“There is no doubt that in any society the link between economics and politics is an extremely close one. Unfortunately their reciprocal influence becomes even more evident when times are bad. Such is the case in Egypt, but not only. Libya comes to mind as well as other countries in North Africa where things are going badly, but the economic crisis is now affecting the whole world, starting with Europe and the Unites States.” According to Amr Hashem Rabie, a political analyst at the Ahram Centre in Cairo, for Egypt the current crisis is an economic impasse with deep and robust roots, dating back to the beginning of the Mubarak era. “The Nazif (Ahmed Nazif has been Prime Minister since 2004, Editor’s note) government’s economic strategies are not enough to rebalance a series of negative factors that have accumulated over the years. I refer to conflicts with Israel, Washington’s overpowering influence on Egyptian politics and those of the entire Middle East. And foreign investments, or the income deriving from mass tourism, is useless without a seriously organised State.”
Organisation. This is the word this political analyst repeats more than once, emphasising the abyss that exists between Cairo and the rest of the country. “There is no organisation; immense areas of Middle and Upper Egypt have been abandoned to fend for themselves or to the goodwill of ordinary citizens, as well as Egyptian and international NGOs. The gap between citizens and central power could not be greater. Millions of Egyptians are not even registered; they simply do not exist for Cairo. “How can there be development without change in the political class?” he asks himself, “Our regime is thirty years old, with the same President since 1981 (Hosni Mubarak has governed the Arab Republic of Egypt since the month of October 27 years ago, the day after the death of his predecessor, Anwar Sadat, assassinated by radical Islamists, Editor’s note). There is no democracy, reforms have been stopped and the usual people cash in the money.”
After the reformist surge experienced three years ago – or at least what was perceived as such by outside observers – when Mubarak opened the presidential election process to other candidates, “there has been no change, human and political rights are violated just as before and even more, and tension among the people is rising.” There is, however, no revolution in sight according to Amr Rabie. “If anything, violence between citizens will increase” – he says – “as has happened recently. Clashes between Muslims and Christians are not part of the Egyptian tradition, we have always coexisted peacefully. Recent events prove that hunger, poverty and the lack of a future lead to violence. Just as drug abuse, which is increasingly significantly in the lower classes of society, reflects this despair.” This is a dark picture in which the researcher from the Ahram Centre sees few glimmers of hope, especially until political power addresses the “the scourge of corruption”, instead of continuing to avidly feed off it.
Translation by Francesca Simmons