Egyptian unrest rises with inflation

By Amr Hamzawy
In Arab countries such as Morocco, Egypt and Jordan, a burgeoning social crisis caused by out-of-control global inflationary pressures, a crippled welfare system and persisting high levels of poverty and unemployment is further complicated by a broader political deterioration. Taken together, the simultaneous trajectories of social unrest and deteriorating politics call into question the prospects of stability in those countries.
Over the past two years, Egypt has come to be a case in point for the dangers inherent in that kind of development. On April 6, 2008 a number of civil society organizations including independent unions, syndicates and networks of young activists - some of whom belong to political parties - organized a national strike day to express their frustration with deteriorating social and economic conditions. Although government security forces contained the strike in most Egyptian cities, they could not stop workers in state-owned industrial complexes in Mahalla, a city in northern Egypt, from orchestrating massive demonstrations. There were numerous reports of violent confrontations and clashes between thousands of protesters and security forces that went on for two days.
Workers' strikes have become frequent in Egypt. Hundreds of strikes and protests have been carried out over the past two years, but none escalated to the levels of early April. The primary demand of workers has been to link their wages to commodity price levels. Inflation has been a problem for many years in Egypt, settling at around 8 percent in late 2007, according to the International Monetary Fund. Earlier in March, unanticipated shortages of subsidized bread caused considerable popular agitation, prompting President Hosni Mubarak to instruct army bakeries to boost their production.
The social unrest of the last two years is quite different from what Egypt witnessed briefly between 2004 and 2005. Back then, street-level outbursts were the result of reform-driven activism led by several opposition movements, most notably the Muslim Brotherhood and Kifaya. By and large, the present unrest is a reaction to the acute decline in socioeconomic conditions, and its instigators do not appear to have a well thought-out agenda.
The regime has consistently tried to contain the situation through a combination of repressive and conciliatory measures. Government officials have issued warnings to industrial workers that participation in strikes or any other protest activities would cost them their jobs. More often than not, security forces have been deployed to preempt or smother strikes. At times, however, the regime has yielded to certain demands such as increases in wages, expanding the beneficiary pool of state welfare programs and sustaining some subsidies. Most recently, Mubarak announced a 30 percent increase in public sector wages. Yet the persistence of protest activities demonstrates the seriousness of popular discontent and the failure of both oppressive methods and minor peace-making concessions to mollify the public.
The Egyptian regime's lack of an overall strategy to address the country's enduring troubles extends far beyond the economic sphere. The regime seems to have abandoned the often implemented option of using political reforms to defuse socioeconomic tensions. The strong showing of the Muslim Brotherhood in the parliamentary elections of 2005, when its candidates won 20 percent of the seats of the People's Assembly (the lower chamber of the Egyptian Parliament), tested the regime's grip on power and led it to crack down on the political activism of the years before.
In 2006, the regime postponed local elections, extended the state of emergency and repressed opposition activists. And it suppressed efforts by the country's judiciary to accrue some measure of independence. The Muslim Brotherhood also became a target: In 2006 and 2007, the regime launched a wave of arrests targeting the movement's high-ranking leaders and financiers.
The resultant weakness of the organized political opposition is further augmenting social unrest. The capacity of opposition groups to operate effectively has been terribly deflated. The consequence of this condition has been a massive increase in spontaneous, unstructured outbreaks of civil disobedience. Leading these discordant waves of activism are labor leaders, human rights activists, bloggers and young journalists. They have roots that stretch across the ideological spectrum and are remarkably responsive to the public's sentiments. In spite of attempts by some political parties to develop links to these activists, they have remained largely autonomous. Nevertheless, this dispersion of energy from the center of the political system to its peripheries has also obstructed the emergence of a coherent movement with a clear set of demands.
Egypt is trapped in an unenviable position, characterized by growing social unrest and political deterioration. Choices made by the Egyptian regime will most likely determine whether the current social convulsions will be followed by more instability or, if matters are handled prudently, sustainable recovery. In all likelihood, the option of moderating the perilous effects of economic strain by orchestrating a new wave of political reforms is one that the regime will hesitate to embrace at this stage. The concern that such openings might make worse the odds of the approaching presidential succession (Mubarak turned 80 on May 4 and his fifth terms ends in 2011) seems to surpass any other considerations.
The current resurgence of protest activism constitutes the one promising development in Egyptian political life. But progress on the street needs to be complemented by real progress in the performance of organized opposition forces in the political process. Notwithstanding the fact that this progress is largely predicated on the regime's willingness to welcome the opposition's input, it is also dependent on the quality of the opposition. Only through active, disciplined, credible and committed participation in the political process can organized political forces in Egypt effectively advance the reform agenda and push for sensible and comprehensive policies that address the socioeconomic exigencies at hand.

