I have no clue why our adept government has issued a new traffic law. Everything was fine before that. No one stopped at a red light or heeded the pedestrian crossings and until recently, we were the only country in the world where seatbelts were ripped off cars as soon as they arrived from abroad and given to children to play with. And when it was decreed that seatbelts must be worn at all times, they were kept in the cars but nobody fastened them.
But this is a bygone era. With the new traffic law in place, Egypt has become a police state where those who violate laws prohibiting crossing a red light or driving without fastening the seatbelt are immediately fined.
But the new traffic law has infringed on our freedom. At a time when we raise our heads high among third world countries, for the press freedom we enjoy, the new traffic law has disgraced us with its violation of our traffic freedom. We can no longer brag about being one of the few countries where citizens can park in no parking zones and can drive in the wrong direction.
What the government failed to note while issuing this new law is that freedom cannot be divided and that there cannot exist press freedom, without freedom on the street. How can anyone enjoy reading all the possible insults in his favorite newspaper without having the freedom to commit a single offence on public streets; and what’s worse, he cannot commit a single traffic violation without being subjected to a fine or a jail term.
This law is in blatant violation of citizens’ freedom in the public space. It also constitutes a serious regression in press freedom, a fact we must claim clearly because history will remember this government harshly as the first to shackle citizens’ freedom on the road while driving their car.
History will also remember how our free press confronted the new law to such an extent that the number of column inches dedicated to attacking the law are almost equal to the space given to coverage of fatal road accidents and train crashes.
Egypt’s low rating on the road safety index has even led foreign embassies to warn their citizens against land travel, either on busses or cars because they may be shocked to know that the bus taking them to Hurghada or Sharm El Sheikh has no brakes; or as they drive their own cars they may find themselves facing a truck moving in the opposite direction or as they wait at a train crossing, a trailer would crash into their car from behind only to push other cars onto the rails just as the train passes through.
Even though all that is true, the solution is not by shackling peoples’ freedom and preventing them from driving under the influence of drugs or without a drivers’ license. The solution is through supplication and dependence on the Almighty. If you warn any driver against driving without brakes, he’ll tell you, “Don’t complicate things, leave it all to God! This is the real reason why not all drivers who violate traffic laws get into accidents. We often hear about accidents caused by driving without brakes or on the wrong side of the road, but what we don’t know is that those who don’t abide by other safety regulations are much more prevalent than those who cause these types of accidents.
The only reason why these accidents don’t happen is because of divine protection, not because the driver has violated traffic laws. Anyone who denies that is indeed a non-believer.
But here goes our adept government proclaiming that it has no faith in the divine providence on which we have depended since we first started driving on Egyptian streets.
The government is claiming responsibility for road safety through an unfair law it has issued just to impose more shackles on citizens’ freedom – citizens who have hitherto done as they pleased on public roads, whether by taking up space on the pavement to sell stolen glasses and watches or driving without brakes, licenses or even a steering wheel.
The government has issued this law simply to fill the coffers of Finance Minister Youssef Boutros Ghali’s because it knows that people will continue having faith in God alone, not the traffic law, to organizing the movement of cars on Egypt s roads.
Mohamed Salmawyis President of the Arab Writers’ Union and Editor-in-Chief of Al-Ahram Hebdo.
