In Aftermath of Egyptian Elections, No Surprises

By Andrew Hammond

What’s been described as the most eagerly awaited cabinet reshuffle in decades has turned into one of the biggest disappointments instead. Even the slavishly loyal state-owned newspapers are acknowledging—indirectly, of course—that the government reshuffle doesn’t match the big changes President Hosni Mubarak was promising before his re-election in a Sept. 26 referendum.

“Cloning, not reshuffling” was how the main opposition Al-Wafd newspaper put it. A total of 19 ministers were kept on, including the major ministries of foreign affairs, the interior, information, and the economy, and the 13 new faces brought into government included no one with a political background, let alone an independent or opposition track record.

The choice of 66-year-old Atef Ebeid as prime minister on Oct. 5 came as a surprise to most observers. He has been in government since 1984 and as minister of public enterprises was the architect of Egypt’s economic reform program since negotiations on privatization and debt reduction began with the International Monetary Fund in 1991. But proponents of economic liberalization inside Egypt and abroad view Ebeid as part of the old gradualist school of reform—people who don’t fundamentally believe in liberalizing markets, but will do it if the president tells them to.

With Ebeid, though, President Mubarak maintains a tricky balancing act. Domestic opposition to the reform program is still considerable. Living standards have not improved for the majority of the population, while a new middle class emerges that’s big on conspicuous consumption.

The opposition press has amplified the popular perception that the country’s fate is in the hands of a small group of business entrepreneurs with direct access to the president. The opposition also says that as trade barriers come down and state assets are sold, foreigners are being allowed too much sway.

Ebeid may be demonized as pro-privatization by a large sector of the political establishment, but he’s a devil the country knows. At the same time, he is associated with the same go-slow approach to economic reform as was his predecessor, Kamal Ganzouri. Ganzouri was ousted in part because of the periodic dollar shortages in Egypt this year, which peaked in August and got the country bad reviews abroad. It’s unlikely, however, that Ebeid would have handled things any differently.

The immediate reaction to the new government on the Cairo stock exchange has been positive. Share prices are rising again after months of stagnation. Businessmen say, however, that the economic reform program is in need of a new lease on life.

“It’s clear that we’re going through a period of loss of momentum at the moment. It’s not a very comfortable feeling,” says Mansour El-Tarzi, chairman of the CAPEX Corporation for Fund Management, and one of Egypt’s leading investment bankers. “We’re still enjoying the benefits of years gone by—the goodwill of the international community and the impetus of a number of factors since 1991. But we cannot rely on those, and pretty soon we’ll have to rev up the engine.”

One thing Tarzi and other bankers strongly advise is the privatization of a major bank, since the state is still in control of some 70 percent of the banking sector. Says Dr. Mohamed Taymour, chairman of the Capital Market Authority and EFG-Hermès, “If we really want to liberalize and follow market economies, then the government has to let go of the banking sector.”

Economists are also waiting for more privatizations in the insurance and electricity sectors, and a new mortgage law is eagerly awaited. The removal of the ministers of electricity and communications in the reshuffle suggests that there is now the political will to pursue these.

For proponents of more political reform, all this has been a bitter pill to swallow. Civil society activists launched a campaign in the lead-up to the vote to push for reform.

A Preparatory Committee for Political and Constitutional Reform was formed in August by a collection of opposition and civil and human rights groups, including the Egyptian Organization of Human Rights (EOHR), the Wafd party, the Nasserist party, leftist Tagammu party, Islamist Labor party and the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

They came up with five demands: lifting the 18-year-old state of emergency, ensuring free elections, freedom to form political parties, lifting restrictions on the media, and guaranteeing the independence of the professional syndicates. One leading columnist in the state’s flagship daily Al Ahram even called for the Ministry of Information to be scrapped, as it has been in Qatar. It’s unlikely that any of that will come to pass in the next six years.

Mubarak’s argument, repeated on numerous occasions in recent weeks, is that too much political pluralism in one go can be a bad thing, and that in any case it doesn’t suit the “cultural specifications” of Egypt. “Politics in Egypt is dead and I don’t foresee it coming back to life under Mubarak,” Mohamed Al-Sayed Said, deputy director of the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, told Reuters recently.

Some fear things could get worse than that. There is a lot of talk, spearheaded by several influential businessmen, about setting up a modern, business-friendly political party along the lines of secular Turkish parties such as Tansu Ciller’s True Path Party and Mesut Yilmaz’s Motherland Party.

Hizb Al-Mustaqbal, or the Future Party, has been touted as the proposed new Egyptian party’s name. But word also got out that the president’s banker son Gamal is interested in having a leading role in it.

Asked about the rumors in a recent magazine interview, Mubarak said his son “isn’t thinking of political work.” But on referendum day state television made a point of showing Gamal casting his vote along with his mother and father, suggesting otherwise.

Ironically, Mubarak got an easier ride than he probably expected during the referendum. When he last faced a vote in 1993 the regime was mired in a war with extremist Islamist groups.

In fact, Islamists within the system felt strong enough to challenge the president openly. The opposition Labor party, in an alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood, put out a booklet entitled 100 Reasons to say no to Mubarak.

The booklet was banned by the authorities, but that it was issued in the first place said something about the mood of the time. This time around the country was awash with huge banners in which every business, institute or lobby group imaginable, right down to the local corner shop, pledged its allegiance to another six years of Mubarak.

Of the major political parties, only the Nasserists said no. Even mosque preachers—most of whom now are vetted by the government’s Ministry for Religious Affairs—were calling on the masses to give Mubarak their vote. In the end he got a 94 percent yes.

Of an electoral register of some 24 million, the minister of interior announced less than 24 hours after the vote took place on Sept. 26 that 17,554,856 Egyptians had turned out to say yes to a fourth term for Mubarak. The logistics of that number of people turning out to vote in a country already suffering from chronic traffic problems suggests that the figure is exaggerated, although the government did provide free rail transport on polling day and for the first time voters could vote by e-mail.

Most Egyptians wouldn’t quibble with the propaganda that Mubarak is the right man for the job at the current time. That’s not a surprise, given the state’s huge media apparatus—seven major publishing houses, three daily newspapers and nine terrestrial televisions channels. As for possible differing viewpoints, Egypt has no private broadcast media and only restricted independent print media.

It’s a chicken-and-egg situation. Loosen up on state control of the media and the public might begin to show more active opposition to the government that encouraged them to think more critically in the first place. Still, the regime is pretty stingy with its concessions to a political and economic establishment that has solidly supported Mubarak despite its reservations about the totalitarian mentality that still permeates the government.

As his American counterparts apparently reminded him during a trip to Washington over the summer, Mubarak still has no clear successor. Reporters asked him if he might be considering a vice president after he casts his own vote on Sept. 26.

“That only happens in America,” he retorted angrily, then walked off. There’s a fine line, however, between keeping a tight grip on a country in the midst of difficult changes and suffocating its nascent independent spirit altogether.

Andrew Hammond is a free-lance journalist based in Cairo.