Parliamentary elections, scheduled to start Nov. 28 and entailing three rounds ending Jan. 10, were meant to bring a sense of achievement and distill the uprising into a fairer, less corrupt political and economic system. But as campaigning begins in earnest this week, the proliferation of more than 55 parties and about 6,600 candidates for 498 seats in the People’s Assembly inspires mostly confusion.
“The picture has become so muddled that we don’t know where we’re going — this is the problem,” said Rami Essam, the young heartthrob bard of the revolution, answering questions between guitar songs in Tahrir Square, where lackluster demonstrations still come together on most Fridays.
“Freedom!” he sang about the unrealized demands of the revolution.
“Ignored,” the crowd responded in Arabic.
“Civilian rule! — Ignored! — Counterrevolutionaries! — Ignored!”
Arrested on the square last March, Mr. Essam posted pictures online of the heavy gashes and bruises he said had been inflicted by soldiers who detained him.
He tweaks protest anthems that targeted the Mubarak government to denounce the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. “We have not realized any of our demands, and all of our dreams are gone,” he said.
On the economic front, Egypt’s most important sources of income remain steady, with tourism the notable exception. The other pillars of the economy — gas and oil sales; Suez Canal revenues and remittances from workers abroad — are either stable or growing, according to Central Bank figures.
But those sources of income have accomplished little more than propping up an ailing economy. Over all, economic activity came to a standstill for months, with growth expected to tumble to under 2 percent this year from a robust 7 percent in 2010. Official unemployment rates rose to at least 12 percent from 9 percent. Foreign investment is negligible.
The revolutionary tumult hit tourism hardest. Nearly 15 million tourists visited Egypt in 2010, a record, but numbers were off by 42 percent through September of this year, said Amr Elezabi, the chairman of the Egyptian Tourism Authority, with about $3 billion lost. Whenever the numbers of tourists begin to edge up, they inevitably collapse again after periodic riots.
Desperate to reverse the trend, the tourism authority even test-marketed the uprising. “People were happy for us about what happened, but they said, ‘Don’t talk to us about the revolution,’ ” Mr. Elezabi said. “You cannot sell Egypt through Tahrir Square.”
Part of the blame for Egypt’s economic malaise, though, rests with the caretaker cabinet, which reports to the ruling military council. The ministers, mindful that several businessmen who served in the Mubarak government sit in jail on corruption convictions, are reluctant to sign off on new projects.
“The normal red tape got redder,” said Hisham A. Fahmy, the chief executive of the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, which groups elite multinational and Egyptian companies.
Nearly every conversation navigates into politics, with the basic theme being why there has been so little concrete change in Egypt, especially when compared with the tectonic shifts right next door in Libya and Tunisia, where uprisings also ousted long-serving dictators. The answers run along two main tacks.
The ruling generals and their supporters argue that repeated demonstrations and strikes by unrepresentative activists are undermining all attempts to restore stability and the economy. State television even commissioned a tune about it. The key lyric translates roughly as, “Even if you have demands, put the interests of the country first.”
Activists accuse the generals of resurrecting the Mubarak playbook to stay in power. The military deploys draconian measures to silence critics, they say, banning strikes and singling out individual critics like Alaa Abdel Fattah, a renowned blogger jailed by a military prosecutor this week for a 15-day sentence on incitement charges.
The surprise appearance recently of posters of the military’s top officer, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, and the slogan “Egypt Above All” fueled widespread suspicions that the generals want him to be the fifth military president in a row since the armed forces seized Egypt’s government in 1952. Presidential elections are likely to be at least a year away.
The generals denied any connection to the campaign, but activists recognize that toppling Mr. Mubarak turned out to be the easy part and that they should have pushed harder for sweeping change while they had momentum.
“Most of those who took part in the revolution were satisfied with the fall of Mubarak,” said Dr. Mona Mina, a soft-spoken Coptic pediatrician who helped lead physicians nationwide in a work stoppage over deteriorating medical services. “They celebrated and left Tahrir before they had established an authority from among them to monitor the transformations demanded by the revolution.”
The revolutionary spirit lives, but resonates less.
“We are ready to live on dates and water for our freedom!” proclaimed Mohamed Sabr, a 30-year-old engineer protesting in Tahrir Square last Friday.
“If you want water and dates, fine, eat that yourself,” rejoined Tareq Ali, 36, an export manager for a cheese company.
“Feloul!” shot back Mr. Sabr, a popular slur basically meaning “counterrevolutionary remnant.”
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The New York Times
