CAIRO: Attempting to offer a platform for productive political and socio-economic discourse in Egypt, Gessoor (Bridges) hosted a panel of six speakers on Sunday to discuss Egypt’s political and economic future in light of the Jan. 25 revolution.
“We do not want to lose the [momentum] that was created by Jan. 25 uprising, we have to grip it tightly,” said Amr Hamzawy, research director and senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center.
“This new energy should not completely exhaust in politics. The essence of democracy is to move this energy down from formal politics to other fields, especially civil society,” he said.
Laila Iskandar, the chairperson of CID Consulting, a non-profit hybrid organization based in Cairo, agreed with Hamzawy, adding that the work in Egyptian villages inspired her to believe in the power of simple Egyptians to enforce change.
“People who cannot read or write are our target for democratic reform, because, unlike the educated, they are the ones who did not get mentally corrupt by education and wrong practices of the ousted regime.”
Iskandar sees that development of Egypt should start from the villages in Upper Egypt, encouraging youth to go back to their origins to find the real Egypt.
“Solving many problems like energy for example can be found in the heart of Egyptian villages,” said Iskandar. “It is important for youth to go back to the villages they came from and try to join NGOs operating there and start real development.”
Veteran opposition member and coordinator of Kefaya Movement Goerge Ishaq predicted a state of social and political liquidity after the revolution.
“This liquidity means giving more opportunities to form new political parties from the youth who were born in the Mubarak era, who are more than 30 million,” said Ishaq.
“We do not want a civil society restructuring, we need the current civil society to transform the society from the ‘I’ state to the ‘We’ state and to unite people’s hearts and minds.”
Egypt’s economy was a major concern during the 18- day revolution, but Ahmed Bahgat, Egyptian businessman and owner of Dream Channels, sees the economy as irrelevant.
“We cannot think of returning foreign investment now, because it will never come back to Egypt unless Egypt’s political future is stable, so let’s focus on politics first,” he said
Bahgat criticized the stance of the Egyptian banking sector during Mubarak’s era, saying it never encouraged small projects.
“All banks preferred lending government sponsored projects, because this wasn’t risky for them,” he said.
“Small projects were not in their agendas, they did not want to risk it.”
The failures of the banking sector coincided with failing state budget allocations for scientific research according to Alaa Idrees, head of the scientific research committee at Masr El-Khair NGO and professor of Nuclear Reactors Design Engineering.
“State budget allocated for scientific research is only 0.2 percent of the budget. This destroys researchers’ motives to move forward,” confirmed Idrees.
“Civil society’s role in the future is to watch and evaluate the state’s budget allocations to ensure the advancement of scientific research in Egypt.”
Economic, scientific and internal political reforms in Egypt should be followed by a reform in Egypt’s foreign policy according to Nabil El-Araby, Egypt’s former ambassador to the United Nations.
“Establishing a national security committee in Egypt is very essential to set Egypt’s national and international policy agendas,” confirmed El-Araby.
“We have to set our priorities in the future, and working on them is very essential to contribute to Egypt’s development. This could be done through constitutional and legal reforms and creating advocacy and lobbying groups by the civil society,” he said.
