A commentary on Jack Shenker's article "Sharm el-Sheikh rumbles with grand promises of the international elite" published in The Guardian March 15, 2015. http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%85%D8%A4%D8%AA%D9%85%D8%B1_%D8%AF%D8%B9%D9%85_%D9%88%D8%AA%D9%86%D9%85%D9%8A%D8%A9_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%82%D8%AA%D8%B5%D8%A7%D8%AF_%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B5%D8%B1%D9%8A In this article you mention that the "Resounding message" of the Egypt Economic Development Conference (EEDC) "is modernity – but violence, oppression and malnutrition are still rampant in Egypt." EEDC was obviously held to boost economic development in Egypt, as you wrote in your article; it is no secret that the country has economic problems that any serious government is meant to deal with. This has nothing to do with whether or not there is violence, oppression or malnutrition in Egypt. One cannot but marvel at the skill of twisting words to serve certain ends. Allow me to put your mind at rest. Yes, we Egyptians do need to develop economically and yes, we do have problems regarding malnutrition in Egypt. There is still violence on our streets, but hardly comparable to crime rates in most democratic nations. Question: would you have preferred that we displayed sick hungry children on the sidelines of the conference or should we have bombed Sharm El Sheikh's international congress center, just to make the event more ‘representative' of ‘what's happening on the ground' as you say? Just to emphasize my security point, kindly note that the plan for this conference was to host 1 Prince, 1 Crown Prince, 7 Presidents, 4 Prime Ministers, 1 Parliament Head, 2 Kings and 2 Vice Presidents, making a total of 18 official state heads. Is there a country in the world that could have received this number of heads of states and senior officials without a maximum level of security being put in place?
Ambiguity is sometimes the mark of deceit. It goes without saying that you have every right to express your views freely. Yet a commitment to facts should prevail and your use of deliberately misleading statements that give way to misconceptions in the reader's mind is questionable. In the second paragraph you say, quote "It's the rumble that accompanies the corporate makeover of a nation, and there are many – in Egypt and beyond its borders – hoping that it will prove loud enough to drown out this country's rival soundtracks of protest, resistance and dissent. These days the corridors of counter-revolution are busier than ever, and it is international elites who are making most of the noise." You speak of ‘soundtracks of protests': agreed, there are protests in Egypt and we do hear them all the time. Show me a country that does not have protests. In our case, since we are still in the formation process of a parliament, protestors may justifiably be louder. I think it only shows the healthy nature of the transitional period we are in. When you speak of a ‘counter-revolution' it would be appropriate to make your point clearer. If you do recall, and I think you do, over 30 million Egyptians voted in favor of the road map currently followed by the government. The Egyptian people voted in an unprecedented way; the most akin to direct democracy that I have seen in modern history. In fact, there is no democracy that can be as expressive as what the world has witnessed in Egypt on June 30th 2013. I don't think that day can be forgotten, except by those who purposely do not want to see it. Your article says: "New investment and bankruptcy laws will grant blanket immunity to investors and public officials when handling state funds, loosen restrictions on public assets being handed to the private sector free of charge, and enable foreign companies to abandon privatised projects virtually without penalty if they so choose." Again, I have to pinpoint a lack of precision here: please be kind enough to give references to the "new laws" you mention. However, at least a dozen serious investors did not see your point and decided to go ahead and invest. The Human Rights Watch website was blocked on the conference WiFi network, you say, to prevent the EEDC attendees accessing the damaging Human Rights Watch reports on abuses in Egypt. How very naïve... or deceitful, one wonders. Do you really think that anyone would've waited until the conference day to check the reports? And what exactly is supposed to have happened had they accessed and read these reports? Democracy served by partial media is tyranny in disguise. In disguise, because people are under the illusion that they have access to real information and true facts while unaware of agendas being served by biased articles and analyses. They will never think of protesting. http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/styles/slide_narrow/public/field/image/mubaraktahrir.jpg?itok=Y5y1K1dF Please check the June 30 footage, if nothing else, to discover that Egypt has freely chosen its path. Better accept this fact, because it is bound to stay that way; it is the people's will. No democratic process can be more expressive. You wrote: ‘Bread, Freedom, Social Justice was the revolution's slogan, though none of Egypt's post-Mubarak regimes – from the junta that took power immediately after the January 2011 uprising, to the short-lived, aggressively free-market government of Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, to the new military autocracy – have bothered to take the latter demand seriously. The Brotherhood declared last week that Egypt is not for sale, forgetting that exactly the same multinational corporations currently signing deals in Sharm el-Sheikh were fawned over and flogged to by Morsi as well. At Egypt's economic summit, the more things change, the more they stay the same.' If you think that Egypt's currently governed by a ‘new military autocracy' then I am afraid you need to check your facts. President Al-Sisi was democratically elected; he is following a clear road map that was voted for in due form. All ministers are civilians and the judicial system is free and independent. Saying that there is a military rule of any kind in Egypt today, is an extremely unfounded statement, that ought to be corrected.
