Why Egypt Still Has Hope - Reason #2



Re-nationalization: A Cotton Pickin' Mess!

Egypt's white gold

Buried under the endless commentary of the recent violence in Egypt (but not lost on investors), a decision taken by an administrative court to annul the sale of shares of a then state-owned cotton ginning company threatens to cause far more lasting damage than any demonstrations, election results or political figurehead. Taken within the context of an already toxic mix of a fiscal crisis, unstable leadership and the urge for short-term, populist policymaking, this decision (still hopefully to be overturned) sets the stage for complete economic chaos. 

The ruling itself is based on vague allegations of an undervaluation of assets and even more vague allegations of corruption, and follows a troubling trend of similarly statist edits from imprecise, activist judges (encouraged/directed, no doubt, by military insiders seeking to reassert their total control over the private sector, incompetent interim governments, as well as misguided activists in their fanciful mission against the bourgeois). Left totally unanswered are questions of how to redeem shares held and traded by the wider public and workers (who as per most Egyptian privatizations, were granted a significant stake of floated shares as an incentive to participate as part owners in their company), and the impact on creditors. Egypt's reeling stock market is being further damaged, and the uncertainty of the decision further undermines the already compromised credibility of the country's investment climate.

Why Egypt Still Has Hope - Reason #1

Buy Egyptian?

 

Not to be confused with the evil import

If the latest gimmick to jump start the dormant Egyptian economy is a sign of things to come, then we are in big trouble. No matter how many bags of kebab-flavored Chipsy (owned by Pepsico) are munched, nor colorful galabaya are purchased (typically with imported, short-staple cotton, since higher quality long-staple Egyptian cotton is used in higher end goods that are exported and produce much more value added), the “Buy Egypt” campaign will do nothing to address the structural deficiencies in the economic system. 



Mmmm

Worse, the campaign is a reflection of the quick-fix, delusional and autarkic thinking that looks to isolate Egypt from the global economy and create artificial markets, when it is precisely the opposite that is needed. Whether it is flawed ideas of disavowing foreign borrowing, fanciful and regressive notions of food self-sufficiency or grand, national schemes to create dead-end jobs, all of this is stifling the country’s potential and delaying badly needed reform.   

Brothers in Arms: Team Obama and the Muslim Brotherhood

Ughh

Senator John Kerry’s recent high-profile visit to the ostentatious new headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood (query the funding source) is the latest in the continuing outrages of the Obama Administration's placation of regressive Islamists. Never mind that the lower house election cycle in Egypt is only one-third complete. Never mind that secular forces naturally allied to U.S. ideals of civil and individual rights are being suffocated by religious demagogues of whom the Muslim Brotherhood are the patron saint. Never mind that U.S. attention and recognition remain decisive factors on the Egyptian political scene. The head of the Salafist party - supposedly distinct and separate from the supposedly moderate Brotherhood party - synthezied it all quite well: "[t]he American administration's contact with Islamists is a sign of victory for us." 

Message to Egyptian Revolutionaries: GET REAL!

So the experiment of populism has produced an unsurprisingly miserable outcome.  No need to whitewash the result through tortured reasoning about the differences between backward and even more backward brands of political Islam, the allocation of distant minority votes or trying to make sense of the idiosyncratic voting system.  Whatever feel-good factor was generated by the relatively high voter interest and participation, the landslide victory of the Islamists is a blow to the cause of the betterment of a progressive Egypt.     

This result should not be a surprise.  It is virtually exactly the same result as that of the constitutional referendum from last March.  The vote simply is a reflection of what Egypt has become over the past sixty years – a country lacking in economic growth, lacking in proper education, lacking in cultural openness, and a country that is highly susceptible to the corrupting influences of a paternalistic state and even more paternalistic and manipulative religious clergy.  The result is also unsurprising because it stems from an ill-considered process of political transformation driven by street demonstrations, Twitter feeds and idiotic political televangelists that cornered the ruling authorities into following quick-fix solutions to protect what will always matter most to them – maintaining a pliable status quo wherein they always come out on top.  And the result is unsurprising, because the brain-children in the White House fatally comprised the standing of secular forces in the region by naively (Team Obama is too ignorant to have done so intentionally) aiding-and-abetting the intractable rise of the Islamists.    

