A Root Canal of Egypt’s Revolt

Here is one of the best outlines of the Egyptian revolts and the seeds of the regional unrest.

It is still the land of the Pharaohs that subjugated its people. Unfortunately the people have chosen a change to a different form of subjugation.

Roots of Egypt’s Revolt | The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty

by Nouh El Harmouzi Posted February 21, 2011

Egypt has been a pressure cooker for decades. Like others in the region, the Mubarak regime was been sitting atop a simmering political crisis, simultaneously attempting to contain rising Islamist violence and snuffing out pockets of political resistance. The country has been under a continuous state of emergency since the assassination of Mubarak’s predecessor, Anwar Sadat in 1981. That state of emergency has been the foundation of a policy of “stability through continuity,” which in fact has meant the monarchical exercise and transmission of power by a president backed by a military junta and with the support of the barons and apparatchiks of the hegemonic National Democratic Party. It’s now all crashed down, and Mubarak is gone. How did such a “stable” regime become destabilized so fast?

One reason Egypt’s political development was frozen for so long is the lasting influence of Gamal Abdel Nasser (president 1956 – 1970), who allied the country with the Soviet Union and imposed a policy of economic nationalism and statism, and created huge loss-producing state enterprises and a bloated bureaucracy. Other reasons are Egypt’s geography, geology, economy, history, and geopolitical position, each of which has stifled the generation of an open political and economic system and strengthened the country’s static and authoritarian political system by providing revenue directly to the rulers, without requiring the consent of a productive population. Since the rulers don’t rely mainly on taxes, they have little reason to promote good governance or to be accountable to the people. ...

Excerpts...Sources of Revenue

the outine includes: Geography, Geology, Economy, History, Geopolitics

...A “rent-seeking” political system that cemented its hold on society put Egypt in a perpetual pre-revolutionary situation and created a powerful, but quite brittle, security situation.

Plutocratic Land of the Pharaohs

In short, the Land of the Pharaohs is a dual society, with a thin layer of powerful and wealthy people whose wealth has largely derived from rents from the state, ruling over a mass of impoverished people. The poorly managed “privatizations,” undertaken in a climate of pervasive corruption and hostile business climate have done little to address the country’s intolerable inequalities. Moreover, the country faces a total public debt that is above the 100 percent of GDP and public finances are taking a nose dive, resulting in delays in payment of wages to public servants, traditionally a strong base of support for such rent-seeking states. The pressure has been building for years, and the example of Tunisia accelerated the process, resulting in an explosion of anger and rage....

...The roots of the revolt have been growing for years. It will take some time before we see what will grow from those roots: a pluralistic democracy, a renewed and even more tyrannical military state, or an intolerant Islamist tyranny.