is determined to protect its role.
"Previously the military budget was subject to specific laws and was not in any constitution," said General Mamdouh Shahine, who is responsible for legal affairs on the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which has run Egypt since Mubarak's ouster. "But now we want to bring it under the new constitution to ensure stability. By adding budgetary clauses to the constitution, I am simply asserting a reality that has existed for a long time. What is the problem with that?"
The aid rankles civilian leaders as well. In 2009, according to a U.S. embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks, Egypt's then prime minister Ahmed Nazif met U.S. officials to ask for $50 million in development funds. But he knew the government was also asking for military funding.
"I sometimes feel like I am competing with Field Marshall Hussein (Tantawi) and he is winning," Nazif, who was given a suspended jail sentence for corruption after Mubarak fell, told embassy officials.
"A SYSTEM OF PATRONAGE"
The spark for the soldiers' rebellion in Alexandria was a brutal episode in Cairo. On October 9 last year, a group of Coptic Christians converged on Cairo's television station to protest at the burning of a church. In a neighborhood called Maspero, the protesters clashed with soldiers; about 25 civilians were killed.
The army says soldiers were also killed in the violence. The lieutenant colonel with direct knowledge of the rebellion at the Air Defence Institute said one officer and 22 soldiers died. Those who survived were seriously injured and some were disabled, according to a source at the military judiciary. Among other things Air Defence Institute officers demanded was financial compensation for the families of those dead.
Money has long been the cause of frustration in the lower ranks of Egypt's military.
"The army is the richest institution in Egypt, yet a large group of officers feel disenfranchised," said a retired general in Cairo. The wealth, he said, "is concentrated in about 15 percent of the army's officer corps, upper ranks, who remain loyal through a system of patronage."
Elite officers can make millions of dollars, according to junior officers, get access to special clubs and seaside resorts and retire into cushy corporate jobs or political positions. A low- to mid-level officer gets about 2,500 pounds ($414) a month before bonuses, about the same as a Cairo taxi driver.
There are also problems with training, which four senior officers said was evident in the poor handling of tanks and armored personnel carriers on the streets during last year's protests. At Maspero, inexperienced soldiers in charge of armored carriers injured protesters inadvertently, one recently retired general responsible for devising training systems for the military said.
The protesters in Alexandria also wanted the chain of command to be decentralized, so they could respond more immediately in a crisis.
Low-level officers say the high command has allowed all those grievances to fester.
The unspoken rule, said the lieutenant colonel, dictates that soldiers "stay away from politics or organized religion, don't outshine your commander, don't think about improving the system."
After attending an operation on January 17 that combined units of the three main branches of Egypt's Second Field Army - air defense, air force and infantry - Tantawi defended the military's training methods, and promised salary increases. "What we saw today in the drill of the accuracy of fire and efficiency in performance reflects the high capacity the armed forces have achieved."
"TIME TO SPEAK OUT"
To get its way in the new Egypt, the military will need to rely on the Islamist parties, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which now control parliament. It has kept up a strong intelligence network to ensure the Brotherhood does not infiltrate military ranks, according to mid-ranking officers. While most soldiers and officers are religious, the military does not allow religious organizations to set up within its ranks.
Leaders of the Brotherhood have stressed the need to work with the military. But the Brotherhood's decision to enter the presidential race worries the military leadership. Senior Brotherhood figures have also said they will amend the new constitution before the end of the current parliamentary period.
In the army-run International Medical Centre where former president Mubarak has been held during his trial, a major's cell phone rings with the melody of a popular song that honors the people who died in Tahrir Square last year. "My country, my country, I love you my country," the lyrics go.
"When you are in the seat of power for so long, you cease to have a vision to make things better," the major says.
Officers with knowledge of the military council say it could be reshuffled after the election. But don't expect a revolution. "It is like an in-house replacement, like what happens on a board of directors who offer their CEO a retirement package," the general said.
Could mid- and low-ranking officers attempt a takeover? Insiders doubt it.
"You must remember that at the end of the day, the army is patriotic," said the colonel. "Many of the rank and file refuse to rebel because they feel the country depends on them and they are the last institution standing. They want change but they would rather wait until a civilian government is formed."
Last year, as the protests gathered pace, Ahmed Shouman, a Cairo-based major, handed in his weapons and joined the crowds demanding an end to Mubarak's rule. Shouman was tried for quitting his army unit without permission, found guilty but then pardoned.
He returned to Tahrir Square last November. "It is time we spoke out against the wrong and corrupt," he told Reuters then. "We must stop being afraid. The military council does not represent the rest of the army. I call on the military council to step down."
Shouman was re-arrested two months ago for "actions that harmed the armed forces" including talking to the media and criticizing the military. A military court sentenced him last week to six years in prison.
(With additional reporting by Tom Pfeiffer in Cairo; Edited by Sara Ledwith and Simon Robinson)
MULTIMEDIA
RAND expert Jeffrey Martini speaks on the upcoming Egyptian presidential election and offers insights on the various presidential candidates, Egyptian and global reactions to the candidates, and the possible implications of an undefined constitution for the candidate that will be elected.
COMMENTARY
Just as before the disqualifications, the fundamental decision voters face is about the scope and nature of the change Egypt will undergo in the coming years. And there are still candidates representing almost every position on that spectrum, writes Jeffrey Martini.
COMMENTARY
The Arab Spring demonstrated that leaderless revolutions are difficult to repress or co-opt. Unfortunately, it is also true that leaderless revolts find it difficult to make transition to authority, writes Charles Ries.
COMMENTARY
The SCAF's attempts to curtail dissent and the democratic process have fueled doubts about its true intentions. Will the military fulfill its promise to support democracy? Or will it seek to replace Mubarak's rule with its own or that of a friendly autocrat? write Jeffrey Martini and Julie Taylor.
COMMENTARY
Assisting Arab democratic transitions will not eliminate religious extremism. But successful transitions would directly challenge the jihadist brands that promote attacks on America, writes Julie Taylor.
COMMENTARY
If some measure of democracy does result, the elected governments likely will reflect the popular antipathy that the "Arab street" has for both the United States and Israel, writes David Aaron.
COMMENTARY
Much of what we know—or think we know—about the Muslim Brotherhood's ambitions, beliefs and history is clouded by misperceptions, writes Lorenzo Vidino.
COMMENTARY
The most favorable outcome achievable in Egypt might be what we see in Iraq, but without the violence, writes Harold Brown.
MULTIMEDIA
Senior political scientist Julie Taylor spoke with RAND media relations director Jeffrey Hiday about the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the effects it could have on other Middle East countries and U.S. relations with the region.
COMMENTARY
Continuing support for the Egyptian military will be crucial for U.S. influence and for an evolution in Egypt that can meet American interests, writes Robert E. Hunter.
COMMENTARY
There is no clear political party or leader ready to step in if the regime in Egypt falls. However, this protest is not without leadership; it is spearheaded by a large network of Egyptian human rights groups and other citizens, writes Julie Taylor.
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The Center for Middle East Public Policy (CMEPP) provides expertise on the Middle East that is second to none. Our analysts are in touch with vital political, social, economic, and technological developments in and around the region. Through research and analysis of the highest caliber, we help public and private decisionmakers solve problems, tackle challenges, and identify options to make society safer, smarter, and more prosperous. The…
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Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) plans to again offer an amendment later today to cut off all U.S. aid to Egypt due to the Egyptian government's ongoing prosecution of U.S. NGO workers around the world.
The Egyptian government has asked Interpol to issue international arrest warrants for American and other foreign NGO workers for organizations working to develop civil society in Egypt as it struggles with its transition to democracy. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton waived congressional restrictions on U.S. aid to Egypt last month, following the release of more than a dozen NGO workers who were barred from leaving Cairo, but the Egyptian government is now seeking the arrests of those NGO workers who were not in Egypt at the time criminal charges were brought.
Interpol is considering the request and can reject warrant requests that are politically motivated, but meanwhile Paul wants to prevent the United States from sending more than $1.5 billion in annual aid to the Egyptian government. He told The Cable Tuesday he will offer an amendment along those lines to the bill moving in the Senate on fixing the financial problems at the U.S. Postal Service.
"I find it incredibly insulting that we're sending them $2 billion in aid and their putting out international warrants," Paul said. "Interpol is not supposed to be involved in political persecution so this is troubling to me."
In February, Paul attempted a similar gambit and filibustered a transportation-related bill as a means of pressuring the Senate to hold a vote on his previous amendment to cut off U.S. aid to Egypt. Democrats blocked Paul's amendment from getting a floor vote.
Asked why he thought this time might be different, Paul said, "You have to just be an optimist around here. I don't know that it will go better (this time) but I'm going to try."
Sen. John McCain, the chairman of the International Republican Institute, one of the NGOs with members facing charges, told The Cable today the new Paul amendment was unwise and would not succeed.
"It won't pass," he said. "A lot of us are very unhappy about the events in Egypt and very unhappy about the treatment of NGOs. But this is not the time to cut off aid to Egypt as they are going through this electoral process. ... Most members of the Senate understand that."