Get used to it

What is surprising, annoying, depressing and ultimately most damning to the cause of a progressively transformed Egypt, however, is the reaction of a wide spectrum of the self-appointed guardians of the defunct Egyptian “revolution.”  However well-intentioned and passionate, the ostrich-like vision of liberal activists to the trying circumstances surrounding them has been detrimental to the good cause.  The majority vote of the Egyptian populace will not be won during this election cycle, and it could not have been won. 

Ganzo for Life

A very wise, experienced, accountable, super prime minister. Sorry for those inappropriate criticisms made of your time in government (your governorship in Wadi El Gadeed in 1976 is exactly the sort of hand's-on experience the country needs to navigate through the turmoils of the international financial crisis, to communicate in the age of the internet and transition Egypt into a beacon of reform).

We love you so much, that this little election thing need not get in the way of your mandate to govern Egypt for life. Who says that landslide parliamentary elections (and anyway they will win less than 100% of the vote) should result in any mandate for the victors to appoint the head of the legislature - that is such a narrow-minded view.

May your reign be successful and long...very, very long.



The Visionary 



Ahly = Corruption in Egypt

Ahly are outdoing even their own, tainted standards by setting a new low on disparaging all norms of sporting behaviour.  Bailing out on the country's oldest competition for the sake of their new shirt sponsor is nothing short of reprehensible.  Let's see if their brothers-in-arms at Itihad El Zift will do anything about it; probably not, when there are clear and present dangers to worry about, such as using the excuse of controlling firecrackers in matches played by a certain, superior competitor, to ban home matches and further tilt the playing field.

Egypt will not progress so long as Ahly's corrupt ways remain.

Disgusting.

Not with Ahly around

Third Class

Appropriately, operator and sponsor daraga talta, for a team daraga talta.

Yet another reason to hate them

A Classless Mob

As always, Ahly and its classless fan base never cease to probe new depths of their corrupted and mob-like ways. And, as always, the blinded apologists are rationalizing the irrational.

Best Fans in the World

Up yours Ahly

Egypt and the BRICs

Inspiring Tahrir

Egypt has rejected (apparently) a $3 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, goaded (apparently) by populist idiots who believe Egypt can become a socialist paradise on its own initiative. Never mind that the IMF standby loan facilities are specifically designed to stabilize economies that have undergone the sort of negative shock that Egypt is witnessing by offering front-loaded, low-interest loans. Never mind that Egypt’s ability to tap into the far more expensive bond market is highly limited by the depressed macroeconomic landscape, the Greek debacle and the very decision of not accepting loans from the World Bank Group. Fear not, for Egypt is separate and apart and can count on “freebies” from “friends” in the Gulf who will, surely without any condition (thanks for keeping the enlightened Sheikh Qaradawi safe in Doha and for inspiring progressive policies at our heathen beaches, hotels and shopping centers), shovel money into the country out of their (apparent) love for its culture and people.

At Least They Listen

So there will be no capital gains tax after all.  Hopefully, this will be a step in the right direction...assuming, that is, they mean what they say (or did not mean what they said before).

Economics 101: Tax Them, and They Won't Come

The brain-trust running Egyptian economic policy (assuming, that is, there actually is an economic policy) are, to be blunt, idiots. In the midst of halted growth and a near total collapse in domestic and foreign investor confidence, the Ministry of Finance has announced an intention to apply a ten percent capital gains tax and raise corporate taxes so as to fund the country’s notoriously inefficient system of subsidies on fuel and food staples. The result? A greater than three percent loss in equity values in the first hour of trading post announcement, higher bond yields and yet another hit to the credibility of the country’s financial reputation.

Then there is the bright idea of instituting a minimum wage increase that will set minimum pay above the average wages of many East Asian countries…surely something that will augment competitiveness and encourage investors to look to Egypt, given the already exciting investment climate of stagnant consumer spending, an industrial and service sector in recession and basically nothing to suggest the country is a more appealing investment destination than the already difficult place it was pre-January 25, apart from the vague foreign aid commitments that will further crowd out the private sector from the economy.

Protect the Copts

Nestled into the Egyptian landscape

More and more, all that is separating Egypt from descent into a total abyss is the simple existence of its indigenous Christian population. The continuing (it did not start in the past few months, but rather has been ongoing for centuries) efforts to plaster over Egypt’s Coptic community has far-reaching implications for the direction of a post January 25 Egypt. But for the presence of many millions of Copts (it’s ridiculous, we don’t know how many), the continuum of the Muslim Brotherhood – Salafists (don't know their numbers either, but there are too many directly and indirecly sympathizing with them) would have a far clearer path to imposing their regressive monopoly over Egyptian society. Ideally, one would not have to revert to such simplistic and anti-modern notions of nation building, but the depressed state of Egypt leads to this conclusion.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up!

