“Panicked” does not even begin to describe the feelings of many of Egypt’s more liberal and secular citizens. The results of the first and second rounds of the nation’s first apparently free parliamentary elections have been nothing but cause for serious existential introspection for the country’s entire liberal movement. In fact, many outside of Egypt share the same disheartened emotion, whether in the public sphere or governmental circles. To be sure, almost everyone expected an outright Islamist victory and majority in parliament, but few expected such staggering scores, with the Islamists set to easily dominate eventually at least sixty-five to seventy percent of parliament. The one side of the debate that grabbed most of the headlines and airtime centered on why Islamists were doing so well. But the question of why the liberals haven’t done as well is equally important.

First, and perhaps foremost, there’s the question of defining what the ideologies themselves mean to the people. The words “liberalism” and “secularism” themselves have been under heavy assault for decades in Egypt, and much of the Arab world, most particularly so since the end of the January revolution, framed as the antithesis of everything that a tradition-respecting Egyptian should call for. And both liberals and seculars have failed to project an alternative and proper public image and understanding, or create a uniform, clear, realistic and attractive message that could rationally appeal to a wide base of predominantly conservative citizens and voters. In fact, they often appeared to the public just as the opposition to conservative political forces, rather than entities with their own clear and unique project. This failure was both the result of the apparent lack of presence of such a consensual, consistent, coherent and presentable mainstream ideological construct from the start, as well as the difficulty of defining in clear terms the proposed delicate legal and de facto relationships between liberty and tradition in a society like Egypt.

And things were only further complicated following the formation of the nation’s electoral alliances. While at first there were two major coalitions, with one of them (the Democratic Alliance) led by the Muslim Brotherhood yet still inclusive of household liberal names such as Al-Wafd Party (whose head later stated that Al-Wafd was neither a “liberal” nor an “religious” party, but a centrist one, in an effort to appeal to the mainstream), and another more outright liberal bloc lead by the Free Egyptians Party (FEP), by the time the elections actually began to take place the Democratic Aliance had lost many of its mainstream parties, including Al-Wafd, and became more essentially a Brotherhood-based coalition. And with both blocs offering somewhat identical and very broad platforms and economic programmes, including the later-arriving Salafist third bloc, the debate further shifted to reinforce the perception that people were voting over the “identity” of Egypt, rather than a range of public policies, with one bloc appearing to represent the negatively-perceived ethea of secularism and iberalism, and the two others appearing to better represent local traditional values.

Moreover, a look at the Egyptian Bloc’s composing triumvirate of parties reveals the centre-right FEP, the centre-to-centre-left Egyptian Social Democratic Party, and the leftist Tagammu Party, further reinforcing the perception that the only thing that would unite such genetically different entities would be their unity over the preferred “identity” and socio-political ideology for the nation. There is also a degree of agreement that vocal coptic support of the Egyptian Bloc, and the inextricable association with controversial coptic telecom tycoon Naguib Sawiris as one of the main muscles behind the bloc, both didn’t help allaying the vocal suspicions of many conservative Egyptians over the vision of the bloc and relevant liberal forces for Egypt.

The question of identity also gained greater focus as attention to other, perhaps more pressing, questions was mute. There was little, if any, detailed and limelight-grabbing talk, debate or policy proposals on primarily technocratic issues such as healthcare, agriculture, transport, economic stimulation, or legal reform. Such debates would have helped further healthily engage the voter, widen the room for party differentiation and positioning, and create more a sophisticated campaigning and political environment based on real policy issues. But that was not the case.

Liberal parties have also fallen victim to another growing unflattering association, this time between “liberalism” as an ideology, particularly on the economic side, and the fallen Mubarak regime. The crony capitalist practices, corruption and the perceived rising socio-economic inequality between Egypt’s richer and poorer populations have been connected with both economic liberalism per se as an ideology, and also with Mubarak’s regime. And liberal figures and parties have not appeared to the exhausted public eye to significantly deviate in their economic plans from the basic premises of macroeconomic policy as implemented by the Nazif government of the former regime in the last several years, whether rhetorically or in terms of policy, though still promising to act firmly against corruption and ensure that they will (somehow) attend to the vague-yet-popular principle of “social justice”. This is an ironic deal breaker, given that almost all the major contending parties, including conservatives, have economic platforms that are essentially similar.