Amr Hamzawy is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. This commentary first appeared at bitterlemons-international.org, an online newsletter.
Source:http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=5&article_id=92626

Menoufia Residents Demolish Bread Distribution Car

By Karam el-Dakrouri, Adel Durah and Mohamed Fayed
Residents of the 'Gawharia' village in Menoufia demolished a small car used for distributing bread in protest against reducing their quota of subsidized bread from 20 to 10 loaves a day.
Saad Mansour of the Supply Directorate said there are 214 villages facing a bread crisis due to shortages in flour supply.
Meanwhile in Kafr el-Sheikh, dozens of women staged a sit-in before the municipality headquarters to demand increasing their share of flour as Governor Ahmed Abdin had promised.
Eight security vans have blocked the entrance of the village so as to avoid a reoccurrence of the so-called revolution of the thirsty that had erupted last July.

http://www.almasry-alyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=107768

Facebook Youths and Political Powers Establish the Movement of 'Together against the Act of Terrorism'; April 6 detainees join the Movement

By Mahmoud Gawish 23/5/2008
A number of facebook youths, members of Ghad party and human rights organizations leaders declared two days ago the establishment of the movement of 'together against the act of anti-terrorism'.
A number of Aprils 6 detainees joined the movement, including Shadi Al Adl and Rami Yehia. In its first statement, the movement called on all political powers to stand together to prevent endorsing the act which represents a violation of public rights and freedom stipulated in the constitution.
Ahmed Seiful Islam, Director of Hesham Mubarak Center for Human Rights, criticized the draft law and said it will be used against politicians through expanding the jurisdictions of the Executive Authority and making the Prosecution an accusation and investigation authority at one time. The act, he said, also gives legitimacy to torture as a means to get confessions.
Seiful Islam criticized the regime of adopting the method of abruptness with people, especially with laws that affect the community. He indicated that the act of anti-terrorism was not presented to the public opinion to date. He warned that endorsing a draft law that contradicts the articles 41, 44 and 45 of the constitution related to freedoms protection means that we will face a constitutional vacuum.
Ehab el-Kholi, Chairman of Ghad party (Ayman Nour's Front), pointed out that the law intended to be issued will not be applied to political oppositions only, as there will be other mechanisms for anti-terrorism which are prepared with other opposition parties, but he did not elaborate on the details of these mechanisms.
For her side, facebook girl who attended the conference said that since she was released from prison, she did not use the internet at home, due to network outage for reasons not clear to her. She added that she sought help from her specialized friends and colleagues but they were not able to determine the causes of such outage.
http://www.almasry-alyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=106371

The (un)known Egypt of today

Due to the peculiarities of our national holidays legislation Lithuanians enjoyed a particularly long weekend at the beginning of May this year. Many of them used it as an opportunity to have a proper getaway holiday for which the Egyptian beaches are a popular destination. While enjoying the sunshine and gasping at their guides’ stories of the pharaohs, the pyramids and the temples they had built, they probably did not even hear that a general strike was to take place in the country on that same day, May 4th.

It was the day when the veteran Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak whose huge posters follow tourists on the city streets and by the roadsides celebrated his 80th birthday. The local media did not miss this occasion to sing glories to his 27 year rule – ah yes, they might have been aware of the fact that expression of a different opinion, that is libelling the president, state institutions, country‘s dignity (for example, reporting torture used by the state security) or foreign heads of state may earn a journalist a prison sentence. Along with Belarus, Burma, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and several other countries, Egypt has been listed among the “Internet enemies” by the NGO Reporters Without Borders: bloggers calling for democratic reforms risk imprisonment.

Before I forget – the country is actually on its way to democracy, alternative candidates were allowed to stand in the 2005 election which brought Mr Mubarak to his fifth consecutive term in office (yet Ayman Nour who came second and was sentenced later to five years in jail after he claimed the vote was rigged, just as the previous ones). However, elections used to be referendums before 2005 when one could only vote “for” or “against” the single candidate endorsed by the Parliament. Can you think of the person it could propose if some of its members are appointed by the President himself and formation of new parties has to be approved by the government, while “Muslim Brotherhood”, the strongest force opposing Mubarak and his ruling National Democratic Party and enjoying popular support, is banned from political activity?

In the recent few years, Egypt has seen a lot of various demonstrations and protests – these were organized by workers, university students, judges and other employees calling for reform. Strikes were impelled by the political, social and economic conditions that had become unbearable throughout the last decade and that were especially exacerbated by the recent rise of food prices. 16.4% inflation was recorded this April. With 44% of Egyptians living on or below the official poverty line ($2 a day), the price hikes of foodstuffs and other necessities have dire social consequences.