For all the fretting about how the disjointed and basically hopeless opposition can break the seemingly unstoppable momentum of the Muslim Brotherhood and its mind-controlling P.R. machine, the best bet for defeat is to simply let these guys reveal themselves.  The Brotherhood’s ridiculous announcement of an intention to form a sporting arm that can field a team to play in national sporting competitions is a priceless platform for exposing its real limitations.  The day Egyptians abandon their love of Zamalek (and for those less fortunate ones, Ahly), or give up on the cathartic and decidedly unreligious practice of mass, dirty chants against the opposition, the referee and their respective mothers and sisters, is the day donkeys (the real kind, rather than the symbolic ones flapping about from time to time) will fly over Tahrir Square. 

Where Bin Laden is Missed

Peace and Love

So the same Muslim Brotherhood whom President Obama and his cheerleaders hopefully point to as forward thinking reformers who will create a new Middle East, and with whom a leadership in Egypt  continues to disturbingly accommodate, turn out to be rather ambiguous, if not outright remorseful and bitter, it would seem, about the death of a man who is an embodiment of hate and destruction.  In its own words, the Brotherhood's official statement about the "assassination" of "Sheikh" Osama Bin Laden (and women and children) makes not a single reference to this man's destructive legacy.  Instead, they moan and groan about the familiar and tired refrains about Western imperialism, Zionism, etc.  Such is the state of retardation and escapism among the Egyptian population, that this view sadly is not confined to just the Brotherhood, but in varying degrees, reflects the thinking of many Egyptians, including seemingly educated and Westernized ones, bitter that it does not fit into the comfortable storyline of a saintly uprising versus American-backed purveyors of suppression in the region. 

No more candy, please

Egypt is not exceptional. Unfortunately, those are four words practically no Egyptian or world observer of Egypt accepts, and the longer it takes for this reality to set in, the more torturous the path of reforming Egypt will be. From birth to the grave, Egyptians are fed a steady diet of self-edifying drivel about their uniqueness, based on everything from the civilization built up by the Pharaohs seven thousand years ago, to their supposedly superior ability to do anything and everything in modern times. The inconvenient truth of the chaos and underdevelopment that defines Egyptian life always is the fault of some sort of other (from either within or outside of Egypt), and the path forward is one that Egyptians can define without reference to lesser places like the United States, the entirety of Europe, India or China - which are still somehow widely considered less advanced - or anywhere else for that matter. Hence, the zig-zagging approach to drafting a new constitution, the obtuse definition of the relationship between state and religion, economic policies which, to be generous, can only be considered as idiosyncratic, and the omnipotent short cutting and rule bending of Egyptians on anything and everything.

The world, led by the United States, has reinforced this exceptionalism by playing along to and expanding the mantra of Egypt’s special role in the region. Thus, the tens and tens of billions of dollars in grants, debt relief and concessional loans that though well meaning, have retarded the country's economy, and kid-glove treatment on the blatant disregard of universal norms of respect for individual and minority rights by Egypt’s power structure (which structure extends far beyond a single leader or institution, but rather is the potent combination of the repressive central state and mob rule that has defined Egypt since 1952, and still does).

Game Over

The day of reckoning awaits

Neither Ahly's corrupt officiating, Ahly's budgets tainted with corrupted funds, Ahly's corrupted media, Ahly's tail-between-the-legs pleas to cancel the league, nor any other human force in Tahrir, Tanta or Tizi Ouzo will stop Zamalek's rightful ascension to victory.

We're gonna be rich!

My other car is a Cadillac

So based on the latest fanciful figures dreamed up by Egypt’s ever so precise prosecution team, every man, woman and child can expect to receive over 50,000 Egyptian Pounds from stolen funds from just the former president.  And surely there must be at least an equivalent sum from the other rascals being put behind bars to feed the masses lust for raw meat, so it is very reasonable to believe that after all is said and done, your average citizen will be dressed up in silk suits and driving a shiny new Benz.  Add to this the exciting prospect of re-instituting the great successes of public ownership of private assets (we all remember the excellent the quality at Omar Effendi, Stella (aka “One Million Cockroaches Can’t Be Wrong”) and other marquee brands before the evil efficiencies of private ownership took over), and things really are looking splendid. 

