On May 4, 2008, Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak celebrated his 80th birthday. In a country such as Egypt – where 45 percent of the population survives on less than $2 per day, people die while waiting in bread lines, and inflation of prices runs even more rampant than in the rest of the world – one might wonder what President Mubarak had to celebrate. But it seems that Mubarak got his birthday wish. The streets of Cairo were bustling as usual despite calls from opposition parties and independent activists to stay at home to strike against rising prices and the corruption in the current regime.
The May 4 strike was planned in the aftermath of the April 6 strike, during which many Cairenes actually did observe in solidarity with the workers of a state-owned textile factory in Mahalla. These workers were continuing a year-long protest about their own wages while addressing the current economic issues plaguing Egypt: rising prices, depressed salaries, and a growing gap between the wealthy and the poor. The impact of that strike was certainly noticeable; Tahrir Square, one of Cairo’s busiest squares, was empty of people and traffic, replaced by groups of soldiers and generals sipping tea outside the shops lining the midan.
Both strikes were not as widespread as predicted and considered a disappointment by many. Others knew better than to hope for a positive outcome. However, neither strike could be dubbed a complete failure because of the important new developments that have occurred within the last month in Cairo.
One of the most important lessons from these strikes is that the government took the strikes – or at least the threat of the strikes – seriously. The police presence in the city, particularly in downtown Cairo, was impressive.
Numerous olive green trucks full of soldiers crowded Mohammed Mahmoud Street across from the American University in Cairo’s campus.
During the April 6 strike, soldiers actually lined the sidewalk and hurried along anyone who might pause for too long. Powered by the emergency law, on April 5 the government preemptively arrested a number of opposition party leaders and others implicated in planning the strike.
Mubarak also responded to some of the demands of the strike. He recently ordered the army to help increase bread production and announced a 30 percent pay increase for public sector employees during his International Labor Day speech on May 3.
Also noteworthy is that the strikes utilized new forms of communication and technology in order to mobilize a large group of people. A young Egyptian woman named Esraa Abd El-Fattah created a Facebook group for those participating in the April 6 strike and almost 70,000 people joined. She was arrested and detained for a number of weeks after the strike, emphasizing the importance of the Facebook medium.
Similar tactics (thankfully, without the arrests) were used on May 4. The Pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat, reported that 150,000 people joined a group in solidarity with the second strike. Text messaging was also important in both strikes’ coordination. But this too didn’t escape the government’s scrutiny. When a frustrated friend realized she couldn’t text message from her phone, she was told by her service provider that the company was given orders to shut off the text messaging function on all unregistered phones in anticipation of their use during the strike.
The strikes and their seeming failures prove two important points. The first is that there is a distinction between internet movements and actual movements. Editorialists here continue to emphasize the difference between the internet world of blogging, where words are sometimes no more than hot air, and the real world of street protest action. Egypt has a vibrant and critical blogging scene, yet this has failed to translate into cohesive opposition support and failed to help the strikes succeed.
The second point is perhaps the most important. Today, I asked my cab driver, the newspaper salesman and the fruit vendor near my apartment, the barista in Costa Coffee downtown the same questions about the strike. Few knew any of the details, and those who did said they would not and could not participate because of the economics of missing a day of work. Magdi, the cab driver, said that he couldn’t afford it: “How can I afford to strike when I can’t afford bread?
Until the majority of Egyptians are economically stable enough to take a day off to protest, major change cannot and will not occur.
Perhaps, the current situation is something which Mubarak can celebrate.
Elizabeth R. Nugent is a Cairo-based US Fulbright Fellow, 2007-2008.
