The Muslim Brotherhood has finally published its Renaissance plan. Amira Howeidy discovers it adds little flesh to the already well known skeleton It's been almost a month since the Muslim Brotherhood's second in command, Khairat El-Shater, announced that he would stand in the presidential elections and began marketing what was thought to be the Brotherhood's winning card, a development project with the ambitious name of Al-Nahda (Renaissance), the group's manifesto for Egypt's political and economic future. El-Shater was subsequently disqualified from the race, replaced by Mohamed Mursi, head of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party. The Al-Nahda project, though, remains as the central plank of the Brotherhood's election campaign. On 28 April it was finally published as a hard copy. And it turns out that the plan which claims to be the outcome of 15 years hard work extends to just 11 pages. They add little to the broad outlines of a project already reiterated several times by El-Shater, begging the question of whether all the hoopla surrounding Al-Nahda is no more than a PR exercise for a programme that has yet to be translated into a serious plan. The print version of the "project" makes a point of inserting verses from the Quran and the sayings of Prophet Mohamed throughout. In many cases the references appear contrived, or simply state the obvious. To convey the role of the "experts" and "think tanks" that contributed to the project, the Quranic verse "So ask the people of the message if you do not know" tops the "strategy" section. Other verses allude to justice, combating tyranny and devising "popular" mechanisms to scrutinise the government's performance. The plan is consistent with El-Shater's discourse on reducing the size of the state and allowing a greater role for the private sector and civil society, though this emphasis on the private sector has little to offer in terms of a strategy to address social justice, a main demand of the 25 January Revolution. What is envisaged is a free market untrammelled by the corruption that infested the Mubarak regime. It promises more job opportunities, a transformation of the "rentier economy" to a "value added" one, nodding along the way to the concept of a "knowledge society" and a doubling in domestic production within five years courtesy of "100 national projects". The "transformation to a developmental economy" section cites some examples of what these national projects will be. They include building houses in Sinai, maritime service centres at major ports and professional and technical training centres. There is also an emphasis on developing small- and medium-sized enterprises. Any reference to the poor is restricted to the "revival" of waqf (religious endowments) and zakat (compulsory giving of a portion of one's wealth in charity) as "foundations" of the economy, making it clear that any strategy to tackle poverty will operate within a charitable context. There is no reference to minimum and maximum wages or progressive taxation, part of the current debate on social justice, and only vague and generic mention of "structuring a comprehensive social justice system" that allows "equal opportunities" in housing, education, work opportunities, healthcare and political rights. The rest of the 11-page document alludes to eradicating illiteracy, reforming the educational system, restructuring the security apparatus, upgrading the military and the expected "restoration" of Egypt's role on the international stage. For a project that's been in the making -- as the manifesto claims -- for 15 years, it's very thin. Nor could its publication come at a more critical time for the Brotherhood as the group continues to lobby, with less than three weeks before the presidential elections, for their short notice candidate, 61-year-old Mursi, an uncharismatic professor of engineering who doesn't seem anywhere close to a frontrunner position. His modest showing in opinion polls is certainly not what the Brotherhood -- which clinched 47 per cent of the People's Assembly vote -- is accustomed to. Now Al-Nahda has been published the grandiose rhetoric that has hitherto surrounded the Brotherhood's manifesto can no longer disguise that it is a rushed plan unlikely to secure Mursi a ticket to the presidency.
