Popular
Social Movements and the Future of Egyptian Politics
Joel Beinin
March 10,
2005
(Joel
Beinin is a professor of Middle East history at Stanford University
and an editor of Middle East Report.
He contributed this article from Cairo.)
President
Husni Mubarak’s unexpected announcement that Article 76 of the
Egyptian constitution will be amended to permit a direct and competitive
vote in the September presidential election has captured the attention
of the international and local media and political classes. The
substance of the proposed constitutional amendment, announced
on February 26, remains undetermined. While the president will
not run unopposed in a single-party referendum, as he has done
on four previous occasions, a multi-party contest might not end
his 24-year rule. Past multi-party elections for the parliament
have been plagued by voter intimidation, fraud and other dirty
tricks intended to pad the ruling National Democratic Party’s
majority.
It is far
from clear that Mubarak’s decision heralds the birth of genuine
electoral democracy on the Nile. Moreover, focusing on top-level
political maneuvering misses the pressure from below that has
played a significant role in forcing this concession from the
regime.
| 
Workers at the
Qalyub Spinning Company. |
For the last
several months, a disparate collection of burgeoning movements
among several sectors of Egyptian society has converged upon one
message: opposition to the status quo. Since December 11, 2004,
the Kifaya (Enough) movement has organized three demonstrations
demanding that Mubarak step down and that he refrain from handing
off the presidency to his son, as happened in Syria and in the
“democratic” US-allied monarchies of Jordan and Morocco. Kifaya
activists have collected well over 1,000 signatures of public
figures on a petition calling for a direct and contested presidential
election. Members and supporters of the Ghad (Tomorrow) Party
have loudly protested the incarceration of their leader Ayman
Nur. Human rights activists have continued to criticize the regime’s
arbitrary roundups of Islamists in response to the October 7,
2004 terrorist bombings in the Sinai resort of Taba. Workers have
engaged in long strikes protesting the business-friendly policies
favored by Mubarak -- and, even more so, his son Gamal. In covering
these developments, the non-governmental media have gone well
beyond previous limits on freedom of the press.
Since 1952,
no Egyptian head of state has been targeted directly in this manner.
A taboo has been broken, and there is no telling where these popular
movements may lead.
A STRIKE
AGAINST PRIVATIZATION
Some 12 miles
north of Cairo, 400 textile workers at the Qalyub Spinning Company,
a branch of the ESCO conglomerate, have been conducting a sit-in
strike since February 13. They are protesting the government’s
sale of their mill to a private investor because they believe
private-sector management will not maintain the levels of wages
and benefits they have achieved since ESCO, like most other significant
Egyptian manufacturing firms, was nationalized in the early 1960s.
The strike began because the government and company management
failed to deliver on promises to provide an adequate early retirement
package in response to a shorter ten-day strike in October 2004.
| 
Workers
at the Qalyub Spinning Company. |
Privatization
of the public sector has long been strongly supported by Washington,
as well as Egypt’s creditors at the International Monetary Fund
and the World Bank. Fearing social unrest, the Mubarak regime
delayed the recommended privatization measures for years before
moving with relative vigor to sell off state-owned enterprises
in 1993. Despite several bitter wildcat strikes and indications
that privatization was contributing to a greatly widened gap between
rich and poor, that state passed over 100 factories into private
hands between 1993 and 1999. In May of 1999, the International
Monetary Fund declared itself satisfied that Egypt was finally
heeding its advice. But the selloffs stalled as the economy stagnated.
The sale of the Qalyub Spinning Company is part of a renewed wave
of privatization. Textiles, one of the largest and perhaps the
most storied of Egyptian industries, have been targeted because
the sector has been in crisis since the 1970s due to competition
from east and southeast Asia.
The first
step in preparing firms for privatization is reduction of the
labor force. The six ESCO mills employed some 24,000 workers in
1980; they have been reduced to 3,500 by a combination of attrition,
a hiring freeze since 1987 and five waves of early retirement
packages, the last in 2000. At ESCO’s Bahtim facility, the administrative
offices, garage and spinning mill were all sold to a private investor
without any obligation on his part to employ the workers who previously
worked there. The striking ESCO workers believe that the long
years they have worked in the mill -- many have 20 to 30 years
seniority -- entitle them to continue working there rather than
being replaced by new workers who will undoubtedly receive lower
wages and benefits. Basic monthly wages now range from 250 Egyptian
pounds ($43) to 600 pounds ($103) a month -- below the poverty
line at the lower end of the scale.
The Qalyub
Spinning Company workers believe the state is divesting itself
of valuable assets without due process -- and at bargain-basement
prices. Gamal Shaaban, a skilled worker with 23 years seniority,
asked, “With what right was the sale [of this mill] conducted?”
The workers own 10 percent of the firm, but they were not consulted
about the sale. “Muhsin Abd al-Wahhab al-Gilani [the CEO of the
public-sector holding company that owns the mill] agreed to the
sale. Was the company his property or the property of the people?”