Sharjah, United Arab Emirates - The Arab world has lately been experiencing monumental changes including the realignment of political alliances, but one possible long-term outcome of the Arab uprisings may be a game of musical chairs involving the Arab monarchies, republics and Western powers. By the end of the next decade it is not unreasonable to predict a stronger relationship between certain Arab republics and the West than that which existed between Arab monarchies and the West over the past few decades.
The politically stagnant Arab monarchies are also precipitating this possible realignment as they enact increasingly restrictive political and social laws. Kuwait's parliament, for instance, has recently passed a law that imposes the death penalty on anyone who insults God, Prophet Mohammed or any of his wives on social media. This regression is taking place in a country whose half a century old constitution is probably the most advanced in the Arab world and guaranteed freedom of speech (Article 36) as early as the 1960s.
The UAE, Jordan, Saudi and Morocco have also seen a stringent clampdown on social media expression, with each imposing lengthy prison sentences on anyone seen breaking vague and loosely defined boundaries, including spreading rumours or insulting the monarch. Although the Islamist governments in the Arab republics may attempt to impose restrictions on freedom of speech under the guise of preventing religious blasphemy, such restrictions will be challenged by extremely active civil society movements. Contrary to the Arab monarchies, the republican regime restrictions on freedom of expression are unlikely to include criticising political figures.
The reliance of Arab monarchies on the West is vital for perpetuating the status quo, especially in the absence of popular participation in high levels of decision making. There have been many examples of Arab monarchies threatening to sever ties with the US, even in recent months, which ultimately have turned out to be mere exercises in sabre rattling.
Last September Prince Turki Al Faisal, a senior member of the Saudi royal family, indicated that if the US vetoes a United Nations attempt to recognise a Palestinian state the "special relationship" between Saudi and the US would come to an end and lead Saudi to pursue a more independent regional policy. Ten days later US President Barrack Obama once again stated clearly that a veto would be used, leading the Palestinian bid to die a slow death. In the end, relations ultimately weren't affected.
Presently, the outwardly conservative Islamist parties that are coming to power in the region appear to be more politically liberal than the Arab monarchies. They are expected to allow some sort of a rotation of power, independent courts and freedom of assembly in their new constitutions, even though the Arab monarchies that perpetually delays serious reforms seem to have survived the Arab uprisings. As the Arab republics enter the post-uprisings era Western powers may slowly adjust their foreign policies and move closer towards some Arab republics that are more aligned with the Western political model. It would therefore be advisable for Gulf States to start the long delayed political, social and media reforms that they lack while they still enjoy varying degrees of popularity.
This geo-strategic realignment is not improbable. After all, not all Arab monarchies are wealthy, and not all Arab republics are poor. Libya, Algeria and Iraq have considerable mineral resources. Should they find their way beyond their current political impasse, they may challenge the Arab monarchies dominant role in the purchase of US and European weapons and military equipment. In ten years' time Libyan oil production is expected to surpass that of the UAE and Kuwait while Iraq's continued oil discoveries may lead it to challenge Saudi Arabia's current role as the world's "swing producer" of oil. In 2006 gas-rich Algeria announced a massive purchase worth $7.5bn of Russia arms that undoubtedly attracted the attention of Western arms producers and governments.
Couple that with what is expected to be significantly higher levels of freedom of expression in Arab republics, a functioning parliament, freedom of assembly, some sort of rotation of power and perhaps a strong desire to strengthen ties with the West and this scenario appears more likely. Relations with Arab republics will be, to borrow from Prince Turki's lingo, less "toxic" to many Western powers than those with the Arab monarchies that do not tolerate many of the aforementioned freedoms. Case in point: last March a Swedish defence minister had to resign over mere allegations that his country is helping the Saudi government build a weapons factory.
To be sure, there are several assumptions for this policy shift theory to come into play. For one, there must be a realignment between the proclaimed values of future US and European governments and their convergence with foreign policies, which have so far diverged due to powerful lobbies in the US and complex bureaucratic structure in Europe.
If Arab republics follow similar foreign policies to those of their monarchical counterparts while maintaining at least a minimum level of political freedom within their nations, it will be tricky for Western powers to treat both sets of countries with the same level of "friendship". Implementing urgent and serious political reform in the Arab monarchies to maintain strategic ties with the West is the right thing, even if it is being done for the wrong reasons.
Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi is a UAE-based political commentator.
Follow him on Twitter: @SultanAlQassemi
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
DÉCRYPTAGE- D'abord plutôt indifférente, la révolution de la place Tahrir ayant été marquée par l'absence quasi totale de la rhétorique anti-israélienne, l'opinion égyptienne manifeste depuis une hostilité croissante à la paix avec Israël.
Until the beginning of 2011, an external observer might have felt justified in claiming that the lot of Egyptian women is improving far beyond that of women in many other Arabic countries. In 2000, they had been granted the right to no fault (or ‘khula’) divorce,(2) efforts were made to give women greater custody of their children,(3) there were 3 female cabinet ministers (4) and women occupied nearly 25% of all top management positions.(5) This is not to say that Egyptian women had equal rights and status to Egyptian men but the general trend appeared to be a positive one.
On 25 January 2011, the wave of peaceful revolutions that started in Tunisia struck Egypt. This general call to a peaceful revolution has since been dubbed the ‘Jasmine Revolution.’(6) Mubarak’s Government was toppled, an interim military Government was instated and a new Constitution is being drafted. However, despite the very active participation of Egyptian women in the Revolution,(7) the interim Government shocked both Egyptian women and the rest world by not appointing a single woman to the committee for drafting a new Constitution, hence earning itself the name of the ‘Committee of Wise Men.’(8)
This CAI paper discusses the post-revolution contradiction between a progressive women’s rights agenda on the one hand, and the Salafist return to ultra-conservative gender relations on the other. It considers the role of the Internet in raising awareness and politicising Egyptian women amidst the general dissipation of previous advances made for women’s equal rights.
Salafism: An answer to Mubarak’s secularism
Mubarak served as Egypt’s President from 1981 to 2011 and was commonly seen as a dictator. His re-election in 2005 was widely disputed as neither free nor fair. One of the important reasons for this was the disqualification of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is seen by many as Egypt’s most popular party.(9) The general feeling was that Mubarak’s restrictions on media and Parliamentary Government were to curtail the spread of fundamentalist Islam. Mubarak’s regime was characterised by increasing secularisation of the legal and political system, for example the inclusion of women in Government and the programming limitations on Salafi religious television stations.(10) Even the Government-sanctioned Al Azhar mosque was seen as serving political, rather than religious, ends and thus widely held to be illegitimate.(11)
Ironically, while Mubarak tried very hard to exclude the Muslim Brotherhood from Government, his Government did very little to curtail the spread of fundamentalist Islamist sentiment among non-politicised Egyptians. The media restrictions mentioned above and attempts by the Al Azhar mosque to advocate moderate Islam, particularly with regards to women’s dress,(12) were too little too late.
Reports from Egypt indicate that Salafism, a form of Sunni Muslim fundamentalism that rejects all modern forms of government, is on the rise. It calls for a return to a traditional Muslim form of government and legislature and emphasise a ‘return’ to the lifestyle of the first three generations after the Prophet Mohammed. Women, or their families, insist on them wearing the niqab (full body and facial covering revealing only the eyes), while more and more men are seen growing their beards and adopting traditional Muslim dress. Universities report that female students refuse to shake hands with male lecturers, yet they used to only a few years ago, and there is a proliferation of Salafi television programmes and books, often through book festivals that used to be renowned for supporting liberal ideologies.(13)
Apart from being highly conservative with regards to women and puritanical in adherence to Muslim moral laws, Salafism disregards any form of politics as revisionist. They view democracy as an ‘infidel idea.’(14) By refusing to engage with Mubarak’s Government on a political level, Salafi organisations have had to be tolerated by the Egyptian Government. Their active engagement in education programmes and providing social services has won them the favour of the people. Two Salafi organisations, Gamey'ah Shar'iah and Ansar al Sunna, have been classified as non-governmental organisations (NGOs) by the Egyptian government.(15) On the other hand, Salafis are highly critical of the Muslim Brotherhood (16) – a factor which may have endeared them both to Mubarak’s regime and to ordinary people who have become disillusioned with the Muslim Brotherhood’s promise of change.
Tahrir Square: The first signs of backsliding
Although they do not appear to be directly in control of the current political proceedings, Salafi ideology is clearly affecting the post-revolution climate in Egypt. A good indicator of this is the sudden turnabout that Egyptian women are experiencing with regards to their position in politics. As noted, women enjoyed the privilege of standing side-by-side with men during the demonstrations at Tahrir Square and elsewhere in the country, without being discriminated against. This is especially remarkable when one considers that most Egyptian women admit to have been groped in public, both before and after the revolution.(17) Acting out of this climate of equal participation in politics, women took to the streets on 8 March to protest for maintaining the recent positive trend in legislature concerning women’s rights.(18) This protest was partly fuelled by the interim Government’s decision to exclude women in the committee tasked with drafting a new constitution.(19) Some men took part in the protest to support the women’s cause. Unfortunately, the demonstration encountered a large group of men in plain clothes who demanded that the women’s protest disperse.
