The Egyptian government held the power to corrupt its people and then to punish them on charges of corruption. This was the result, in a nutshell. The details follow. Egyptian government bureaucracy turned the Egyptian into “a thief in spite of himself, a liar in spite of himself, an anarchist in spite of himself.” It treats him with mistrust and he reciprocates. For bureaucratic service, traditionally the government required from a citizen a character reference signed by two civil servants certifying that he was of sound reputation and behaviour. As this was a senseless certificate, not worth the ink with which it was written, people forged the certificate or paid a bribe to get around it, proving in the process that they were not, in fact, of sound character. The government generated a climate of suspicion through various security and bureaucratic mazes and red tape that put the citizen in the position of being guilty until he could prove his innocence. Without the means to do so, he became a criminal in the eyes of the state bureaucracy. In spite of the fact that this apparatus consists primarily of ordinary citizens, it stripped these employees of their empathy with their fellow citizens for fear they might not abide by the rules of the bureaucratic game. The state corrupted its citizens and made it practically impossible for them to live without breaking the law. The management and administrative sciences have paradigms for measuring the costs of this mistrust in the citizenry. They are very high in terms of the wasted time, energy and money required to grapple with all the bureaucratic hurdles placed before the execution of even simple tasks. One effect has been making the people regard government as a stupid entity, guided only by the logic of reaping fees and gazing upon all people with suspicion. Such a government would never give a thought to conducting opinion polls to determine the extent to which it has succeeded in serving the people and facilitating their lives. It does not want to know. To ask would risk being confronted with the magnitude of injustice it has meted out. For example, it is impossible for a public school teacher to survive on the paltry salary he or she earns a month. They are therefore forced to give students private lessons, in violation of the law. At the same time, the government persists in the false claim that education is “free of charge.” Now, if the government were frank with itself, it could redirect its resources to ensure that real instruction is carried out inside schools and that teachers have the wherewithal to live a dignified life and serve as genuine models of good character. Unfortunately, teachers are required to lie and to lie continuously to avoid the consequences of the law. So they give private lessons and deny this, and tell their students to deny this as well, which is to say they are telling their students to be liars. The whole thing has the inescapable dynamics of a mafia web. There are three sides: a silly government that uses slogans it can't live up to, such as “free education”, with the result that education is not free at all; the civil servant at a public school pay grade who cannot be faithful to his assigned task because he cannot afford to; and the student who is forced to go to school for the sake of attendance records while real instruction is carried out in his home. It is as if the government is determined to teach children from the earliest age that it is a “swindler” that deludes itself and deceives its citizens, and trains them to become liars and hypocrites. The problem, of course, is not limited to the educational system. It permeates every bureaucratic organ and the way the people have to deal with them. In order to obtain a driver's licence one has to leap through hoops, produce papers and perform a runaround that, in practical terms, can only add up to a high price tag. Out of the best of intentions, I am sure, the government felt that prospective car drivers should submit two medical certificates testifying that they have no physical or visual problems that would impair driving. Ideally, the demand is just. But in a society as poor and backwards as ours, such demands became instruments for corruption. Nor do I believe that they have prevented any citizen, regardless of the capacity of his motor skills or vision, from driving a car in Egypt's streets. Somewhere inside, or in the vicinity of, every traffic and licencing department there is an unemployed nursing assistant who will supply you with the two certificates without you ever having to have set foot in the clinic of a physician or optician. The problem is that every employee in the Egyptian government bureaucracy knows this, accepts it and works with it. They will even direct you to the place where the nursing assistant or certificate fixer is located. Again, its that mafia-like syndrome with three sides: a stupid government bureaucracy that imposes illogical rules and restrictions; the underpaid civil servant who was given control of the stamp with the official seal, but without the salary to keep him honest; and the citizen who is driven into a frenzy because, in order to obtain or renew a licence for his car, he has to produce a signed and sealed certificate testifying that he has no outstanding traffic tickets, a certificate certifying that his vehicle meets the necessary safety requirements, plus the application forms with all the documentation they require, after which he will have to obtain a licence plate number, pay the fees and collect the necessary stamps to affix to the documents, and so on. All these steps, moreover, are rarely done in a single place and generally require innumerable trips around town to different government offices and departments. Yet none of them have helped prevent an accident or ensured that a prospective driver had even a minimal familiarity with traffic regulations and rules on how to drive. It is all really nothing less than a farcical play in which the government pretends to make rules and regulations, the civil servant pretends to apply them, and the citizen pretends to follow them. At every phase in that maze, citizens finds themselves faced with an opportunist or conman who fiddles with the law and manipulates them, ultimately turning them into frauds, whether they like it or not. The phenomenon is familiar to anyone who wants to travel abroad and retain his profession at home. “Leave to accompany spouse” is a well-known tale. It involves, in short, a long list of bureaucratic procedures that ultimately yield a forged contract that the applicant submits to his workplace so as to be able to travel abroad because he refuses to live as a poor man in a society in which only the rich are entitled to a dignified life. However, by the time he can leave he will not be boarding the plane with his honesty and integrity intact, because in order to get to this point he will have had to reciprocate the Egyptian bureaucracy's immorality and lie, cheat and forge at every step along the way. An eminent scientist told me a strange story that I would never have believed had I not thoroughly trusted his knowledge. He said that at the beginning of Dr Tun Mahathir Mohamad's premiership in Malaysia, the Malaysian government sent a letter to every Malaysian student studying in the US, telling them not to come home for a while and, if possible, to find a job in the US so as to be able to work, learn and build themselves. The letter also cautioned the students against falsifying any documents or assuming qualifications they did not have. All the government required from them for the moment was that they inform the Malaysian consulate of their whereabouts and field of employment or study, so that their mothers at home would know where their children were in case of emergency. And so they did, and Malaysia boomed. Egyptians, meanwhile, stay as far away as they can from the consulates and embassies of their host countries because of the rudeness, ruses and duplicities they have had to experience in their dealings with Egyptian bureaucracy. Add to the foregoing the cases of dozens indeed, hundreds of investors who want to complete the formalities involved in establishing their title to properties they have obtained on the basis of a commitment to initiate a land reclamation or some other type of development project, and after having deposited a certain logistical sum of money to sustain the national treasury, and ensure they see their projects through. Soon the investors find themselves bounced from one government office window to another, and from one government official to the next, all the while having to shell out bribes and tips, the sum total of which may will exceed the amount deposited with the state. The government has come up with dozens of slogans to attract investors large and small. But when things get serious, investors find themselves faced with obstacles, haggling and under-the-table payments and other sorts of dealings that are as remote as can be from the government's sales pitch. The government continues to lie to lie with a persistence that leads every Egyptian to see it as a liar, and learn to reciprocate every lie with a lie of his own. President Al-Sisi faces an enormous challenge and everyone who loves this country should support him. The battle against corrupt persons is easier than the battle against corruption and its causes, prime among which is the bureaucratic red tape that gives government employees inclined to corruption the opportunity to corrupt the people. Winning the war against corruption is a prerequisite for building the Egypt we wish for.
The writer is a professor of Political Science, Cairo University.
