Comparisons between Egypt and advanced countries only help if they drive forward practical change and development, writes Abdel-Moneim Said Czech President Vaclav Klaus told me recently that his country's greatest achievement was that it had become "a normal European nation". The remark stunned me for a moment, but it soon became clear what he was driving at. It was not about high per capita incomes, longer life expectancy rates, or the amount of new inventions Czech has contributed to global industry. Nor was it about how his republic split off from the former Czechoslovakia without a civil war and how the two states -- Czech and Slovakia -- came together again under the umbrella of the European Union. His point was that his country had become like other European nations: democratic, modern, industrially advanced and, perhaps more importantly, subject to the same rules and processes of development and change, and the same cycles of expansion and recession (inclusive of the occasional crisis) that apply to other capitalist nations. Of course, I knew that this transformation was not entirely self-directed. The Czech Republic had to undergo a process of formation that was largely steered by the guidelines for membership in the EU. Countries are only accepted into this organisation if they comply with a set of agreed-upon principles and standards regarding economic performance (not exceeding a certain budgetary deficit ratio, for example), trade (adhering to certain rules and procedures regarding taxation and customs fees), democratic government, human rights and environmental protection. These principles and standards are no longer purely European; they have come to form the general universal laws of progress and advancement. The details might vary here or there, often depending on the level of development, but the essence is the same. In the UNDP Human Development Report for 2009 we find countries classified into four categories on the basis of their ranking on the UNDP human development scale. These categories are "very high" (38 countries), "high" (46 countries), "average" (76 countries) and "poor" (25 countries). Among the 84 countries that make up the "high" and "very high" categories, there are only a few exceptions to that "normal" condition mentioned above, and these are struggling along with the bulk of the countries in the "average" category to complete the process of becoming "normal". Regardless of what you call it -- "growth", "development" or "progress" -- this process entails the transformation of societies and their elevation to the "norm" for social and material advancement. I mention the foregoing because our public debates, which occasionally erupt into nasty spats in the press and over the satellite networks, feature a good deal of criticism and not a small amount of anger directed at the current condition of our country. Frequently, debaters and squabblers are given to citing statistical comparisons between Egypt and other developing countries. Yet, regardless of how accurate the data that is being bandied about might be, a perpetual silence hovers over the question as to whether such comparisons will lead Egypt to the means and methods, and rules and laws (and even constitutions) used by other countries that have outstripped us on the human development scale. In other words, is it comparisons like these that will spur us into making the types of changes needed to transform Egypt into a normal country? Undoubtedly, the persons drawing the comparisons are indicating their willingness to give educational development the highest priority, or to focus on industrialisation, or to promote free and fair elections, depending upon which sets of statistics they are citing. Undoubtedly, too, they think themselves, or at least would like to project themselves as, consistent with the countries that meet these demands. Unfortunately, they have rather missed the point. Becoming a normal nation entails embracing and applying an ethically and philosophically coherent system of values, and the institutions, performance standards and procedures for making change that embody these values. In the 2009 UNDP Human Development Report, Egypt is classified in the third, "average," category. It is ranked 123rd on the human development scale, far behind Norway (first place), the US (13th), Qatar (33rd), Mexico (53rd), Turkey (79th), Iran (88th) and the occupied Palestinian territories (110th), but ahead of South Africa (129th) and India (134th). These rankings, as we know, are based on three main indexes: the rate of life expectancy, educational achievement levels and the standard of living coefficient (per capita GDP in relation to average purchasing power). The chief reason for Egypt's relatively low ranking is its performance in education and, specifically, the high rate of illiteracy, which is why the occupied territories, which are under constant siege and economic blockade, rank higher than Egypt on the UNDP scale. So if this is so starkly clear, why aren't people rushing to remedy the problem of education, at least, among the many problems that are dragging us down and holding us back from the "high" and "highest" ranks of nations? The answer is that there are certain "abnormal" conditions in Egypt that make us incapable of tackling the dilemma of its low ranking, especially when compared to nations whose higher rankings were not the product of oil wealth or relatively low population densities. One of these "abnormalities" is a bloated government bureaucracy of a sort unparalleled among "normal" nations and that had once been common to those socialist nations that had imprisoned their citizens in a vast bureaucratic maze. Since the end of the socialist era, there remain only a handful of countries left with this kind of bureaucracy, and Egypt heads the list. Our government, complete with its various administrative and service agencies, public sector industries and businesses, security and defence establishment and other public institutions employs more than seven million people. That is 28 per cent of the Egyptian labour force. A bureaucracy of this size and scope is more than a question of a payroll that is item number one on the national budget. It is a socio-political, economic and cultural conundrum of the first order. An oft-recited theory holds that bureaucracies flourish in river cultures. Regardless of the validity of this theory, in a country in which regulating the flow of the Nile no longer figures high on the government's to-do list, the bureaucracy has continued to proliferate and sprawl in a very irksome way. A Bahraini official once remarked that his country's entire civil service has fewer employees than a national newspaper organisation in Egypt. And here most public organisations in Egypt share an "amazing" trait, which underscores the abnormality of the Egyptian case. They do not need more than a third of the manpower they currently employ, which means that wages are being distributed across three times the number of employees needed. More amazingly yet, 10 per cent of the staff are engaged on a "temporary" basis, the purpose of