Muhammad
Gabr Abdallah, a night supervisor with 28 years seniority at ESCO
and a spokesperson for the workers, led a tour of the mill and
explained that in 1999 the company was valued at 60 million pounds.
In 2003 the government invested 7 million pounds in capital improvements,
including computerized spindles. It then concluded a three-year
lease agreement for 2.5 million pounds a year with a businessman
named Hashim al-Daghri, expecting that he would buy the mill.
Before the lease expired, the mill was sold to al-Daghri at the
steeply discounted price of 4 million pounds.
The ESCO
workers are highly conscious that their strike questions the fundamental
direction of Egypt’s economic strategy. Not only are Gamal Mubarak
and his entourage of US-educated economists and business tycoons
intent on introducing more free-market policies, but in December
Egypt also concluded a trade agreement with the US creating seven
Qualifying Industrial Zones where foreign and domestic factory
owners will be free to pay structurally lower wages. Rashid Muhammad
Rashid, the new minister of industry who is associated with the
younger Mubarak, attempted to parry nationalist criticisms of
the agreement by claiming that the zones would revitalize the
struggling textile sector. Indeed, the Qalyub facility is not
the only mill on the auction block. Gilani announced on February
25 that the Delta Spinning and Weaving Company is up for sale.
“ASK THE
GOVERNMENT”
Because of
the political importance of the Qalyub strike, activists from
the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services in Helwan have
supported the workers. Journalists from al-Ahali, the weekly
of the legal left National Progressive Union Party, and the open-minded
English-language al-Ahram Weekly have written sympathetic
accounts. The new English-language weekly, Cairo, published
an equivocating report that nonetheless contained more information
than is commonly available in Arabic.
In contrast,
Ibrahim Nafie, chief editor of al-Ahram, made it known
that he was not enthusiastic about covering the strike in the
quasi-official, Arabic-language daily. The workers have received
no support from the state-sponsored Federation of Spinning and
Weaving Unions. Federation spokesman Ali Muhammad Mansour agrees,
however, that ESCO cannot pay the workers an adequate retirement
package. Early retirement packages have been an integral but controversial
component of Egypt’s privatization schemes. The downsized workers
first receive a lump sum, which the state encourages them to invest
in a small business, and then a monthly stipend that is often
much less than the pension they would have received had their
factory remained state-owned. Workers have long complained that
the stipends are too low to meet the rising costs of living. In
the severe downturn that has afflicted Egypt’s economy since 1999,
the limited appeal of the lump sum payment has also diminished.
The ESCO trade union representative resigned because he did not
want to bear any responsibility for the packages on offer to the
Qalyub Spinning Company employees.
ESCO’s management
is equally aware of the import of the strike. Sitting at his desk
below a poster of the shrine of the Kaaba in Mecca, the manager
of the mill, Sayyid Abd al-Fattah, an ostentatiously pious Muslim
with a large prayer scar on his forehead, evaded direct answers
to questions put to him by a group of journalists. He complained
that the workers were “pressuring” him and the private investors
to accede to their demands. To buttress his claim that the current
strike and the one in October 2004, for which three days’ wages
were deducted from workers’ pay checks, were illegal, he pulled
the text of the New Labor Law (Number 12 of 2003) out of his desk
drawer and quoted the appropriate sections. It is almost impossible
to conduct a legal strike in Egypt, as this requires the approval
of the government-controlled trade union federation.
The striking
workers have proposed three options to the ESCO management and
the government. They want their mill to remain in the public sector.
If that is impossible (as is likely since the contract of sale
has already been signed), they want the workers to be permitted
to transfer to other mills of the Egyptian Holding Company for
Spinning and Weaving, which manages all textiles firms in the
public sector. If they cannot be transferred, they want to receive
“reasonable” early retirement packages. The third option is the
sticking point, because while 10 percent of workers’ monthly wages
are deducted for retirement benefits, the company has not paid
its matching 20 percent share into the retirement fund since 1992.
Consequently, the retirement fund is not able to pay out an adequate
retirement package. Abd al-Fattah was asked if the company’s failure
to prime the fund was not as illegal as he asserts the strike
to be. He responded, “Ask the government.”
POLITICAL
ISLAMISTS
The 287 workers
at the Egyptian-Spanish Asbestos Products Company (Ora Misr) in
Tenth of Ramadan City, one of six satellite communities built
by the state to ease population pressure in greater Cairo, have
been on strike since November 20, 2004. The owner of the factory,
Ahmad Abd al-Azim Luqma, is known as a member of the Muslim Brothers
-- an illegal but semi-tolerated Islamist party widely considered
the largest and most organized opposition force in Egypt. The
workers assert that he arbitrarily fired 52 workers after the
Ministry of Labor Power closed the factory because of health code
violations. Luqma has also refused to pay the workers’ wages since
September. They claim he intends to sell the plant’s stock of
raw materials and to evade paying the fine the government has
imposed on him and the compensation due workers for health damages.