The liberals, other than being mostly newly-founded parties or predominantly based in larger cities, suffer as well from either a very recent and weak presence in Egypt’s various governorates and rural areas, as well as having a relatively smaller base of vociferously passionate volunteers. Conversely, the Brotherhood has had an organisational ground network that has been developed steadily over 80 years, including an army of loyal, rigidly-managed and active membership, and that network has been actively providing varying degrees of aid, social assistance and religious education to the members of such communities almost consistently for decades. The Salafists as well have been very active on the ground on both the social and religious levels, and command strong influence and loyalty over their followers through their dedicated media outlets, and were rather more ignored by the former regime than the Brotherhood due to the Salafists’ former doctrinal shunning of political involvement before the revolution. Thus, while liberal groupings will certainly aim to be present in various capacities in such areas in the coming period, the Brotherhood and other Islamists will have two advantages: they were present first and for much longer, and they were present and active long before elections were ever an issue.

It is true that the Egyptian Bloc and other more liberal or “civil” forces (as they are referred to in Egypt) are certainly doing a respectable job for entities that have mostly been founded less than six months ago. Nevertheless, they have a long path ahead towards becoming legitimate and competitive heavyweights in Egyptian politics.

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/3871/egypts-liberals-and-the-elections

Press Release by The Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt's Debt

Interim Government Obtains Loans Four Times as Much as Those during Mubarak's Time

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan issue is looming again in the Egyptian horizon, a few months after the rejection of a similar loan. It was claimed that the first loan was rejected because its conditions were unacceptable, however, such conditions were never revealed to the public.

Dr. Fayza Abu el-Naga, Minister of International Cooperation and Planning, who previously rejected the first loan, refered to conducting positive consultations with the IMF, confirming that this time, the loan is “conditionless”. She further stated that negotiations are necessary to get a three billion US dollar loan from the IMF to support Egypt's budget.

Only three months earlier, Dr. Abu el-Naga had stated that Egypt was not in need of any loans to support its budget and its economy was instead in need of new investments to expand and create more jobs. Yet, today, she is talking about getting a loan to cover the budget deficit, although this step would not help efforts to achieve economic recovery, boost growth rates or create new jobs.

Why was the previous IMF's loan rejected at first when Egypt’s credit rating was much better than now and its negotiating position with the IMF was much better? The IMF gives low-interest loans under arrangements that stipulate economic or political conditions. Yet why are we witnessing the conduct of negotiations regarding the same loan, today, when Egypt is in a bad negotiating position, in light of its deteriorating political and economic circumstances? Who is responsible for such confusion and lack of sound vision?

Over the past two decades, the IMF has been involved in drawing up and implementing the main economic and financial policies of Egypt, which led to low living standards, high poverty rates, and a deterioration in public services and human resource development, as recen World Bank and United Nation Development Program reports state. Policies supported by the IMF resulted in the richer getting richer at the expense of the poor, as well as a downsizing in public spending on health services and education once offered to the majority of Egypt's citizens.

Yet, today, the government is negotiating again with the IMF to get a fresh loan under the pretext that the budget deficit reached unacceptable levels. The government ought to have reviewed the budget after the revolution to be able to restructure it, taking into consideration the requirements of social justice and human resource development. Instead it has applied the same old policies as the former Mubarak regime and its Minister of Finance who allocated more than nineteen percent of public spending to subsidize fuel. The majority of this subsidy goes to capitalists and does not benefit the poor. One fifth of the budget also went to service the public debt, while sums allocated for health, education, and social security remained the same.

Rejecting or approving the IMF loan is not the problem. The concern lies in the absence of public participation and lack of transparency in the Egyptian economic scene.

The transitional authority purposely uses the scarcely announced financial data to serve its own interests by either scaring the public about the revolution or alternatively giving a rosy picture of the economy. The absence of transparency, lack of adequate data, and the publication of misleading information manipulated by the government or the ruling authority are all still going on.

Another dilemma points to the fact that the current interim government's economic team belongs entirely to the former regime and its dissolved party. Such a government does not have the legal right to get such huge loans that would lead to further burdens on future generations, without any public authorization or real parliamentary monitoring or any measure of transparency that would allow the public to see for itself the benefits and obligations it would have to fulfill due to such interim governmental decisions. The same applies to the international commitments made by the Egyptian government after Mubarak was toppled. All lack transparency regarding the amount of the loan, its sources or its beneficiaries.

The Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debts has monitored Egyptian foreign debt and has found that it rose from thirty-five billion to thirty-six and a third billion US dollars in the past year, as reported by The Economist. This increase comprises loans obtained during the reign of the interim governments without any public authorization, political legitimacy or full disclosure.

The Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debts stresses the fact that the current IMF loan for Egypt is an odious one as the current government does not represent the Egyptian people for whom it is supposedly negotiating for, despite the fact that even donors realize that the current government is not a legitimate one.

In the event the Egyptian government gets a three billion US dollar loan from the IMF, the sum of loans obtained over the past year would be around four billion, which is four-fold above the average annual loans obtained during the Mubarak's era. This would pose a huge burden on the Egyptian people for years to come and thus would have to be addressed by the elected parliament and government.