These men claimed that women’s role was to “stay home and raise presidents, not to run for president.”(20) While heckling and groping the women, they claimed that the aims of the women’s protest were “against Islam.”(21) With the upsurge of Salafism in Egypt, there is a general return to the belief that women should be barred from the public domain. It appears that Salafi ideologies are surfacing in multiple facets of Egyptian life and that they play a major role in the suppression of women’s rights, including their right to education - women remain less literate (59%) than men than men (83%).(22)
Already, the new constitution shows signs of reinforcing women’s separation from the public domain. Article 75 states that “Egypt’s president is born to two Egyptian parents and cannot be married to a non-Egyptian woman. Neither he nor his parents shall have another nationality except the Egyptian one. He shall practice his own civil and political rights.”(23) The use of the masculine pronoun throughout the constitution indicates that masculinity is the preferred norm, not only for the Presidential individual but for governance in general.
Ironically, while Mubarak’s Government did much to recognise women’s rights, the post-revolution atmosphere threatens to stifle them. The lack of policing and control over religious media is allowing Salafi ideology to be propagated much faster and more efficiently than during Mubarak’s regime. Women are witnessing an implicit return to the medieval Muslim tradition which the Salafis esteem. This traditionalist worldview is forcing women out of the public sector and there is no external governmental force to curtail this development.
The Jasmine Revolution: The Internet for Egyptian women
The publicity that the revolution received has turned the world’s attention to the plight of women in Egypt. Mubarak’s government failed to stop the Jasmine Revolution, partly because it realised too late that internet chat rooms played a key role in spreading anti-Mubarak sentiment and facilitating revolution planning. “The revolution is the brainchild of the Internet”, said Egyptian opposition leader Mohammed ElBaradei in March 2011.(24) The Jasmine Revolution encouraged women to be politically present, both physically and online. Women played an active role in the Revolution, not only in the streets but also as bloggers and propagators of revolutionary ideologies in chat rooms. Since the Egyptian revolution, blogs and online news reports about the daily experiences of women have multiplied.
Salafism, as a traditionalist worldview, does not recognise the potential role the Internet can play in promoting feminism in Egypt, because it is an ideology developed in, and geared towards, a world state as is was prior to the Internet. While Egyptian women may find themselves physically limited in the public domain, they have seen the potential freedom and power available to them through Internet use. For example, three women activists used the Internet to promote awareness about Egypt’s first democratic elections in 2005 with a film they made.(25) BBC News reported in 2009 that 30% of Egyptian women used the Internet and that middle and upper class women used the internet to “blog for their rights.”(26)
Concluding remarks
The stark juxtaposition of ultra-conservative Salafism with a progressive women’s agenda raises many more questions. What chances do the women have of advancing women’s rights in an increasingly conservative and unstable political climate? Given that some women support the Salafist return to fundamentalism, is it possible for liberal women to gain political ground? Are there class-based political divisions between women in Egypt that underpin their differential Internet use, or do the upper and middle class Internet users represent the working class women’s interests, too, and if so, to what extent?
Although the Jasmine Revolution brought some setbacks for the women’s rights advancement agenda, it has also increased the politicisation of Egyptian women by encouraging them to keep using an avenue of expression that Salafism is not yet capable of limiting. Hopefully, this consequence of the Jasmine Revolution can increase the drive for equal rights for Egyptian women.
NOTES:
(1) Contact Aidan Prinsloo through Consultancy Africa Intelligence’s Gender Issues Unit ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ).
(2) ‘Egypt: Ensure women’s equal right to divorce’, Human Rights Watch, 28 November 2004, http://www.hrw.org.
(3) C. Linberg, ‘Gender Equality in Egypt’, Wikigender, 13 February 2008, http://www.wikigender.org.
(4) Karim Haggag, ‘Women’s Progress in Egypt’, The New York Times, 30 July 2010, http://www.nytimes.com.
(5) Ibid.
(6) ‘Jasmine Revolution’, Wikipedia, last edited 11 March 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org.
(7) Nadya Khalife, ‘Only Half a Revolution?’, Ahram Online, 9 March 2011, http://english.ahram.org.
(8) Ibid.
(9) ‘Egypt election campaigning begins’, BBC News, 17 August 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk.
(10) WikiLeaks, ‘Salafism on the rise in Egypt Cairo’, The Telegraph, 15 February 2011, http://www.telegraph.co.uk.
(11) Ibid.
(12) Ibid.
(13) Ibid.
(14) Ibid.
(15) Ibid.
(16) Ibid.
(17) Hadeel Al-Shalchi, ‘Egyptian women’s rights protest marred by hecklers’, Yahoo! News, 8 March 2011, http://news.yahoo.com.
(18) Ibid.
(19) Ibid.
(20) Ibid.
(21) Kristen Chick, ‘In Egypt’s Tahrir Square, women attacked at rally on International Women’s Day’, Christian Science Monitor, 8 March 2011, http://www.csmonitor.com.
(22) CIA, World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov.
(23) Cf. ‘Women wary of new Egypt constitution’, Euronews, http://www.euronews.net.
(24) ‘There would have been no revolution without Internet: ElBaradei’, TwoCircles.net, 19 March 2011, http://www.twocircles.net.
(25) ‘Egypt: We are watching you. Three Egyptian women use the Internet to promote democracy’, International Museum of Women, http://www.imow.org.
(26) ‘Egypt women blog for their rights’, BBC News, 18 March 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk.
Earlier this week, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde told a news conference that the $3.2 billion lending program for Egypt “will not be sufficient, and everybody knows that, so it will require other donors, other participants to also come to the table to help Egypt”.
Christine Lagarde (c) World Economic Forum
By ‘other’ donors, she was of course alluding to Saudi Arabia, who has announced that it will deposit $1 billion at the Egyptian central bank and buy T-bonds worth $750 million by the end of April as part of a $2.7 billion package to support Egypt’s battered finances.
An Egyptian official said the package includes $250 million of support to buy fuel and $500 million in project finance with an additional $200 million going to small – and medium – sized enterprises.
Saudi Arabia’s offer came two days after the United States president Barack Obama’s announcement that the US will relieve up to $1 billion of Egypt’s debt. Magda Qandil, executive director of the Egyptian Centre for Economic Studies (ECES), does not think the timing is a coincidence and he, too, believes that there was a push for Saudi involvement.
He said: “Regardless of what purposes the Kingdom might have, what’s really interesting for me is the fact that the aid announcement followed the US debt swap announcement.
“Despite omitting Saudi Arabia from his speech, Obama asked for some economic powers to support the Egyptian and Tunisian economies in the post-revolution era…I think the Kingdom was what he meant by that”.
Saudi Arabia plays a prominent role in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. This billion-dollar package will come with certain conditions attached to it: you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.
The Kingdom is well-known not only for suppressing its own people, but also for spreading its oil wealth to radical groups across the world which, for many decades, included Egypt’s very own – the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to LIGNET.com sources, Saudi Arabia and Qatar spent tens of millions of dollars on the Egyptian elections last week to ensure a big win for the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood reportedly used the funds to host rallies and other events to drum up support and to lure voters to the polls with sugar and cooking oil.Saudi leaders invested the money out of a fear that the uprising in Egypt could empower both secular liberal and Salafi radical Islamist movements that could affect stability in Saudi Arabia. And this is without taking into account the stranglehold the military has on the country.
There is hypocrisy in the media and among Western governments when it comes to Saudi Arabia.
The Kingdom (whose clerics announced that if women were allowed to drive in their country, it would lead to “no more virgins” in the Kingdom) can crush democratic protests in Bahrain, execute 76 people in 2011 (including a woman accused of “sorcery”), threaten to execute a blogger who posted an imaginary conversation with the Prophet on Twitter, sentence thieves to amputation, announce that rape, sodomy, adultery, homosexuality, drug trafficking and apostasy are to carry the death penalty, and no one bats an eyelid.
Christine Lagarde recently visited Riyadh and expressed her appreciation of the kingdom’s “important role” in supporting the global economy. It truly is astounding.
Even this week British Prime Minister David Cameron, when asked about the situation in Bahrain, claimed that it was ‘nothing like Syria’ as there is a “process of reform under way in Bahrain”, despite the fact that the opposite is the case.
Imagine if the Formula One was to take place in Syria – would Cameron insist that sport is not political and reforms are ‘under way’? I doubt it.
The change in Saudi Arabia is striking. Riyadh’s old practice was to keep its head down but now is more open and vocal in pressing its interests, especially with US influence waning. This influence can be seen in Syria, where Saudi, along with Qatar, is arming the rebels.