which is difficult to understand in light of the huge pool of available yet underproductive full-time labour. But apparently, there is no getting around that sea of semi- employed and temps who are possessed with the desire to perpetuate this phenomenon by passing their jobs on to their children or those of a close relative. At the same time, government agencies face another sea of pressure from the outside on the part of those keen to gain access to this employee warehouse and that will use whatever material and moral means at their disposal to tap the political and economic perks it offers. The irony is that many private business owners have no qualms about using whatever pull they have to secure government jobs for friends and relatives they meanwhile would never consider hiring in their own enterprises. As suggested above, the problem is not just the cumbersome bulk of the bureaucracy, it is the ideas and methods of managing the country that it generates and perpetuates. President Gamal Abdel-Nasser once said, referring to the government and its agencies, "We managed to build the High Dam and the Suez Canal, but we couldn't run Qasr Al-Aini hospital." His complaint is not peculiar to Egypt. The former Soviet Union managed to reach the moon, but it could not produce a single industrial manufacture capable of competing in the international market. The North Korean government could develop nuclear capacities, but remains incapable of fending off food shortages, starvation and malnourishment from the North Korean people. Over the course of last year, the Egyptian bureaucracy emerged from another crisis, which had spread from a bread shortage to a fuel shortage. People old enough to recall the 1960s will find this reminiscent of the shortage crises in soap, matches and a host of other goods and commodities. Yet this is the bureaucracy that controls virtually all the keys and avenues to the productive and consumer processes in Egypt and, moreover, distributes food subsidy cards to 70 per cent of the population. In some quarters of socio-political thought, "bureaucracy" is regarded as the epitome of the rationalist state. The famous philosopher Max Weber was of this opinion, for example. However, that attribute of "rational" only applies when the functions of the government remain minimal. When the state decides to shoulder everything related to the protection, nurturing and care of its citizens and when it controls the sources of wealth and production and the instruments of power, the machinery and staffing needed for all this take government bureaucracy into the realm of the absurd. But there is an even more absurd side to this mammoth bureaucracy. The Egyptian state, as we have said, subsides education, transport, food, and essential commodities. In so doing, the state declares itself the guardian and caretaker of the poor and limited income. Egypt is not alone in this; however it is unmatched in a glaring inconsistency that practically cries out the abnormality of its condition: of the LE166 billion subsidy allocations only 16 per cent reaches the poor while the wealthiest strata of society obtain 28 per cent. Also, one would think that a bureaucracy of the size of Egypt's would control everything and even know everything. Surprisingly, it turns out that an inverse relationship is often at play, to which testifies the informal economic sector in Egypt. Evidently, the larger the bureaucracy the less it controls and the less it knows about the activities of those who have no permit to run a business or a commercial registration number, do not pay their employees' social insurance fees and who remain outside the reach of the tax authorities. Needless to say there are no accurate figures available on the extent to which the informal sector contributes to the GDP. International agencies suggest that in developing nations, in general, the informal sector can range from 30 to 70 per cent of the GDP. With regards to Egypt, some experts have estimated that the informal sector accounts to a third of the Egyptian economy, producing between LE60 billion and LE80 billion worth of goods and services. Others place the figure higher, at LE95 billion, and the figure soars to LE200 billion if you add to it the income from illicit activities such as the narcotics trade. It goes without saying that the revenues from the informal sector are not entered into national budgetary calculations. Regardless of the figures, the Egyptian bureaucratic dragon has never been able to absorb the informal sector into the economy. The same applies to the organisation of society. The sprawl of random urban development is a very tangible manifestation of the housing problem and it is impossible to discuss our chronic garbage problem without mentioning the incompetence of an over-centralised government bureaucracy blighted by a lack of imagination and initiative in dealing with difficult conditions precisely because it monopolises everything to do with dealing with them. The lack of a proper garbage collection system is one of Egypt's most serious problems. According to a Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs report, Egypt produces 75 million tons of solid waste a year. Domestic refuse alone comes to around 20 million tons a year, or 55,000 tons a day. The painfully visible heaps of uncollected rubbish we see can only be described as a symptom of "abnormality". Among the most important tasks of government are educating citizens and keeping the country's cities clean. Such elementary tasks come before other grand "national" projects. Elsewhere I have discussed no less significant "abnormalities" concerning the Egyptian constitution, such as the provision on the percentage of workers and peasants in the People's Assembly, Article 2 pertaining to the relationship between religion and the state, and the articles regarding the role of the state in the economy. However, what I find particularly curious and another sign of "abnormality" is how rapidly people who claim to be concerned with political reform dismiss all discussion of the civic state, which is an intrinsic characteristic of "normal" states in which the people are the source of authority and legislation, both in theory and in practice, and not via a council of jurists, or a clique of writers and politicians, or a band of "dissidents" who pose as the ultimate authorities. To me the matter is perfectly clear. Egypt is the first state in history and its legacy is a source of pride to its inhabitants. It is also one of the countries best poised to make a breakthrough toward progress and development. However, it is still hampered by certain features that are "abnormal" by contemporary standards. Perhaps we should make it the chief focus of the political activity that will be revolving around the forthcoming legislative and presidential elections to come to terms with and overcome these "abnormalities" in our country so that we can move forward to the norm set by developed nations. At that point, comparisons will have legitimacy because they will be made not to score points but to achieve real progress towards reform.