In view of the Egyptian experience regarding past loan-related conditions imposed by the IMF, The Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debts insistingly rejects getting any IMF loan and finds it necessary to identify better alternatives to cover Egypt's current budget deficit.

The Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debts hereby calls on the interim government to provide complete data regarding the economic conditions of Egypt, including the precise amount of funds in the country's foreign reserve, the current budget deficit, the economic basis for getting external loans, and all political and economic conditions associated with the current IMF loan.

The Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debts also calls for the involvement of the elected parliament, not the Security Council of Armed Forces, immediately and without any delay, to reviewi the loan agreement in detail and consideri whether to approve it or not. We believe this is the least to be done.

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/4092/interim-government-obtains-four-times-the-loans-ob

Impper posted:
lolberals

Lessons posted:
Al-Nairf

al-Pointe
bin Egad
in Zo'rt

The question of identity also gained greater focus as attention to other, perhaps more pressing, questions was mute. There was little, if any, detailed and limelight-grabbing talk, debate or policy proposals on primarily technocratic issues such as healthcare, agriculture, transport, economic stimulation, or legal reform. Such debates would have helped further healthily engage the voter, widen the room for party differentiation and positioning, and create more a sophisticated campaigning and political environment based on real policy issues. But that was not the case.

This paragraph in particular is important. If the rich powerful West knew how to fix their economic and infrastructure problems and gave the left valid honest information on how to do it then the people would have voted for them even with their association with the West. The West is more interested in nationalism, militarism, and economic security for their own nations rather than fixing the problems of other countries. Libya is going to have a lot of fun realizing this.

Also, during the Cold War the West saw no reason to cultivate the liberal ideas they gave birth to because they were associated with communism. After a worldwide genocidal compaign to exterminate any liberal or leftist idea that wouldn't hold Western interests above all else they then wonder why the secular left is so weak and worthless today.

Just look at this article about a man being arrested for atheism in Indonesia.

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/breaking-news-indonesian-atheist-officially-arrested/492612

An Indonesian atheist who questioned the existence of God on his Facebook page has officially been arrested and is facing the prospect of five years in jail.

http://www.rhizzone.net/forum/topic/730/

If you read my above post about U.S. support for genocide in Indonesia in 1965 you realize the secular left is rotting in mass graves.

What was done over fifty years ago still has an effect today. What is happening in Egypt is a result of what happened decades ago when the West decided to support Mubarak.

As for Saudi influence, it's much more akin to the influence of the Soviet Union in a way. Back then there was a rich powerful nation with an educated populace and an ideology, but since they were a dictatorship their worldview was extremely immature. As a consequence they unintentionally produced groups like the Shining Path and the Khmer Rouge in Peru and Cambodia the same way Saudi Arabia is producing Al Qaeda and similar offshoots in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, etc.

The big difference is the West needs Saudi Arabia to maintain its economy with cheap oil. The largest proportion of terrorists who made up Al Qaeda in Iraq were Saudis but the U.S. never mentioned it as being anything important. Could you imagine during the Vietnam War the U.S. refusing to condemn the Soviet Union for supporting the Vietcong because it was afraid the Soviets could collapse the U.S. economy? That's what it's like today.

A lot of poor nations abused by the West saw communism as their only alternative for true independence. The Salafists are gaining power because they have a powerful nation untouchable by the West backing them up like the Soviet Union. If Saudi Arabia's strict interpretation of Islam threatens the West then the West, by supporting the Saudi dictatorship, is sowing the seeds of its own destruction.

internationalist posted:
As for Saudi influence, it's much more akin to the influence of the Soviet Union in a way. Back then there was a rich powerful nation with an educated populace and an ideology, but since they were a dictatorship their worldview was extremely immature. As a consequence they unintentionally produced groups like the Shining Path and the Khmer Rouge in Peru and Cambodia the same way Saudi Arabia is producing Al Qaeda and similar offshoots in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, etc.

what does this mean

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

Cycloneboy posted:

Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Wow Lessons you really hate the will of the people don't you.

I mean what kind of person is so misanthropic that they can do nothing but pour scorn on the legitimate aspirations of a newly enfranchised populace, I hope i never get that cynical.

you know who else represented the legitimate aspirations of a newly enfranchised populace? that's right...

Castro?

hitler you dumbass.

Cycloneboy posted:

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

Cycloneboy posted:

Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Wow Lessons you really hate the will of the people don't you.

I mean what kind of person is so misanthropic that they can do nothing but pour scorn on the legitimate aspirations of a newly enfranchised populace, I hope i never get that cynical.

you know who else represented the legitimate aspirations of a newly enfranchised populace? that's right...

Castro?

hitler you dumbass.

whoosh.....

getfiscal posted:
full disclosure: my group has a discussion bulletin, which is completely different.

It actually is way different though. Ahem