Egypt accepted a loan from the IMF only last summer, yet that was not enough – one can only guess as to where the money is going. With the economy in shambles and the Egyptian elections around the corner, it looks like the long arm of the Saudis is going nowhere.
Africa and the Egyptian revolution
ShareI sincerely congratulate the great and heroic people of Egypt on their determination and the success of the recent revolution. Before Hosni Mubarak finally stepped down from the dais of power, the Egyptian people paid the supreme sacrifice. Over 300 people lost their lives. Lives were lost at different points and stages during the two weeks of the struggle against Mubarak and his establishment. Activists sustained irredeemable injuries at all epicenter of the struggles; some died during the clash with the paid supporters of the then President Mubarak, who came out shamelessly to demonstrate support for the sinking regime, some died during confrontation with the law enforcement agencies and the military while many would have died of exhaustion. On an occasion of the protest, I was shedding tears with indignation when one mad truck driver ran through the demonstrating activists and there were piles of dead. I salute the enduring courage of the people who insisted with one voice that they would not vacate the Liberation Square, until Hosni has stepped down. Hosni Mubarak stepped down while the government of Switzerland placed embargo on his bank account in that country. On February 13, 2011, the Supreme Military Council announced what could be described as the interim programme for returning the embattled nation to democracy That the legislature has been dissolved, that the constitution has been suspended; and that the fresh election would take place in September, 2011. This is not enough because all the members of the cabinet of Mubarak are still within the corridors of power as caretakers!
The prime minister and all ministers should vacate their positions and go home for good because their outings with Mubarak were not in favour of the Egyptian humanity. The economy did not favour the humanity in Egypt and, according to the IMF, and the World Bank reports; over 40 per cent of the Egyptian population live in abject poverty and do not live well, as about, 13 million people live in slums.
Since the days of the Gamal Abdel Nasser Military revolution in July, 1952, the nation of Egypt has remained firmly in the hands of the military establishment of Egypt. And today, Egypt has been ruled for six decades by the military. Nasser was originally the founder of the military intervention in 1952, but advanced the power to General Neguib, who was then seen as a weak ruler. Within two years Neguib’s inefficiency became unacceptable to Nasser and he took power from him. Nasser nationalised the Aswan Dam, abolished the age of Pharaohs and monarchical system, which had lasted for about five thousand years, and gave lands to the landless Egyptians, Colonel Nasser faced the three-day war with Israel and after the defeat of Egypt he died of heart attack. That was the Yom Kippur War of 1973. There was President Anwar Sadat shortly after that, who was sprayed with bullets by a lieutenant at a public parade. Egypt is a very ancient country with long and chequered history, and by now it should obtain the objective conditions and proceed to join the modern world. The army by now should allow the people of Egypt to take their destiny in their hands.
The present revolution is not the first attempt of the people of Egypt in their struggle to institute a system whereby all Egyptians, rich or poor, high or low, young ad old, man or woman and different religious persuasions, should participate fully in a different system which is able to provide for the needs of all the people. Before the 1952 revolution, there was the people-based uprising in Egypt busy searching for one strong and enduring system where all people would be free like the ocean waves to manage and promote their welfare and prosperity. Now, Egypt must make sure that the new methodology is upheld and never to be allowed to slip from their hands. The presence of the army in the search for the methodology and the implementation of the methodology are tactical blunders in terms of such a popular revolution. All the revolutionaries should go back to the drawing board and come with a strong decision and be the implementers of the decision because the decisions must have direct bearing on the the lives and destiny of the people of Egypt. This must be contemplated quickly without allowing an evil wind to blow over the gains of the revolution.
Certainly, Egypt has the great duty to herself in ensuring that the spirit of a revolution is never allowed to go under as, there is always the likehood of history repeating itself again and again. Measures must be put in place to renew and strengthen the spirit of the revolution. There must be a particular ideology which the country and her people intend to follow. These ideology or philosophy must be defended while severe punishments must be given to the offenders of the ideology. What happened at the Liberation Square of Egypt was not a joke at all, as the young and old people of Egypt were ready to die at the square. Whenever the process is relaxed, there are always the gradual and systematic manipulations and interpolations. China, till today, is still using capital punishment to address the ideological crimes and less than two years; a Chinese minister was publicly executed for corruption while six Chinese were also executed for exporting fake goods to Nigeria. China itself went through about two thousand years of civil wars and frightening systematic human oppression and repression. Today, Egypt has a choice and that is to decide never to go all over again. It is pertinent to state here in the unambiguous term that what happened in Egypt is lesson to all the countries of Africa with evil politicians in virtually all countries. The raging wind of revolution is blowing across the Middle East and North Africa, and eventually it will blow across the whole of Africa. Mr Ben Alli was recently toppled in Algeria and the country’s capital, Algiers has been boiling even till now because the people are not satisfied with the arrangement on the ground through the military. I do not like the idea of the people to struggle and win and to hand over to the military to destabilise the gains. The army is the servant of the state and it si never historically trained to rule but to take orders from the civil authorities. The army is always to destroy, destabilise, maim, and kill. When in 1952 there was the military take over in Egypt, it eventually spread to many countries in Africa. In the event that the wind is blowing across the whole of Africa to wrestle power from Africa’s wicked and deadly political rulers, there must be sufficient intellectual work for such uprising and of necessity any uprising in any nation must be ideological because an ideology must explain the how, why, where, and when of the revolution. Enough of these wicked despots.
Osunbote, the Managing Director of Pentagon Books Limited, wrote in from Ibadan
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LSE’s Jason Hickel says that Egypt’s new leaders seem to be planning the same old economic policies which led to increased poverty. This post originally appeared on Al Jazeera.
The ouster of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 set off a spate of political reforms in Egypt culminating in the recent parliamentary elections and the ascent of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. Yet the meaning of the 2011 “revolution” remains far from decided.
When Egyptians rose up last year, it was not only against tyranny and political repression, but also against the neoliberal economic order – designed by the United States – that has generated hunger, poverty and inequality in Egypt since the 1980s. For most people, these latter concerns were at least as pressing as the former, though they have been completely obscured in the prevailing media discourse. Now the tragedy is that, when it comes to economic policy, Egypt’s new rulers seem set to reproduce more of the same.
Khairat el-Shater, deputy chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood
Khairat el-Shater – multimillionaire businessman, deputy chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood, and likely candidate for prime minister of the coalition government – has been forthright about his economic ideology. He promotes a version of Islam that explicitly valourises free-market capitalism. He has clamped down on dissent among those within the Brotherhood who hold different ideas about how the economy should be run. El-Shater’s partner, Hassan Malek, the Brotherhood’s next most influential businessmen, has advocated for policies along similar lines.
While hoping to train a higher-skilled workforce and build the country’s manufacturing base for import substitution (two concessions to the economic left within the Brotherhood), el-Shater has openly espoused free markets, deregulation and other policies geared toward attracting foreign direct investment – the pillars of neoliberal economics.
The Brotherhood’s new position on economic policy has delighted the United States. US lawmakers have pushed hard since the beginning of the uprising to foster a form of political Islam compatible with US economic interests and the ideology of the Washington Consensus. When Senators John Kerry and John McCain opened the Egyptian Stock Exchange in a made-for-TV moment last June, it was clear to all that the US would seek – in a characteristically cynical move – to hijack the cries for freedom echoing from Tahrir Square in order to promote the “freedom” of deregulated market capitalism.
As far as the US is concerned, it doesn’t much matter if the people in power are tyrannical dictators or political Islamists, so long as they align with US economic policy. This was certainly true under Mubarak, who, with the help of the US, implemented a battery of macroeconomic reforms that shifted wealth and power to the upper socioeconomic strata of the population.
The consequences of this were devastating: the privatisation of public services enriched well-connected cronies while putting education and healthcare out of reach for many, the elimination of subsidies and tariffs undermined local businesses and drove up unemployment rates, labour standards were systematically eviscerated, unions were violently repressed and the tax burden was shifted from the rich to the poor.
USAid and economic policy in Egypt
Neoliberalism first came to Egypt as part of a longstanding alliance between Mubarak and the US. After Mubarak assumed power in 1981, the US granted more than $60bn in aid to Egypt.
Analysts commonly point out that most of this money was transferred in the form of military aid – $1.3bn per year since the Camp David Accords in 1979 – designed to help Egypt purchase American equipment like tanks and teargas canisters to supress internal dissent (incidentally, the US has continued to ship arms to Egypt, enabling further violence against peaceful protestors by the same military that ruled under Mubarak).
But, perhaps even more importantly, the US has also dispensed an average of $815m per year in economic assistance, distributed by the US Agency for International Development (USAid) with the key purpose of promoting “market freedom”. As of now, this flow of aid is set to continue into the post-Mubarak era.
Aid from the US always comes with strings attached. Technically, economic aid to Mubarak’s regime was supposed to support initiatives that “reduce poverty”, “create jobs” and “promote regional stability”. But a closer look shows that the overriding policy objective was to pry open the Egyptian economy for the benefit of American and other foreign corporations with little regard for the well-being of the Egyptian people.
