The Muslim Brotherhood's new look presidential candidate Khairat El-Shater is touting his "renaissance" project to whoever will listen. Amira Howeidy tunes in Brotherhood strong man, financier, millionaire, ex deputy supreme guide and now presidential candidate has spent two decades working behind the scenes, mostly in silence as he consolidated his influence within the group. Now, eight days after being nominated to run for the presidency, Khairet El-Shater, 62, won't stop talking. Having kicked off his campaign with a new look -- trimmed beard, shaved moustache and dark suit -- the Brotherhood's wealthiest businessman punctuates his daily TV appearances with interviews with the local and international press and the occasional lecture as he tries to woo voters 45 days ahead of the presidential poll. Despite entering the race late his campaign team is confident their candidate will win. "God willing, there won't be a run-off," Murad Mohamed, one of El-Shater's campaign managers, told media representatives on Monday. The Muslim Brotherhood is banking on armies of experienced volunteers on the ground and blanket media exposure as its candidate pushes the Al-Nahda (renaissance) project that forms the core of his yet to be published manifesto. It is heavily weighted towards the economy which, given El-Shater's commercial acumen, is only to be expected. "They say I'm the mystery man," the Brotherhood candidate told reporters. "I'm an engineer and a businessman." Al-Nahda is the keyword in El-Shater's campaign, a rebirth that will happen in several stages. First the political and security situation will be stabilised. This, says El-Shater, involves consolidating a political system based on the rotation of power, the rule of law and respect of human rights and a restructuring of the security apparatus. It will be followed by a development plan that seeks to "empower" both the private sector and civil society. "Most modern economies," El-Shater contends, "are based on service oriented businesses, not agriculture." What this means in practice, say his team, is that the increasingly dysfunctional role of the state and public sector must be cut back. But how will this impact on the promotion of greater social justice which was one of the main demands of the 25 January Revolution? The neo-liberal economic policies of the last two decades, with their aggressive privatisation, served only to widen the gap between Egypt's rich and poor as the clique of businessmen surrounding Gamal Mubarak amassed obscene fortunes while public services were steadily eroded. El-Shater, who likes to describe himself as a merchant, is unfazed by the failure of earlier free-market policies to improve the lot of the poor. There are services that the state simply can't offer, he says, which means many development projects will have to be funded away from the state budget. They include areas of strategic concern, such as the generation of power. The state, El-Shater argues, cannot afford to meet rising energy demand and so the private sector must be allowed to fill the gap. "The reality is that there is a serious budget deficit," says El-Shater: domestic debt has reached LE1 trillion, the budget deficit is more than a quarter of the state budget and "we're faced with an unusual situation". Critics insist limiting the role of the state isn't the answer. Joint public and private sector projects "are the most dangerous form of privatisation" says economist Wael Gamal. El-Shater's vision of a reduced state has political as well as economic dimensions. He criticises the "deep state" with its "repressive security institutions". "There was no balance [under Mubarak] between the state and the public... now this balance needs to be defined in the new constitution and through new laws." "We need to exert colossal efforts and generate creative ideas to rebuild this country and to spearhead a renaissance" after the damage caused to political life, the economy and society over the last three decades. El-Shater admits the process will involve trial and error, because "everything is susceptible to change and improvement". But whatever improvements happen, he stresses, will always come within an "Islamic frame of reference". The "comprehensive" economic and development plans forming the second stage of El-Shater's renaissance will influence the "immediate" needs of the people and include improving the educational system and promoting greater social cohesion and harmony. The first two years of this second stage he describes as a "firefighting" or crisis management exercise. The final stage in Egypt's rebirth will address the country's international role. The Al-Nahda project grew out of a series of meetings that began in 2003, hosted by El-Shater in his Nasr City office. The 15 participants included political science professors, scholars, researches and experts in various fields. Some were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, others were on their way out. El-Shater facilitated their meeting but was not active in producing content. The project was interrupted in 2006 when El-Shater was arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison. After a brief lull the participants resumed meeting every two months in one of two Gulf countries. Following his release last March El-Shater sought to revamp the project but, as one of the participants told Al-Ahram Weekly, Al-Nahda's originators were loath to hand over what they saw as a national programme to the Brotherhood or any other partisan political group. This didn't stop El-Shater, who set up a steering committee in the Brotherhood's political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, to resuscitate the project. The aim, says steering committee member Gehad El-Haddad, was to establish a "group to work alongside different organisations and state institutions to ensure the existence of communicators and facilitators whose function would be to help these bodies function with a much higher level of fluidity than under Mubarak". That was before El-Shater's nomination. Now the project is being rewritten as part of his election programme.
