The world watches – has been watching for more than a week now – waiting for something to give, and yet still the tension in Egypt seems to ratchet ever higher. When does ‘unrest’ become ‘upheaval’? The consensus is that if something doesn’t change, quickly, Egyptians, and perhaps the wider Middle East population, will shortly find out.
Only in hindsight does the sweep of history seem logical, and change rapid. In reality, of course, the future is anything but clear and change, particularly change born of discontent, is achingly slow. People will put up with a lot, for the longest time. In an autocratic state they will endure it for generations.
What we are seeing now in Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen and possibly beyond, is not sudden. Far from it. The men and women on the streets in Egypt are expressing an anger that has been decades in the coming. The causes are deep seated, and President Mubarak seems vastly out of touch, unable any longer to mollify his people with anything but his immediate resignation.
The cause of the discontent is not difficult to gauge. Yes, there is the mockery that country has made of democracy, but alone that would not have brought the people onto the streets. The problem is the economy. As my colleague Karen Leigh points out brilliantly in this week’s issue of Arabian Business magazine, the majority of people in Egypt are young, dismally poor, without prospect and unable to keep pace with steepling inflation.
Unemployment in Egypt today runs at 14 percent – that is nearly twelve million people without a job. Ninety percent of that figure – 10.8m – are under 30 years old. At the same time, inflation has run into double figures for the last three years – it was eleven percent in 2010, but in 2008 it was over twenty percent. Jobs aren’t being created, half the population is under 24, and so school and university leavers have little to look forward to but taking their place on the unemployment line.
Food inflation alone is 17 percent, which the government has tried to some degree to alleviate with subsidies and price controls, but the problem with price controls – especially in a country where the budget deficit last year was $19.2bn – is that spending on other vital areas must be curtailed. Housing and infrastructure in Egypt are woefully underinvested in by the state. It is hard to tell quite how underinvested, of course. In a recent ranking of 180 countries in order of transparency, Egypt came 111.
President Mubarak is obviously a tenacious and proud man – not to say a rich man. The story of a leader accustomed to giving orders to his people being unable to take orders from those same people is as old as Shakespeare’s tragedies. He has ruled for 30 years, and he has survived six assassination attempts. He appears to have read the writing on the wall, but not to have fully appreciated the livid colour of the ink. He says he will go in September, at the end of his current term. The masses on the street say “go now.” And still Mubarak makes noises about his son replacing him in September.
We have seen a leader in the Middle East in the last twelve months withstand massive shows of public support for his resignation. In that country the military was used to quash the dissent. In Egypt that appears not to be an option; the army recently pledged not to turn on the people. President Obama has sent a message to Egypt’s leader urging him to go, but still he is there. By the time you read this, of course, that might no longer be the case.
They say all political careers ultimately end in failure. The trick is leaving with your dignity. Far better to leave during unrest than upheaval.
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