Neoliberal policies were solidified in 1991 – a watershed moment in Egypt’s economic history – when Mubarak signed structural adjustment agreements with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which were reinforced the following year by USAid’s Sector Policy Reform Programme in a move that brought the total amount of disbursements for economic liberalisation to $2.3bn.
The US has even assumed power over key political appointments in Egypt. In 1994, USAid underwrote the US-Egypt Partnership for Economic Growth and Development – led by the then vice-president, Al Gore – which sought to reshuffle the Egyptian Cabinet and appoint a new prime minister, Kamal el-Ganzouri, who would endorse a neoliberal vision of private, export-oriented growth (notably, el-Ganzouri was re-appointed by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the military junta that took over after Mubarak). When the proposed new leaders assumed power in 1996, USAid praised them in a statement to Congress, which read: “The new Cabinet is committed to liberalising the economy by deregulating the trade sector, increasing competition in the financial sector and accelerating the pace of privatisation”.
While structural adjustment and market liberalisation has been great for foreign corporations and wealthy Egyptians, it has devastated Egypt’s economy: average per capita GDP growth has plummeted from 4.1 per cent prior to 1990 to 2.7 per cent during the neoliberal era. Nearly a third of all Egyptians now live below the poverty line.
As Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang has shown, this trend parallels that of developing countries in general, which have seen growth rates halved since the 1980s as a result of neoliberal policy. Despite this glaring evidence, Hassan Malek, speaking for the Muslim Brotherhood, recently said that Mubarak’s free-market policies were on the right track.
Give and take
To push along the process of neoliberal reform, USAid has given $200 million each year to the Egyptian government in handouts to encourage “continuing reduction in tariffs” and the privatisation of 314 government-owned companies. Furthermore, USAid devotes some 25 per cent of its budget to a special Commodity Import Programme designed to help Egypt buy American-made goods and reinforce bilateral trade.
Programmes like these have proven to be devastating for many Egyptians: they tend to undercut local manufacturers, encourage foreign monopolies, concentrate wealth in the hands of political cronies and ultimately contribute to unemployment, which (depending on the measure used) has risen to 25 per cent in recent years and reaches as high as 30 per cent among the young.
Some of the most extreme neoliberal measures have been directed at Egypt’s agriculture sector. As a condition for development aid, USAid has required Egypt to shift its formidable agricultural capacity away from staple foods and toward export crops such as cotton, grapes and strawberries in order to generate foreign currency to pay off its burgeoning debt to the US.
According to Columbia University professor, Timothy Mitchell, USAid first began to facilitate this process in the 1980s through its Agricultural Mechanisation Project, which was designed to develop the productive capacity of Egyptian export agriculture by financing the purchase of American machinery.
In the end – despite USAid’s projections to the contrary – the programme did very little to help common farmers. Instead, it disproportionately benefitted the few large landholders who could afford to take out the loans, while slashing the demand for agricultural labour and causing rural wages to plummet.
To propel the transformation to export-led agriculture, USAid forced the Egyptian government to heavily tax the production of staples by local farmers and to eliminate subsidies on essential consumer goods like sugar, cooking oil and dairy products in order to make room for competition from American and other foreign companies.
To ameliorate the resulting food gap, USAid’s so-called “Food for Peace” programme provided billions of dollars of loans for Egypt to import subsidised grain from the US, which only further undercut local farmers. The result of all of this “agricultural reform” was an unprecedented spike in food prices which made livelihoods increasingly precarious and forced much of the workforce to accept degrading and dehumanising labour conditions. The widespread social frustrations that resulted from these reforms helped spark the 2011 uprising.
Similar forms of neoliberal shock therapy been applied to the public services sector. USAid has aggressively pushed for so-called “cost-recovery” mechanisms, a euphemism for transforming public healthcare and education into private, fee-based institutions. Indeed, USAid typically spends nearly half of its health and education budgets – more than $100-million per year – on privatisation measures.
This has been fantastic for multinational medical companies, as it translates into greater dependence on imported drugs and equipment. For Egyptians, however, privatisation means having to pay large sums on healthcare and education. Mitchell shows that such expenditures - as a percentage of household income – now rank at the second and third highest in the world, respectively.
To make matters worse, Mitchell also demonstrates that USAid’s cuts to public service budgets have forced the wage rates of workers in hospitals and schools below the rate of inflation, causing deep income deficits among working-class households.
These destructive, pro-corporate policies get obscured by the rhetoric that USAid deploys. According to its website, USAid claims to have helped Egypt become a “success story in economic development”, citing “improvements” in the quality of education and – amazingly – “the administration of justice” (a shocking contradiction, given that the US actively funded Mubarak’s repressive military apparatus and its widespread human rights abuses).
Egypt’s vigorous market liberalisation programme has attracted foreign investment and boosted GDP growth, but these gains have only benefited the very rich, while the country’s bottom quintiles have seen their portion of the economic pie shrink significantly over the same period.
Lessons from the past
As the Freedom and Justice Party continue to debate economic policy, they would do well to keep this history in mind. By any measure that takes the well-being of everyday Egyptians seriously, neoliberal development policy in Egypt has been an abject failure: according to the UN Human Development Index, Egypt’s ranking has plunged to 123rd, which puts it just below Guatemala, and tenth place in the Arab Middle East, just one notch above Yemen. For the vast majority of people, it is clear that there is nothing “freeing” about “market freedom”.
The protesters who continued to occupy Tahrir Square well after Mubarak’s departure know this all too well, as do the workers who began protesting Mubarak’s economic policies as early as 2006 during the first wave of labour strikes – the precedent to the 2011 uprising. Theirs has never been merely a struggle for democracy, but for an economic order designed to protect the well-being of every Egyptian – a call for the radical rethinking of neoliberal capitalism.
They realise that, if left unchallenged, the new coalition government will adhere to the neoliberal economic principles laid out by Mubarak and the United States, even if they do choose to reject US aid and instate a few token concessions (such as welfare arrangements and the first ever minimum wage for private companies). They can see, in short, that the revolution has been hijacked.
Egypt's activists have returned to the scene of deadly clashes in Cairo, determined to keep their revolution alive, armed with paint brushes.
They were hit, pushed back and even fired at, but Egyptian activists have returned to the scene of deadly clashes in the heart of Cairo, determined to keep their revolution alive, this time armed with paint brushes.
From a distance, Sheikh Rihan street, a wide avenue in Cairo’s usually busy administrative centre, looks eerily still. Not a car, not a moving soul.
But get closer, and a trompe l’oeil becomes apparent.
On the surface of a concrete wall built by security forces in the middle of the road, artists have painted a street scene recreating Sheikh Rihan with all its lamposts, pavements and trees, in a bid to melt away the barricades as part of their No Walls campaign.
Even after a popular uprising ousted veteran president Hosni Mubarak last year, activists have continued taking to the streets to push for the goals of their revolution—freedom, political transparency and social justice—which they say remain unfulfilled.
In November and December, fierce clashes between protesters and security forces in Cairo’s administrative centre prompted authorities to erect a series of concrete walls to protect vital buildings, they said.
Separation
But protesters believe the walls were built to cage them in and prevent the spread of further protests.“We didn’t have a revolution so that in the end, they build walls to separate us from them and them from us,” said Ammar Abu Bakr, a lecturer at the Fine Arts School in the historic city of Luxor, in southern Egypt.
“We have launched a non-violent campaign, simply by opening up the walls through drawing,” Abu Bakr said.
The once drab walls of downtown Cairo have turned into a giant graphic newspaper, recounting current events through an explosion of colour and form.
Caricatures of the ruling generals, portraits of protesters who died in clashes, scenes depicting street battles have turned the centre of the capital into an open air art gallery.
“Since our revolution is peaceful, if they play with walls, we will play with the mind.
They put up a wall but we don’t see it,” said Amr Nazeer, a graffiti artist who participated in the No Walls campaign.In a cat and mouse game with the authorities, the artists work fast to get exposure for their work before it is removed.
“It’s an exhibition for the people, you express yourself and at most in a few days or a week it will be removed, then you paint again,” Nazeer said.
“The message is always parallel to the events. When something happens or when there’s an event, the revolutionaries come first and then we step in,” said Abu Bakr, of the growing artists’ movement defying authorities through chalk, paint, spray and stencils.
‘Authorities don’t accept graffiti movements’
A ballerina on points, women in traditional robes carrying gas cylinders on their heads, wolves, spears, snakes with human heads, rainbows and balloons are just some of the images depicted in the murals that have covered the grey concrete walls.“Authorities don’t accept graffiti movements, not just in Egypt but all over the world ... But we are trying to introduce a new style and propose new subjects,” said Alaa Awad, another lecturer at the Luxor Fine Arts School.
Awad painted his own interpretation of a page from the Description de l’Egypte—a rare copy of a book written by French scholars who accompanied Napoleon on his expedition to Egypt—which was burned when the building housing it was set ablaze during clashes in December.
