CAIRO: To people on the outside, Egypt seems to be an economically developed, stable country, but a closer look would reveal a world of suffering and “daily humiliations, The Economist said in its latest issue, which discussed power rotation.
The London-based publication juxtaposed the “campus like technology park on Cairo’s western outskirts of the Smart Village and its adjacent hypermarkets and gated communities to the “narrow, rubbish-strewn alleyways of brick tenements where half of Cairo’s people actually live and the queues at subsidized bread outlets.
Showing concern over the Duweiqa tragedy, the article says that the majority of Egypt’s 75 million people are the ones with the real issues, struggling to get by. Their dreams and ambitions are crushed by the rising prices, deteriorating public schools and a corrupt bureaucracy and a regime that parade the idea of democracy but destroy any opposition to the system.
Noting an inflation rate of 23 percent, an increasing wave of protests and factory strikes, and an increasing gap between the poor and the rich, the publication raised the issue of succession.
According to the article, politics is the predominant problem. Taking into consideration, mounting resentment against the government and a rise of religious sentiments, “it takes little imagination to conjure up an Islamic-tinged revolution sweeping away the autocratic state created in the wake of Egypt’s last big dynastic upheaval, the officers’ coup of July 1952 . Considering Egypt’s position as the most populous, politically weighty and geographically pivotal Arab state, the ripples could spread wider, too, upsetting the region’s already fragile power structure, the article said.
The article described the Muslim Brotherhood as the main opposition force, gaining fifth of parliament seats and witnessing a continuous state crackdown. “Yet the Brotherhood displays some of the same flaws as its oppressors, the article said. “Its leadership is also ageing and opaque, and has proved slow to respond to events.
This, the article continues, has led the pragmatists, “the probable silent majority, to look elsewhere. This is in addition to the Coptic population opposed to the Brotherhood and the prevalent preference for “evolution to revolution, which leaves no clear trajectory.
Meanwhile, the government moves in two different directions. “Its ministries sound like those in other states, but many are run like medieval fiefs, the article said. It explains that the presidency views the army, police, secret police, justice, the lucrative petroleum industry and foreign relations “through a prism of state security and regime survival. This relegates to the hard-working Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, a diminished portfolio restricted to economic and social policy.
The article describes the long delayed economic reforms that Nazif and his team have enacted. The paper lists signs of a booming economy from the 7 percent economic growth rate to claims that unemployment rates have gone down from 11 percent in 2003 to just over 8 percent in 2008.
Social tensions are also easing with the report that in 2006 only 45 percent of men at the age of 30 remain unmarried compared to the 63 percent of about 10 years ago. Population growth has also slowed down from 2.3 percent a year in the 1980s to the current 1.9 percent.
Freedom, however, remains to be a lacking field in Egypt, The Economist said, describing a “broader shift towards greater authoritarianism. The promise of more democracy by Mubarak in 2005 has not been fulfilled in the case of civic freedoms and with the state of emergency being extended for another two years the prospects do not look hopeful, it added.
What will happen after the president goes is what everyone is now wondering according to The Economist. The Egyptian people are unaware and unsure of what is in store for their country, with most feeling they can only hope for the protection of God in what could be a turbulent future for Egypt.
