The ruling regime has finally noticed that it has a hostile relationship with the people. For more than half a century, the successive governments have failed to decode public dissatisfaction. Nobody came close to the ordinary citizens to know the real reasons behind the existing dichotomy between the regime and the people. It seemed as if the regime was speaking a language that the street did not understand. The regime has been launching slogans whose effects the people wanted to feel in their pockets and in the education of their children. The result was more indifference and hostility to all what the government was saying or doing. The National Democratic Party (NDP) seems to have become aware of this problem. After years of bad privatization policies, the party has announced a new privatization program that offers to citizens free shares in public sector companies. In an unequivocal statement, the party said the distribution of the free shares for people over the age of 21 inside or outside Egypt will be fair. This means that every Egyptian citizen will be a shareholder in the public funds instead of selling the public companies to Egyptian, Arab or foreign billionaires and increase the gap between the rich and the poor. And because I am optimistic and I dream of a better future for this country, I find this move the closest that was taken in recent years to approach the ordinary citizens. I find it to be atonement for the nationalization sin that used not to differentiate between granted wealth and the national capital that was contributing to the modernization of Egypt and its economy on the pillars of production and employment. It is time national wealth went back to its owners, even in small shares. But it is the application of the theory that counts. We have seen many ideal laws and policies that have failed due to poor application. It may be appropriate for us to know that a similar policy has been tested in the nineties in some Eastern European countries like Hungary and the Czech Republic, where public property was distributed to citizens in the form of free shares. But they put controls to ensure the fair and transparent application of that policy. The experience produced economic reform and equitable distribution of wealth, and the principle of social justice was established among citizens. The people's satisfaction with this step forces NDP and the government to ensure its success away from bureaucracy. I propose the formation of an independent committee of economic experts whose task would be to develop rules governing the distribution and ensuring the transparency of the shares, especially that we are talking about 41 million citizens.
The only meaning of this move is: How nice it is to be back among the people.