Authorities blamed protesters for starting the fire, saying they had deliberately destroyed precious Egyptian heritage, while the protesters insist they were the ones rushing to the scene to salvage what remained of the documents.
State media “tried to show that the revolutionaries were behind the destruction,” Awad said.
“My message is, there is no such thing as the Description of Egypt. Egypt needs to be described by its people,” he said, standing in front of his blue and sand-coloured mural, which bears the slogan: “May we see the light of day.”
A few weeks after it was completed, the enormous concrete blocks that provided the canvas for Awad’s painting started coming down.
Anger
Dozens of angry anti-military activists, using a variety of creative mechanisms including ropes and levers, have torn down the wall, on a main street leading to Parliament near the protest hub of Tahrir Square.After Mubarak was toppled in 2011, the military council of elderly generals who took power was idolised for not siding with the fallen dictator, but has since come under attack for cracking down on dissidents.
Back in central Cairo, the face of Samira Ibrahim, the woman who created a storm by taking the military to court over forced “virginity tests” of female protesters, features prominently.
On one wall, her face looks up defiantly above soldiers, all bearing the face of the army doctor who performed the virginity tests and who was recently acquitted.
Nearby, a series of portraits of the victims who died during clashes—with bright orange wings—cover one large wall.
Abu Bakr said he gave them wings because in Coptic Art—his area of expertise—“wings are related to martyrs, saints and angels”.
The art has attracted many to the city centre, snapping pictures and posing in front of the graffiti.
“I pass by this street and I recognise the martyrs, yes, they sacrificed their lives. But as the graffiti says, they have now become angels,” said Gamal al-Sayyed, an IT consultant.—AFP
Quotes on Carnegie - Praise for the Global Think Tank“[Carnegie is]…one of the centers of gravity of thinking about national security matters in our country.” – General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
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“[T]his great vision of becoming a global think tank [is] badly needed in an interconnected world.” – Nicholas Burns, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs
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“An excellent institution that does important work to help establish stronger international laws and organizations.” – His Royal Highness Prince Turki Al-Faisal
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Briefing: The Egyptian revolution one year onCAIRO, 10 February 2012 (IRIN) - Activists and trade unions have announced 11 February as a day of general strike and civil disobedience in Egypt - in protest against continued military rule.Cairo’s Tahrir Square does not have the same energy it used to; many activists say they feel disillusioned
One year after forcing their long-time ruler Hosni Mubarak to step down on 11 February 2011, many Egyptians are confused about the achievements of the revolution so far.
On the one hand, many say they are freer and more politically-empowered after asserting themselves - not only during the popular uprising that forced the president to leave after three decades in power - but also in the months that followed, in the form of continued protests against their new rulers and at the ballot box.
On the other hand, with an ailing economy, skyrocketing food prices, growing unemployment, inconsistent health services, continued deadly clashes, a weak new parliament, and a perceived unwillingness of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to leave power after taking over from Mubarak, many are asking what the revolution has brought them.
People are, in some cases, getting fed up with the revolution itself. Cairo’s central protest square, Tahrir, does not have the energy it used to and many activists feel disillusioned. They never expected the revolution to be such a lengthy process, and are facing antagonism from some Egyptians who just want the violence, insecurity and economic deterioration to end.
In an increasingly divided Egypt, there is one thing everyone seems to agree on: Egypt is not where they wished it would be one year later.
Ailing economy
Addressing the first post-revolution parliament on 31 January, Prime Minister of the National Salvation Government Kamal Al Ganzouri could find no better word to describe the condition of the national economy than “bad”.
Al Ganzouri said internal debts jumped from 147 billion Egyptian pounds (US$245 million) in 1999 to 857 billion pounds (US$1.4 billion) at present, and that 1,500 factories had already closed, while the government had to take measures to reduce the budget deficit by 20 billion pounds.
Revenues from tourism, a main source of foreign currency, tumbled to $2.8 billion at the end of 2011 from $14 billion the previous year, according to independent economist Abdel Monem Al Sayed. The local currency lost 12 percent of its value against the US dollar over the same time period, he added.
These figures might explain a surging unemployment rate. Unemployment stood at 8.9 percent of the work force in 2010, but in 2011, the rate rose to 11.9 percent, according to the state-run Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics.
Some independent experts expect the rate to increase in the future as the economy continues to perform poorly and tourism proves to be incapable of compensating for the revenues it lost to political uncertainty and security turmoil. The return of over half a million Egyptians from Libya has not helped.
The Egyptian economy grew at 2.5 percent in 2011, down from 4.8 percent in 2010. Pre-revolution forecasts put the economic growth rate at 5.8 percent, according to former Finance Minister Samir Radwan.
Price rises
Apart from scarcity, some basic commodities are becoming intolerably expensive for most Egyptians. The price of fruit and vegetables is doubling, while beef, chicken, and fish have become the privilege of the rich. Tomatoes sell for the equivalent of 50 US cents (up from 25 cents), potatoes for 65 cents (up from 25 cents) and beef for $12 per kilogram.
The majority of Egyptians - who do not have natural gas delivered to their homes - have to wait for hours outside gas cylinder distribution centres. The alternative is to buy the gas cylinder for $6.6 on the black market. The same cylinder sells for $1 at official distribution centres.
Natural gas and petrol scarcity is threatening the ability of subsidized bread bakeries to continue operating, according to some bakery owners.
The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics on 31 January announced that 25.2 percent of the population was poor - living on less than $2 a day - as of 2011, compared with 21.6 percent of the population in 2010.
The agency added that 51 percent of poor people lived in the south of Egypt in 2011, compared with 44 percent in 2010.
Health sector struggles
The security vacuum that hit the nation in the wake of the revolution has made hospitals insecure, despite the government’s best efforts. The dwindling economy has led to shortages in pharmacies and hundreds of thousands of people struggle to find medicines and vaccines. Top of the list of scarcities are insulin and medicine for the heart and liver diseases.
The head of the Heart Institute on 16 January said that doctors had already stopped conducting open heart surgery because of an extreme shortage of 15 medicines which protect patients against blood-clotting. Four days earlier, officials from the Cancer Institute in Tanta in the Nile Delta said the institute was in urgent need of 12 essential medicines that were scarce on the market. Such complaints are voiced every day, reflecting a deeply troubled health sector.Compounding medicine shortages is an endless cycle of protests and strikes by doctors and pharmacists who either want a salary increase or permanent work contracts.
Insecurity
The most shocking recent example of insecurity was the killing of 74 and the injuring of around 200 people during football riots in the Mediterranean city of Port Said on 1 February. It was the worst of many incidents of violence in the country since Mubarak’s departure, and reinforced the feeling of many Egyptians that the state was not present.
A proliferation of weapons and deteriorating security conditions have rendered hijackings and robberies common news in Egypt. And people are increasingly taking the law into their own hands.
Bedouin tribesmen in the Sinai abducted 25 Chinese workers and 18 border guards in two separate incidents in less than two weeks, in protest over the detention or killing of fellow tribesmen.
In late January, hundreds of civil servants decided to prevent tens of cruise ships carrying foreign tourists from crossing a certain point on the River Nile until the civil servants were given permanent contracts by the government.
Inefficient governance
Many in Egypt say they do not long for the days of the former regime, but they express discontent at SCAF’s transitional governance since Mubarak’s fall.
They say the military council is not transparent, participatory, accountable, responsive, or even efficient.
Many members of the newly elected parliament point to the recent presidential election law as an example. The military council issued the law, which will regulate the next presidential elections, without consulting parliament.The new parliament, elected over the course of the past few months, has limited powers compared to the military council, and its majority party - the Muslim Brotherhood - is often at odds with the wishes of activists in Tahrir square.
Optimism
Despite this widespread deterioration, Egyptians still have reason to feel optimistic. In a newly-found sense of voter empowerment, millions of Egyptians showed up at polling stations across the nation in November and December to choose members for the first post-revolution parliament. Around 47 percent of the voters chose the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization banned for decades under the former regime.
Egypt also expects to hold its first post-Mubarak presidential elections this year.
ae/ha/cb
Theme (s): Conflict, Economy, Governance, Health & Nutrition, Security,
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
Egypt had massive income gaps during Mubarak’s regime, which clearly caused the original uprising.
By William Shaub, Assistant Online Editor
Throughout history, popular protest and revolt has stemmed from a whole host of reasons. At times, the public would be subjected to unmitigated state violence. Occasionally, repressed native populations would reclaim their lands from the hand of colonialism. One can find reasons for quite a few revolutions just by looking at the history of economics, slave societies, and human rights.
However, there’s a not-so subtle common thread that runs straight through nearly every revolution in history: average, poor and working people were suppressed. Their economic welfare and social lives were subjected to relatively unacceptable levels of nihilism and degradation.