Among the biggest workers’ strikes organized to demand a higher pay and better working conditions took place in the city of Mahalla el-Kobra that houses the biggest textile factory in Egypt (110 km north from the capital Cairo) already last year and in 2006. Having occupied the factory and stopped the production, several tens of thousand workers won significant victories, but prices continued to rise steadily. Hence a new mass strike was planned for April 6th this year.

Their plans were supported by the opposition party “El Ghad” (meaning “Tomorrow” in Arabic) founded by Ayman Nour. Esraa Abdel Fattah together with other members of the party youth founded a group on the social networking site “Facebook” to publicize this action of protest in which they called Egyptian youth to support the workers of Mahalla el-Kobra on April 6 by joining the general strike and demanding the government set the minimal wage, take up antitrust measures, fight corruption and release all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. By the day of the strike, around 65,000 people coming from across the political spectre had joined the group (today it has about 74,000 members); its aims were also supported by “Muslim Brotherhood”.

Yet the regime was also gearing up for that date: everyone was ordered to go to work and abstain from any demonstrations, while the presence of security forces in the cities was strengthened. In Mahalla el-Kobra the police used tear gas and rubber bullets against 7,000 protesters. Three people were killed, around 300 arrested, with cyber dissident Esraa Abdel Fattah gone missing as well (she was later released but her mother had to beg the government in the press to do so). Even the English weekly “Al-Ahram” that is considered to be pro-government admitted that “Facebook” had become a platform for the political mobilisation of Egypt's disaffected young that lacked other venues for expressing their socio-political views. The April 8th local elections from which many of the opposition candidates had been banned took place right after the strike, but few actually bothered to vote.

These events failed to attract a lot of attention from the Western media, although they made the virtual community that had emerged so spontaneously in just 10 days’ time to discover their power: it claimed that more than 40% of the Egyptian population were involved in the action. Internet activists condemned the use of violence against the protesters and called for a new general strike on May 4th, the president’s birthday.

This time the media was following the developments more closely, even more security forces were deployed, while no reporters were allowed into the hotbed of strikes, the city of Mahalla el-Kobra. Threats of fierce punishments for those taking part and the announcement by the government a few days before the strike that all civil servants would have their salaries raised by 30% helped to ensure few took part in the action this time. However, given that, for instance, meat costs $10 per kilo a raise of $6-50 for some 6 million state employees can hardly save a country of 75.5 million from poverty. Even less so, when the salaries are raised at the expense of severe increases in (previously subsidized) prices of gas and fuel which took place on May 5th.

And yet these outbursts of anger at the police state and the deplorable social situation must have left its mark on Egypt. Rabab Al Mahdi, professor of political science at the American university in Cairo told “Al Jazeera” she believed that the protests would have a long-lasting effect on the mobilisation of people and that the aim of this mobilisation was now a regime change. The same aspirations are shared by most of the “Facebook” group members. My Egyptian friend currently studying in the United Kingdom confessed that the April 6th move made him to believe for the first time that “something could be changed” in Egypt. However, he noted that a serious opposition that could bring about change was now lacking leadership as those who could take up that role were being removed from the political arena as soon as they emerged.

That means president Mubarak stays in power beleaguered by too many citizens frustrated with his rule. Will he still be able hand over his “anniversary present” to his younger son Gamal Mubarak who is seemingly being groomed for succession? We are yet to see it.

This article was first published in Lithuanian on the portal www.politika.lt on May 10th 2008.
http://www.politika.lt/index.php?cid=9327&new_id=1698435

President Bush's tour of the Middle East is timed to highlight his failures

THE OCCASION of Israel's 60th-anniversary celebrations has drawn President Bush into a Middle East trip he would be better off not taking. Rather than consolidating achievements or clearing a path for his successor, the president's tour of Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia will serve to illustrate how much has gone wrong in the region for the United States on his watch -- and how unlikely he is to reverse the tide in his final months. In Israel, Mr. Bush will face the crumbling Israeli-Palestinian peace process he attempted to launch last year; in Saudi Arabia, he will find a regime that has been deaf to his pleas to help with soaring oil prices or support the Iraqi government. In Egypt, Mr. Bush will meet a ruler, Hosni Mubarak, who not only defied the president's "freedom agenda" but also forced the administration to retreat to its old policy of backing corrupt autocracies.
The 80-year-old Mr. Mubarak, in power for almost 27 years, might at least be embarrassed if the president, while in Egypt, publicly calls for the release of some of Mr. Mubarak's political prisoners, such as the liberal democrat Ayman Nour. But Mr. Bush no longer seems to have the nerve for that.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/12/AR2008051202576.html