You have all the right to label Egypt's current regime as ‘military autocracy' but not without justification, I am afraid. So where do you see that it is ‘military', and how do you see it to be ‘autocratic'. Your choice of words is inaccurate to say the least. Otherwise, please justify. This country is like any other, looking to develop and prosper after years of deprivation and want. Why aren't you talking Sisi's track record in just 8 months as Egypt's president? If you did that, with an honest desire to reflect the truth of the matter, the maybe your readers would recognize that he acts in response to the people's demands. He is answering their legitimate needs for a better, more dignified life, after years of corruption which, as you well know, have taken a heavy toll. Your reference to the Muslim Brotherhood declaring that Egypt wasn't ‘for sale' reveals exactly where your orientation lies. To put things straight, the organization you are quoting has been ousted by the Egyptian people and designated as a terrorist organization by the Egyptian judiciary. This is an undeniable fact that the whole world has witnessed. You freely admit that in your article ‘Egypt's revolution continues as grassroots rage against fragmented elite' http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/02/egypt-revolution-continues, dated 2 July 2013. "The majority of demonstrators have been drawn on to the streets not by a nostalgic yearning for the ancien régime but by a bitter sense of betrayal over Brotherhood rule. The president, they argue, has surrendered his legitimacy, through incompetence, through oppression, through a spectacular chain-breaking of promises that he offered up when, after a fatal split in the pro-revolutionary vote, he found himself in a presidential runoff with an icon of the Mubarak era." You were among the millions of people ‘drawn to the streets' to get rid of the Brotherhood rule and you saw for yourself that the determination of the Egyptian people cannot be stopped by any regime whatever it might be or stand for. If Egyptians didn't chose or want the present rule in the country, you can bet your bottom dollar they would say it loud and clear. The MBs and their supporters are the only ones to deny that this is the will of the people. There is no political role left for them to play in Egypt. People who choose to randomly kill on the streets, like they did, and indiscriminately bomb public facilities can only be considered criminals, certainly not opposition. Criminals will never be admitted in a parliament, not even in the most democratic of all regimes. Rest assured that Egypt knows its enemies, and their allies. You wrote: "Egyptian military showcasing a business-as-usual vision for the future, one in which Gulf and western capital works in partnership with senior generals to carve up and commodify the country, and where Egypt's identity – contested so dramatically in the streets over recent years...." Sorry, but what does the Egyptian military have to do with the conference? Since when does economy threaten identity? What are you saying? Do you even respect my intellect, not to mention my sanity, as a reader? You say that ‘Sisi could not pull off such a feat on his own.' I think that you are right; Sisi could not have pulled off .... anything really on his own. However he didn't need to. He has at least 50 million Egyptians fully supporting his decisions. He is not on his own. What's wrong with that? Name me a leader who can do anything on his own? He may take decisions, but unless he gets support, they will remain as such, only decisions. Why should Sisi be any different from other leaders? You say, "Figures like Blair, Sorrell and Attias are central to Sisi as he attempts to establish global legitimacy." Sorry to disappoint you again, but Sisi does not need to ‘establish global legitimacy', his worth has already been acknowledged as evidenced by the exceptional attendance at EEDC. The outstanding response of investors from around the world and more importantly the amazing and joyful reactions of multitudes of Egyptians who bought shares to fund the new Suez Canal project is all the legitimacy he will ever need. You quote Mr. Blair as saying ‘But I also think you've got to be realistic sometimes about the path of development, and that sometimes you will have a country [with] not what we would call100% western-style democracy but [that], on the other hand, is going in a direction of development that's really important.' "100% western-style democracy" is what Mr. Blair and I am sure many other advocates of western style democracy, see as the ultimate goal for nations like Egypt to achieve. Democracy is an excellent venue for human rights, but it can also be abused to serve the powerful and the corrupt. Blair went to war in Iraq, under ‘100% western-style democracy' following a rumor propagated by media which pointlessly repeated that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Of course facts revealed this whole political and media circus to be a complete fraud. How many of your own citizens did you democratically murder? How many Iraqi people and children were massacred by a democratic vote following those democratic atrocities? I don't think that the words ‘100% western-style democracy' should ever be uttered without a sense of deep human shame. We should thank Mr. Blair and his allies for the 100% western-style democracy that Iraq is enjoying right now. Let's hope that the region will have another ‘style democracy' that will result in pride, not shame. Only bold media that have the courage of their opinions care about telling the whole unaltered truth. They respect their reader's right to real information that does not serve any political agendas. I think that people have the right to choose their leaders and this is also goes for media leaders. Freedom of speech is paramount, but so is freedom of choice. I pity those who trust leaders who are followers themselves. They sometimes never get to know the truth until it is too late. The truth untold by media was revealed after a long war in Iraq, where hundreds of thousands were killed. Those media leaders are like the temple merchants who gave water to Pontius Pilate to wash his hands of Jesus's murder. They participate in letting criminals walk while innocents are slaughtered. Leaders should have a compass pointing them to where the truth lies if they are keen to keep their loyal followers.