Growing inequality isn’t desirable or sustainable, and it makes America look like an awfully poor democratic model for the developing world
It’s long been understood that once these groups would get organized after years of repression, they’d realize they had choices. One of them is the option to struggle as moral agents, and assume the power to impose moral standards on powerful institutions.The average Egyptian made the choice to struggle, and for a variety of reasons; most of which can be described as concealed in mainstream global discourse.
If you watched U.S corporate media outlets during Egypt’s 18 day revolution, you’ll find that they hesitated to analyze the root causes of the revolution in Egypt. This isn’t conspiratorial, it’s simply documented. For example, only one news anchor called the protests in Egypt a ‘revolution’ for its first 15 days. They consistently opted for the word ‘crises’ in Egypt, rather than revolution. Why the media does this is the subject of a future article (stay tuned), but there’s something much more important that needs to be addressed.
The media still claims they can’t analyze the crises in Egypt properly because it’s unlike any revolution in history (citing Mubarak’s shutdown of the Internet as an example). Of course, if you do a little research, you’ll find that it’s exactly what we could expect from a 21st-century revolution.
Let’s look at the symptoms. Egypt has had a massive income gap throughout Mubarak’s control, which is clearly the root cause of the original uprising. One half of Egyptians live on $2/day or less. The average per-capita income in the country is just $6,200 (CIA World Fact Book).
To put the largest country in the Arab world’s poverty in perspective, just compare it to the United States. The American economy is more unequal than at any time since 1920. Its per-capita income is stillalmost 8 times higher than Egypt’s ($47,000).
Those types of facts make the idea that between 1980 and 2005, more than 80 percent of total increase in Americans’ income went to the top 1 percent of wealth seem important. Every democratic system has been undermined based on essentially two basic pillars: too much poverty and too much paranoia. Growing inequality isn’t desirable or sustainable, and it makes America look like an awfully poor democratic model for the developing world.
Apparently, Egyptians realized they didn’t have to deal with certain things that not only promote vast inequality, but repress workers. The minimum wage hasn’t risen in 25 years. Mubarak’s political environment has weakened the power of labor and kept down wages to the advantage of major employers, both foreign and domestic. Free and organized citizens, not just a loose-knit group of individuals, usually refuse to listen to the dictates of authoritarian institutions.
In the average Egyptian’s case, this institution was a state regime beholden to private power. Power should always be made to justify itself. It’s not inherent. It’s not a law of nature. When power is questioned, the unraveling of Egyptian democracy as a whole will be the consequence.
People will not accept domination and unjustified authority when they have choices. Despite the negativity surrounding revolution, it’s proven itself effectively to be the Cuban, American, Russian, French, and now, Egyptian, choice of reform.
By William Shaub, Assistant Online Editor
ARB Team
Arbitrage Magazine
Business News with BITE
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Egyptian protesters participating in a silent stand on June 6, 2011, at Kasr Al Nil bridge. By Zeinab Mohamed, via Flickr.
The starting point for a movement of mass action usually cannot be pinpointed to a single moment or person. This is true of the 2011 Arab Awakening, despite the temptation to credit Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in Tunisia or Wael Ghonim’s prowess on Facebook in Egypt; such struggles defy simplistic explanations of origin.
“I don’t want to take much credit; the revolution was leaderless,” Wael told 2.8 million listeners on BBC’s Radio 4 recently. Encircled in a tight studio in London’s Portman Place BBC headquarters, along with Paul Mason, economics editor for the BBC program Newsnight, newscaster Andrew Marr had convened the three of us to discuss the topic of “Revolution.” Egypt’s revolution, our conversation made clear, was far from spontaneous. For years, Egyptian activists were sharing knowledge, organizing and learning to think strategically.
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Wael is a 31-year-old Google executive in charge of marketing for the Middle East and North Africa who helped to catalyze the movement centered in Tahrir Square last year. On June 8, 2010, he saw a photograph of a young Egyptian who had been, in his words, “horribly tortured.” The visual proof of Khaled Mohamed Said’s atrocious June 6 fatal beating by secret police in Alexandria struck a chord throughout the country, in part because the 28-year-old was middle class. Weeping over “the state of our nation and the widespread tyranny,” Wael saw the image as representing “a terrible symbol of Egypt’s condition.” He decided to create a page on Facebook called “Kullena Khaled Said,” or “We Are All Khaled Said.” Some 36,000 joined the page on the first day, many writing comments, and thus a conversation began to occur that could not otherwise have taken place under Hosni Mubarak’s regime.
Explaining that he had never been an activist before, Wael wrote in the first person and in colloquial Egyptian dialect, rather than classical Arabic, with “a lack of conspiracy.” He avoided using political phraseology and wrote personally as “an ordinary Egyptian devastated by the brutality inflicted on Kahled Said and motivated to seek justice.”
Wael credits Mohamed Eisa with sending to the page’s email account the idea for the “Silent Stands,” a critically important tactic used in the build-up to what would eventually become a national movement. The concept was that individuals would stand in a human chain for one hour, wearing black and carrying a Qur’an or a Bible for quiet reading. “We wanted to send out a clear message that although we were both sad and angry, we were nevertheless nonviolent,” Wael writes in his new book, Revolution 2.0. Reckoning that they could not be arrested for wearing black, they started their first single-file stand at 5 p.m. on June 18, 2010, calling it “A Silent Stand of Prayer for the Martyr Khaled Said along the Alexandria Corniche.” Purposely designed to circumvent physical confrontation with the security apparatus, Wael writes, “The goal was for members to summon the courage to take positive action to the street.”
The next stand was in Cairo. They carried out this type of vigil five times, with participants turning their backs to the street, sometimes with three or four kilometers of silently praying Egyptians. A thousand people took part in Khaled Said’s public funeral. The April 6 Youth Movement also organized an event to denounce Said’s murder in Cairo, and Wael’s hopes rose.
The April 6 movement had been launched in 2008. Among its Internet-savvy organizers was Ahmed Maher, a 30-year-old civil engineer, who, in March of that year, urged young Egyptians to support the 26,000 textile workers planning to strike on April 6 in the town of Mahalla al-Kobra. For more than a year, workers had been striking across Egypt, protesting high inflation and unemployment, but their actions were not coordinated. When the Mahalla strikes were violently repressed in March, with police killings of strikers, Maher and his allies called a nationwide general strike for April 6. Maher was brutally tortured by the police a few weeks after the strike. “Security forces were in disbelief,” Wael says. “How had opposition youth groups emerged without any political affiliations, Islamist or other?”
Naming themselves after the April 6 action, members of the movement participated in online tutorials with organizers of Otpor! (Resistance!), the Serbian student movement that unified 18 competing political parties and the general population to bring down Slobodan Milošević in 2000. The April 6 movement even sent one of their group, Mohamed Adel, to Belgrade in 2009. Learning from Otpor trainers about how they had organized, and why it was critically important to avoid violence, Mohamed came back talking about “unity, discipline, and planning,” carrying films and teaching aids. The April 6 movement modeled its logo after Otpor’s and adopted Otpor’s organizational approach, in which all were equal, making it harder for authorities to pick off so-called leaders. By 2009, some 76,000 were involved and posting on its Facebook page.
Practical and tangible lessons came into Egypt over a period of years through a variety of channels. The Otpor leaders had formed a network of activists that included experienced veterans from nonviolent struggles in South Africa, the Philippines, Lebanon, Georgia and Ukraine. The Egyptians tapping into Otpor were therefore learning from a global interchange. Scholars Maria Stephan and Stephen Zunes visited Cairo in 2009 to work with liberal academicians and reform-minded civil-society actors. For five years, some Egyptian activists and bloggers had been meeting with people central to nonviolent movements across the world, comparing notes. This is how they met the Serbian veterans.
Seeing Tunisia’s success, the April 6 movement sought to capitalize on Egypt’s annual Police Day—a January 25, 2011, holiday that would commemorate a police revolt suppressed by British colonial authorities. Wael Ghonim used Facebook to marshal support. If 50,000 people were willing to commit to march on the day he posted, the demonstration would be held. More than twice that number signed up. On January 25, the numbers turning out in Alexandria, Cairo, and Suez took police by surprise. April 6 made common cause with Mohamed ElBaradei’s supporters, some liberal and leftist parties, and the youth wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Wael Ghonim tweeted:
Pray for #Egypt. Very worried as it seems that government is planning a war crime tomorrow against people. We are all ready to die #Jan25.
On January 28, the Day of Rage, Mubarak’s regime blocked the Internet for five days. Egyptians outwitted this measure by relaying through other outlets. A print shop reproduced a 26-page pamphlet for instant circulation. As police used tear gas and water cannon against demonstrators, the pamphlet, “How to Protest Intelligently,” warned people not to disseminate the plan through Facebook or Twitter, because both were monitored by the Interior Ministry. Listing the democracy movement’s demands and calling for tactical unity, it asked for “strategic civil disobedience” in winning over of the police and army “to the side of the people.” It called for disciplined, positive slogans and language. As demonstrations spread across the country, some of the biggest rallies occurred when the Internet was down.
