Two years ago, on the 5th of February 2011, we wrote the following in these pages:
Well, dear readers, we might disappoint you once again, but we owe to tell you the truth: people do not go to the streets because they love liberty.
In fact, why yesterday and not three or ten years ago when the situation was so unbearable?
We are not telling you that these regimes were examples in political decency; we are not saying that these regimes did not have secret police organizations that tortured the people routed by the Americans who did not want to do that job by themselves; No, not at all, the point is to avoid falling into the trap of believing all what our parlour intellectuals are telling us that this is only a matter of political regime.
No, the nature of the political regime is not the cause of the current mass uprisings, is not the first factor that triggered the unrest, even if it was underlying for a long time. This is only one factor among other ones, but certainly not the first one or the major.
So, the main reason of all this massive unrest is not freedom or the politicalregime, but something much more basic, which is, yes, sadly, much less poetic, much less ideologically correct, and even somewhat dull - with all due respect to our lounge revolutionaries - it is nonetheless a vital issue, in every sense of theword, which lit the fuse.
In fact, it is money.
Yes, dear readers, we know, that this is unfortunate, and awfully materialistic for the selfless pure minds of our bourgeois bohemians of Paris or New York, but, nevertheless that’s how the situation is.
Most of the Egyptians live on 2 dollars a day, crammed in the shanty towns of themajor cities; 20% of this population is workless and 20% of them only have part-time jobs that hardly help them to survive. We can easily imagine the catastrophic consequences for all of these people when the cost of living rises, even a little bit.
To be specific, we want to speak here of the consequences of inflation in food and energy prices with a $ 2 day budget.
Because, it is the inflation that actually sent the Egyptians or the Tunisians to the streets, without speaking of those in other countries who will follow.
Of course, this is less “glamour” than liberty, democracy and more, above all when those beautiful concepts have been created through the golden glasses of the Faubourg Saint Germain in Paris or New York Village…
That’s it (the article continues here).
Today, two years later, we are still at the same point. Even worse. Worse as the situation has deteriorated for two years because of the political unrest and - it has to be said - the incompetence of the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi.
That said, to disclaim his responsibility, Morsi could not do much to improve acatastrophic economy, in addition to a political situation beyond control and fragile.
In fact, the political instability has just made the economic disaster worse.
Now, Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood must respond to the anger of the 14 million Egyptians who ran to the streets yesterday calling for resignation and new elections.
But the Army has issued an ultimatum to the politicians for an agreement restoring calm within 48 hours, threatening to intervene and avoid that the situation becomes out of control.
The situation is already out of control.
“If the demands of the people are not realized within the defined period, it will be incumbent upon (the armed forces) to announce a road map for the future,” said the statement by General Adbel Fattah al-Sisi the Commander-In-Chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces.
The Muslim Brotherhood has unanimously rejected this ultimatum...
There are four opposing forces:
- The Army
- The Muslim Brotherhood
- The bourgeois and the divided urban opposition who want “demokracy”
- The hungry population in shanty towns, suburbs and the countryside who hate the Muslim Brotherhood and the bourgeois urban demokrats of the cities.
The time is running out dangerously to this outcome, Egypt may now fall into chaos and / or civil war, because there is no viable solution to the economic crisis.
Moreover, as we have already observed two years ago, the Salafists are gettingprepared behind the scene of the Muslim Brotherhood who have been discredited on their one-year administration tenure when the situation could only become worse.
It should also be noted that circumstances are not helping much, the fall of Gaddafi, which was intelligently claimed and acclaimed by our brilliant intellectuals and politicians, has freed an uncontrolled flow of arms to both the Salafists in Egypt and the Islamists (Al Qaeda) who are more or less controlling the no man’s land in the Sinai desert. For all the reasons in the world, this situation is indeed worrying for the Israelis.
So, all the conditions are met for an explosion in Egypt. Should this occur, you can bet that the repercussions will extend far beyond the borders.
First, Israel will be the victim, but also our demokrat allies in the Gulf who havebeen generously financing the Salafists for decades, in the hope to remove that threatfrom their soils. A serious mistake for which they, with us as well, might pay a heavy price. By now, we may only watch and get worried for the evolution of the situation in Egypt without being able to do anything but pray that the whole Middle-East does not go off on Egypt. It would be astonishing that such outcome would not happen.
But for now, everybody is happy in Pig on Earth, the Brave New World.
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