Dear President Obama: Shut the Hell Up

Thanks for Nothing

President Obama and his clan of “experts” middling in the affairs of Egypt is going from bad to worse. The continuous effort to accommodate Islamists generally, and the Muslim Brotherhood specifically, is legitimizing and empowering a movement that is antithetical to a modern Egypt. Now Team Obama is injecting itself even further into the domestic debate by recklessly advising that Article 2 of the Egyptian Constitution – an article that is per se discriminatory and against the principle of a country that treats its citizens equally – should not be part of the reform discussions. Not only is a public comment on the what to change and not change in the Egyptian constitution stepping well over the bounds of what any U.S. official should be doing, but to single out this particular issue is putting the U.S. squarely on the wrong side the debate.

The U.S. Government can and should be a force for positive change in Egypt, but this Administration is ill serving Egypt, the United States and indeed the world.

Fawda

Madness

When a country is unable to host and secure a preliminary round soccer match, it is not ready to put at stake its entire political future.  That might seem trite and simplistic, but it is the crude reality.

With all due respect to the organization of the protests in January, Egypt is not prepared politically, socially or otherwise for democratic elections to decide its fate.  The country has no culture of acceptance of winning and losing, a fatal flaw in any democratic environment, but especially one where there are no institutional checks and balances to measure the outcome.  Yes, there was a peaceful voting process for the referendum (nb:  not really sure why we had that vote, given many other changes to the constitution were subsequently passed by decree), but there the proscribed outcome was overwhelmingly approved, and the stakes were transient.

We Love You...

Picture Perfect

One of the principal myths that allowed the January 25 movement to achieve the goals that it did, was creating the sense of a loving relationship between the military and the people. This fiction conveniently glossed over the common knowledge of widespread misappropriations by the military, the fact that Egypt's military spending is wildly disproportional to spending on basic services, the deadweight loss of forced service for those Egyptian men who cannot pay their way out of it, and the reality that the military has not really done much of anything for Egypt for almost the past forty years (and there is a strong argument of even longer than that, but let's not go there).

We don't trust you Papa Smurf


Be that as it may, the fiction worked, and the military was hoisted up on a pedestal and returned the favor by giving the movement the space to push out the sitting president and parts of the ruling structure around him (not including, naturally, those expansive segments of the system under direct and indirect military control). Since then, however, the reform movement has splintered along innumberable lines with innumerable demands, which not only has resulted in a loss of unity and purpose, but also given the other enemy of reform, the Muslim Brotherhood, the space to position itself to the military -- and the military's U.S. backers -- as the only alternative path for stability, a sense now reinforced by the lopsided referendum results.

Stop Dithering

There is a train of thought suggesting that the reform movements spreading throughout the Middle East are the result of a carefully crafted plan put together by the Obama Administration. On the sinister side, it is seen as a part of a “New Imperial Plan for the Middle East”:

"The new imperial plan for the Middle East capitalizes on the willingness of the modern middle-classes of the region to enthusiastically serve the international class of super-rich..."

To put it gingerly, that is an idiotic analysis. Others like to think it is all the beneficence brought to the world by the radiating graces and professorial intellect of President Obama, complete with his magical ability to channel American goodness to cavemen enlightened by Google Earth to come to know there is a split between rich and the poor in their countries (…again, a wee bit off).

A Loss - Now Grow Up

The “No Vote” lost…overwhelmingly.  There is no point in sugar-coating the outcome; when you lose an election by 40, 50 or 60 percentage points, it is a landslide loss.  Yes, the voting process was unprecedented and civilized, and yes it got the blood flowing in the veins and raised civic awareness, and yes, the no vote had to campaign against the odds, but the end result is that the groundwork is in place for the Muslim Brotherhood, in alliance with the thugs of the past, to set the terms for the Constitutional direction of Egypt. 

The reform movement in Egypt needs to mature, and do so with immediate effect.  Not in six weeks, six months or most probably six years, will it be possible to educate and convince forty million Egyptians of the importance of defending individual rights enshrined in a modern Constitutional structure that supports a liberal political and socio-economic society.  Instead, the focus of the reformists must be on educating and convincing those in positions of authority of this, which requires a credible and organized political leadership that understands how to engage in the real world of politics, and not just in the kinder world of promoting popular engagement.  As important as the grassroots are, without top-down leadership, this revolution will continue to fall victim to cunning opportunists who are capitalizing on the military’s anxiety with being in the spotlight, the White House’s misguided accommodation of political Islam, and Egyptian society’s conservative leanings, to further their own, pessimistic agenda.