While it might not be time to save a spot on the curb to watch the revolution, as some tongue-in-cheek Egyptians like to imagine, neither are the people as passive as advertised [link to wait]. During the last four years, bubbles have been forming on the bottom of the pot. Some have risen to the surface
“We've had terrible rulers, and been occupied many times. We're professors of compromise. But the moment Egyptians believe compromise is no longer working, they revolt. I believe we're at such a moment."
Alaa Al Aswany, Author
The Yacoubian Building
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Labor Unrest
Scholars say that Egyptians think of themselves as working in a “moral economy,” In other words, they feel they have a right to get mad when not treated fairly.
During the last few years, workers like those in the Fayoum textile industry are the biggest players, but they’ve been joined by property tax bureaucrats, professors, cement industry & agricultural workers, truck drivers, etc.
Since 2004, in fact, workers’ strikes have been proliferating – in both the private and public sector.
"But important elements among the Mahalla [Fayoum) strikers are now framing their struggle as a profoundly political fight with national implications. They are directly challenging the economic policies and political legitimacy of the regime of President Husni Mubarak."
The Militancy of Mahalla al-Kubra - Joel Beinin
In March, 2007, the liberal daily al-Masri al-Youm estimated that no fewer than 222 sit-in strikes, work stoppages, hunger strikes and demonstrations had occurred during 2006. In the first five months of 2007, the paper reported a new labor action nearly every day. “According to Global Research, there were 1000 protests by June of 2008.
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Mahalla textile workers' strike.
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The causes are fundamental. According to Al Ahram Egypt’s major English language newspaper, average monthly take-home pay in late 2007 in a Mehala Al-Kubra [Nile Delta] textile plant , “including bonuses and incentives, is about LE500 ($75)” This puts workers just above the two dollar-a-day poverty line. “Younger workers…are paid LE300 or less. Egyptian textile workers are at the bottom of the regional salary scale.
In the meantime, food went up 22% in 2008 alone and the state, moving on privatization, continues to reduce subsidies on items like bread, diesel oil and gas.
There’s also the damage done in the fog of privatization.
In a number of instances, the state has sold an industry to a buyer (usually well connected to the regime) who, in theory, promised to meet certain obligations to the employees – to pay a stipulated bonus, or social security or refrain from wholesale layoffs, for example.
"During the spring and summer of 2007 there were hundreds of wildcat strikes in various industries, a wave of industrial unrest involving tens of thousands of workers on a scale not seen since the years leading up to the coup in 1952."
John Bradley, Author, Inside Egypt
Then, because the factory isn’t as productive as anticipated, unmitigated greed or some combination thereof, the new owners fail to meet their commitment.
Now, who can be held accountable:The state, whose support of workers seems to be determined by what it can get away with? The new owners, who are ready to walk and hand the mess back to their government friends?
"There is a different, more radical mood in the country today," observed Hamdi Qenawi, an activist speaking at a recent meeting of tax collectors who are trying to form an independent trade union. "Fear from the regime is much less than it used to be."
The Guardian (27 August 2008)
And who’s to challenge this corrupt system: workers who haven’t been allowed to form unions independent of government influence?
In any case, the workers -- not likely to be tracking privatization schemes, appreciating their presumed long term advantage, or trusting the integrity of the agents -- appear to be shouldering the burden of transition without any of the benefits. And that wouldn’t set well in a "moral economy."
It appears that the strikes will continue to roll.
Cyberactivism
"My main goal is to make Egyptians have the free will to change little things such as decision making, which is related to their livelihood, and then we can change bigger things such as the political system"
Israa Abdel Fatah, known as the “Facebook Girl” was speaking to the Journalists’ Syndicate after her April 6, 2008 participation in a Facebook initiated protest of sympathy with striking textile workers and against “rapid inflation in basic food stuff and fuel prices and the weakening of civil and democratic reforms.” She and her fellow Facebookers have been in and out of -- mostly in -- prison for months.
On television the night of the demonstration, viewers saw amateur videos of protestors setting fires and clashing with riot police. They tore down a poster of the president, Hosni Mubarak, an act of rebellion unheard of in the 54 years of the Egyptian Republic.
The government arrested protesters and organizers.
But this strike, and its less successful follow-up - a call for a general strike about a month later -- are raising the political heat. Cyberactivists are becoming more and more of an irritant to the country’s leadership by blogging their complaints about the country to anyone in the world who cares to read them.
"In a country like Egypt … authorities in those countries have made conscious decisions to enable the Internet as a practical matter…. That's in part for economic reasons. Once you do that and you reach a critical mass of usage … [you] leapfrog state-controlled media...
Freedom House
To be sure, their ability to influence things is constrained. Only 10% of Egyptians have access to the internet and, many who do, fear retaliation for unwelcome observations.
Still, in a unique event, the policeman who tortured a busdriver were charged, tried and jailed, reputedly on account of internet fury and, in 2008, after journalist Ibrahim Eissa was sentenced for having surmised that the president’s health was not good, he was pardoned. Cyberactiivism was again credited and as Michele Dunne of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace reports in "there are spheres of public activity that once were off limits -- free media and civil society advocacy -- that now have become legitimate in the eyes of the government, and even more important, in the eyes of Egyptian citizens." Can Egypt Change? Foreign Policy , July 23, 2010
Naturally, the government – like that of many of authoritarian governments - is said to be designing new laws to censor use of the internet.
What will happen, however, when the government-sponsored programs to train squads of youth in computer savvy – a part of its development scheme – release ever more young people capable of hacks and workarounds?
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BARADEI FACTOR
Giving a shock to the Egyptian political system, Dr. Mohammed El Baradei, Nobel Prize winner and until recently, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has announced interest in leading Egypt.
He's feeding the idea the Egyptians have a say about their government:
“You are the owners of this country. Whatever our belief or religion is, every one of us has a piece of this country and has the right to lead a decent life ... it does not make sense that until now 40 percent of the people are below [the] poverty line and 30 percent are illiterate. Social justice is almost non-existent in Egypt, and the gap between the rich and poor is widening ...”
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Judges
“Egyptian judges,” it’s said, “tend to take the separation of powers quite seriously and resent any infringement on their autonomy.”
The government persists in chomping at the boundaries.
The most recent round of a decades-long bout between judges and the government began in May 2005 when the judges threatened to boycott their oversight responsibility for overseeing elections if the government did not give them full supervision.
The entreaty was not welcomed, perhaps because the judges, even in their handicapped capacity, had reported numerous instances of vote rigging in favor of the ruling party.
Not surprisingly, the problem isn't just about elections: it's really a symptom of serious and pervasive issues of judicial independence, election oversight and judicial leadership. The struggle continued after the election challenge.
Then, in June 2008, the Egyptian parliamentary assembly (controlled by the government's party) established a council to oversee the judges, with the power to regulate the administrative and financial matters of their syndicate.
2009 --- Ball's still stalled in the judges' court
2010 --- Neither they, nor anyone else, monitored Shura council elections in which probably 2% of Egyptians voted.
July 2010
See American University of Cairo's Provost on "Can Egypt Change?" Foreign Policy , July 23, 2010
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