The Muslim
Brothers have a long history of breaking strikes and opposing
militant trade union activity going back to the 1940s, when they
clashed with communists in the textile center of Shubra al-Khayma,
north of Cairo. The Brothers continued to oppose the left during
the 1980s and 1990s. But in this period the Brothers-Labor Party
alliance adopted a more pro-labor stance, though this did not
necessarily lead to pro-labor practices. Since the 2001 death
of Adil Husayn, a former communist who became an Islamist and
a leader of the Labor Party, the Brothers have returned to their
traditionally pro-business stance.
At Ora Misr,
the workers’ factory-level trade union committee is supporting
their strike, although their trade union federation is not. The
government, although it is no friend of the factory owner, has
not acted decisively to break the impasse.
Some suspect
that the government is highly strategic about when it chooses
to confront the Muslim Brothers. The regime knows the extent of
the Brothers’ popular support, and, for that reason, its leaders
are periodically arrested. But an all-out assault on the Brothers
carries many political risks in an already unstable political
situation.
Muhammad
Mahdi Akif, who assumed the mantle of general guide of the Society
of Muslim Brothers just over a year ago, has announced that the
Brothers will support a fifth term for Husni Mubarak on the grounds
that the Qur’an says that Muslims should obey their leader. This
is a political maneuver designed to persuade the government to
legalize the society -- a long-sought goal. Liberal-minded leaders
of the Muslim Brothers -- those now in their fifties who joined
during the Islamic upsurge of the 1970s -- objected vociferously
and publicly to Akif’s statement. The organization is deeply split,
and it is unclear if it can maintain its historically tight discipline.
A different
face of Islamism was evident at the February 22 press conference
called by Human Rights Watch to publicize its report on the mass
arrests and torture of at least 800 residents of the northern
Sinai town of al-Arish following the Taba terrorist bombings.
Eight women from al-Arish -- wives, mothers and sisters of those
incarcerated -- attended the event. They call themselves salafis
-- a reference to the era of the Prophet Muhammad and the first
four caliphs. Salafis believe that Islamic faith and legal practice
should be derived solely from the example of this first period
in Islamic history. One woman, speaking in a polished Cairene
accent, announced her name and related the tales of several of
her imprisoned male relatives. She said that her brother, who
has been in jail for 18 years, urged her to speak out strongly
against the regime. Otherwise her husband, who was arrested without
a warrant or a judicial order after the Taba bombings, and is
being held without charge, would remain in jail for 18 years as
well. She then sharply and directly attacked Husni Mubarak using
language rarely heard in public.
According
to Human Rights Watch, Egyptian authorities are holding as many
as 2,400 people without charge following the sweep in the coastal
town, despite having identified only nine people as having a hand
in the Taba attacks. On March 4, some 50 women in al-Arish demonstrated
against the continuing detention of their male relatives and shouted
anti-government slogans. Police intervened and closed off the
area.
AMERICAN-STYLE
OPPOSITION
Members of
the Ghad Party, which embraces pro-US, pro-free market policies,
have shouted slogans and hung banners out the windows of their
headquarters in Talaat Harb Square, a major Cairo intersection,
on numerous occasions since their leader was arrested on January
29. Nur, a wealthy, aristocratic lawyer, was arrested on the rather
ridiculous charge that he forged signatures on the petition to
found the party. Some believe Nur was jailed because he published
a draft of a new constitution with far more substantial changes
than Mubarak and his acolytes are now discussing.
The Ghad
Party proposed abolition of the emergency laws in force since
1981, limits on the nearly dictatorial powers of the president,
and a limit on the number of presidential terms in office. These
demands echo those of other parties and influential individuals.
In other words, in contrast to the largely formalistic “national
political dialogue” that convened at the end of January, Nur and
the Ghad Party put some of the substantive political issues facing
Egypt on the public agenda. Although still incarcerated, Nur has
announced he will run for the presidency. He is the most credible
candidate who can be put forward by the legal parties. One of
the apparent devils in the details of Mubarak’s “bombshell” is
that parties the regime does not recognize -- like the Muslim
Brothers -- will not be allowed to field a candidate.
There is
little doubt that Husni Mubarak will win even a relatively free
election, assuming that he runs, because the political, media
and educational infrastructure for a viable democratic political
system does not exist and cannot be installed by September. A
similar scenario would likely apply if the father contrived magnanimously
to withdraw his name from the race in favor of the son. Consequently,
the future of Egyptian politics will not be determined by the
amendment of the constitution.
Rather, it
will depend on whether these popular political initiatives are
capable of building a social movement for change. While such a
movement has not yet coalesced, challenges to the regime by human
rights activists, workers and other marginalized strata show no
sign of abating and are becoming increasingly sharp. Ahmad Sayf
al-Islam, the director of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, assisted
Human Rights Watch in its investigation of the al-Arish detentions.
At the HRW press conference he accused the government of breaking
into his home and stealing his laptop computer for a second time
two days earlier. Sayf al-Islam’s exceptionally bold public statement
addressed itself to “tyrants, pharaohs of Egypt” and concluded,
“the fish starts rotting from the head. Don’t you smell the rot
of our fish?”
