Beggars

One would not automatically think about the people of Egypt when I refer to beggars; the Egyptian people who are sleeping on the streets and are unable to find a day’s worth of food. They are the victims of repressive regimes that never cared about the people and never even accurately counted them; they are the result of social problems, poverty and oppression. They sleep and wake up between dumpsters and their only joy is finding a piece of bread, off which they clean the dirt, and then it is back to sleeping on the streets and facing the harshness of winter.

I have emphasised their moment of joy when they find a piece of bread on the sidewalk because it is the same joy felt by the shameful journalists who have become accustomed to begging for crumbs and the leftovers of their masters, and they find their joy by maintaining their enslavement of others.

Although I was surprised by the rudeness foolishness, and distorted ideas, it reached the point of these people flaunting their crumbs in front of the people and we see them give up their honour to the coup leader during interviews, and they do not dare to even debate with him. They do not know the value of a country like Egypt and do not have even the slightest idea of national concepts. All we can expect from those who have been raised to please their masters is their rejoice and celebration in having their master’s boots stepping on them.

The coup supporters waited for the genius coup staged by Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi to rescue the Egyptian economy and bring about magical solutions that save them from their problems and make them money, as well as prove the failure of the honourable Dr Hisham Qandil and his men. It does not matter if we agree or disagree with Qandil, he was still a man who worked sacrificed silently in order to do the best for his country, but his idealism tired him.

Egypt has experienced the men who made sacrifices for the sake of their country and gave generously to the nation and also experienced a group of coup-organisers and a gang of secularists and liberals who believed they were the geniuses who would fix the economy and change the world, but now we find ourselves in a miserable situation, even 10 months after the coup.

I will provide the reader with a group of figures released by coup sources. The inflation rate in Egypt went from seven per cent during President Morsi’s term to 18 per cent after the coup, according to data from the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics. This means that at the moment food is not available for ordinary citizens.

The problems of fuel and electricity have returned and are facing the ordinary Egyptians once again after Dr Qandil’s government begun implementing the smart card system to monitor the distribution of subsidised fuel, which was opposed by the corrupt opposition fronts who are now in power.

During President Morsi’s term, Egyptian exports had grown greatly, as the commodity exports for the fiscal year amounted to about $26 billion, compared to the $25.1 billion it reached during the same period in the previous year. After the coup-led government borrowed nearly 40 billion Egyptian pounds from the Gulf states and national debt reached over 100 billion Egyptian pounds during the first half of the 2013/2014 fiscal year, i.e. since the beginning of the coup, the government reached for the deposit that has been frozen since the Gulf War in the early 1990’s and used it for the country’s extra spending, which was 60 billion Egyptian pounds over the national budget.

The difference between the budget revenues and expenses since the beginning of the coup reached 163 billion Egyptian pounds, which the government dealt with by issuing bonds, borrowing from banks and printing new banknotes, thus raising the national debt to unprecedented figures.

Lame duck governments, such as the overthrown Mubarak government, do not solve problems, especially when presided over by an individual who escaped from the presidential palace during Mubarak’s regime. Before him, Beblawi was the Finance Minister who failed during the time of the military council and remained incapacitated towards the end, during which he relied on painkillers and political, rather than economical solutions, causing a deficit in the budget, an increase in the national debt and a decline in revenues.

Despite this, a minimum wage was determined immediately without taking into consideration the government’s spending, relying only on aid, which is unreliable. Moreover, the government did not establish a sound development experience and truly failed in managing the aid given to them by the Gulf states and the aid frozen from associations, which added over 300 people to the unemployment figures. Instead, they formed an imaginary world that was based on thousands of lies, scenarios and directions that were figments of their imagination, far removed from reality and from the ordinary citizens who were not considered a key player in the arena.

The reality of the situation was an inevitable showdown between the Islamic project which adopted the concept of a free, democratic, just state that acted as a pioneer and leader for the Arab nation and between the Zionist project that occupied Egypt through the corrupt, tyrant and oppressing state that deprived people of their rights and humiliated and subordinated them. This is what drove the political scene in Egypt. Nations do not transform democratically and economically in less than eight years, especially a country as big as Egypt that possesses an enormous wealth of people, which require serious planning and preparations in order to prepare the people to first transform their thinking, then their reality.

Perhaps those who are aware of the fundamentals of managing countries would understand that Obama did not even achieve 30 per cent of his programme during his first four-year term governing a country with stable institutions subject to censorship and the law. Amid an economy based on aid and a market that has become closed to the world due to the military coup, we have become the laughing stock of the world, while just a few months ago we repeatedly said: “If Egypt wants to take control of its will, we must produce our own food, medicine and weapons. These three elements ensure stability, development and self-determination.”

These words were reiterated and emphasised by President Mohamed Morsi in a number of his speeches and they reflected the first elected civilian Egyptian president’s vision of what revolutionary Egypt needs after the country lost this vision over the past six decades during which the country was poor and dependent and did not control its national decisions.

We must admit that President Morsi was taking steady measures, regardless of whether we agreed or disagreed with his idealism in his performance. His ambition preceded everyone’s ambitions and his opponents were too foolish to realise that he was acting in accordance with ethics and on the basis of the principles of clean politics. His economic vision was to achieve social justice and self-sufficiency, as well as to guide Egypt out of its crisis and transform the economy from the economy of beggars to a self-reliant economy able to meet the country’s needs. Certainly, once the people realise the nobility and sincerity of this man and his fear of God in serving his country, the military coup in Egypt will be eliminated and the sun of freedom will shine on Egypt.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.