Social media alone are not causative. Nonviolent movements have always appropriated the most advanced technologies available in order to spread their messages. When fighting with the force of ideas, rejecting violence or militarized methods, the reframing of old grievances as wrongs that might now be corrected requires argumentation and teaching. People must be helped to see that deep-rooted predicaments can be amenable to direct action. Wael agreed when I made this point on the BBC: “We’re trying to give too much credit to social media, because it’s a new thing,” he said.
Indeed, far more important than media, pre-existing conditions or the political culture in the Arab rebellions were two other factors that helped give rise to revolt: 1) The existence of a civic capacity for sustained action and protracted long-term resistance—mosques, churches, labor unions, networks of professional and other organizations, and groups that have gone underground. 2) The sharing of lessons and knowledge from other movements, and the dissemination of historical insights among guiding activist intellectuals. Political thinking affects strategic planning. Both of these forces involve human agency—individual and collective.
On the 17th day of protest in Tahrir Square, the waves of strikes that had been ongoing since 2006 widened. They spread throughout all of Egypt. After 18 days—January 25 to February 11—Mubarak resigned from the presidency, his legitimacy destroyed.
Egyptians had been organizing themselves long before they would fill Tahrir Square. Enough of them in sufficiently dispersed centers of society had obtained the knowledge and a level of preparedness to build a national mobilization of noncooperation. This included the country’s dispirited civil-society groups. It included young activists, some of whom had been learning from experience abroad and organizing through online social networks. It included working-class people who had been trying to improve their lot by striking. Ultimately, the refusal of laborers to show up for work in the days just before the Mubarak resignation was the last prop to be pulled away from Mubarak’s regime. Working in diffuse groups, Egyptians knew how to organize, how to withdraw cooperation and how to handle the unexpected. As they confront Mubarak’s successors, they will need this knowledge for their continuing struggle.
The sweeping Islamist victory in Egypts first democratic elections is alarming, but not for the reasons many would have you believe.It is true their credentials as democrats are untested and their ability to manage an economy is unproved. But a strong showing by the Muslim Brotherhoods Freedom and Justice party was no surprise, and the FJP has articulated an apparently coherent economic policy.
Rather, what shocked the nation was that the poorest of the poor a near majority in Egypt strongly favoured the ultraconservative Salafists, a group that so far talks less about a better life on this earth than one after death.
Hope that peoples circumstances might improve in this life, not the next, needs to be restored.
This cannot be answered by a new government, of any political stripe, alone. A business community tainted by the crony capitalism of a few has helped create such sentiments; it must now help broker a new social contract. The success of our venture into democracy will be judged by how we prepare our youth for real jobs that pay living wages; how we care for our sick; and how we protect our minorities.
Solutions will not come from abroad. Egypt must take action on many fronts beginning by grabbing firmly the third rail of our politics: the subsidy programme.
This takes courage and real political leadership, especially given the reactions elsewhere in Africa recently when long-established subsidy regimes have been tapped for reform. The violent national protests over the cancellation of Nigerias fuel subsidy clearly demonstrate the political risks inherent in re-thinking subsidies. On January 1st 2012, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan removed a government subsidy on petrol which resulted in the price at the pump more than doubling from N65 (US$0.40) to N141 (US$0.86). General protests began against the removal of the fuel subsidy under the banner Occupy Nigeria shortly after the announcement and were later significantly augmented by the Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress, which called for an indefinite general strike starting on January 9th. This nearly compromised Nigerias 2 million bpd output when oil workers threatened to join the strike. A week later, on January 16th, a decision was made by President Jonathan to announce a compromise fuel price of N97, which the unions subsequently agreed to.
Although many Nigerians dont oppose the governments desire to save the country billions of dollars in annual subsidy costs, many of the countrys poor believe such savings will end up in the coffers of the elite as faith in the transparency and accountability of government is negligible.
Similarly in Uganda, the governments decision to phase out power subsidies has been backed by ruling party legislators. Although many disagree with this proposal, diverting money away from power subsidies which currently benefit only ten per cent of the population and harnessing it for social development purposes will benefit more citizens.
Yet the subsidies are simply not sustainable. Measured by their contributions to the economy, Africas main assets oil and gas, water, electricity, infrastructure and mining are underperforming, largely since they are yoked to an inefficient, corrupt subsidy programme that indiscriminately benefits everyone on African soil, rich or poor. The more you consume, the higher your subsidy. So, by disproportionately benefiting corporations and the wealthy, subsidies are a major source of inequality in Africa.
For instance, Egypt consumes 380m cylinders of subsidised liquefied petroleum gas a year, but the actual need is closer to 200m for 15m beneficiaries. Savings: $2.2bn. By allowing natural gas imports (or curbing exports while raising export prices), we could make domestic power generation more energy-efficient. Savings: $2bn.
We are a net importer of diesel, which we then subsidise. If we expanded domestic refining capacity; promoted rail and river transport over trucking; and liberalised diesel prices over 10 years, petrol prices over five years and fuel oil over three years, we would save billions and help the environment.
A bold politician might end energy subsidies at once. Along with more efficient use of state assets, and the end of food subsidies, this would save $58bn annually freeing $20bn for direct cash payments to qualified welfare beneficiaries and $38bn for health, education, job creation and cutting the budget deficit. Similar programmes have succeeded in Brazil, Mexico and Iran.
These solutions are within reach, but demand decisive action by legislators willing to trust the business community. Whether they will do so is an open question.
Since the revolution, which should have been a joyous, once-in-a-lifetime event, Egypt has lost at least 10 months of economic growth. In the months ahead, inflation and the need to create jobs will increase the subsidy budget. The desire to punish business for its past excesses coupled with a rising nationalism will make it popular to install trade barriers, reverse privatisations and impose new taxes and regulations.
The instinct of many in business will be to resist and complain behind closed doors. If we are to rekindle hope for more than 85m people, business must instead advocate and actively build a new social contract. Reforms to use state assets better and phase out energy subsidies over five years could free up billions of dollars to fund health, education and job creation and cut the aid deficit.
Wise politicians would accept that involvement. Other African leaders may draw useful lessons for their own drive to build more equitable and vibrant economies.
The writer is chairman of Citadel Capital, Africas largest private equity firm. The original version of this article was published in the Financial Times.
Muslim Brotherhood (MB) Chairman, Dr. Mohamed Badie, met with Pope Shenouda III, Wednesday, at Al-Azhar headquarters, to discuss Al-Azhar’s initiative "Restore Revolution Spirit and Values, and Fulfil Revolution Demands."
The MB Chairman and Pope Shenouda III had a cordial conversation, before the start of the meeting, which the Chairman described as infused with patriotic spirit and determination to safeguard Egypt’s future.
Dr. Badie stressed the need to achieve the full objectives of the revolution and not allow any parties, stakeholders or forces to divide the Egyptian people, emphasizing that the meeting saw a consensus amongst all on the need for concerted efforts to save Egypt.
The Chairman explained the importance of commitment to results of the free and fair elections, and the need for cooperation between all the youth of the revolution and the elected representatives of the people in building Egypt's future under the umbrella of democracy on the basis of parliamentary legitimacy and national consensus.
In a press statement, Dr. Badie announced support for Al-Azhar initiative which declared a number of so-called national obligations, namely:
1. Maintaining Tahrir spirit as it was during the eighteen days that changed the course of Egyptian history, and gathered all the people of this homeland under one banner.
2. National Pledge – in the name of all aforementioned values ??– to fully achieve the objectives of the revolution of the twenty-fifth of January.
3. National Consensus to serve and nurture all components of this nation, without dominance, hegemony, exclusion, discrimination or bias.
4. Affirming citizens’ constitutional right for trial before an ordinary court, preventing military trials of civilians, and releasing all political prisoners.
5. Expediting trials without prejudice to sanctity of citizens’ rights, appropriate justice or the duty of impartiality.
6. Fulfillment of the rights of families of martyrs and wounded to treatment and compensation, work and comprehensive care.
7. Proceeding with construction of the state’s democratic institutions and completing the handover of power to civilians as scheduled, without delay.
8. Commitment to results of the free and fair elections, and cooperation between all the youth of the revolution and the elected representatives of the people in building Egypt's future under the umbrella of democracy on the basis of parliamentary legitimacy and national consensus.
9. Eliminating the deep-seated effects of repressive policies and widespread corruption, and endeavoring the utmost to build a strong Egyptian economy that invests all Egypt’s resources and brings justice to all the people of this homeland.
10. Restoring Egypt’s leading role in the region, and contributing to international politics with free will, without subordination or bias.
11. Returning the Egyptian army – the people’s great protector, defender of the nation and its revolutionary uprisings – to its role in guarding Egypt’s borders and safeguarding its national security.
12. Releasing the people’s energies, especially patriotic revolutionary youth, to build community and state, to fight against underdevelopment, backwardness, poverty, disease and ignorance, and to help Egypt rise politically, economically and morally to be a shining model for the Arab and Muslim nation.
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