After Tahrir Square the writer wonders if Egypt could be playing out like the Philippines. Just like People Power – when he was stranded in Singapore – he likewise missed 9/11. He was then traveling from Alexandria to Cairo with a French colleague, who was driving . . . Then his cell phone rang . . . and in no time brought the car a halt: “You may want to call home, my wife’s on the phone, there’s something going in New York, she saw it on CNN. And it was déjà vu: stranded briefly in Cairo then shuttled to Paris, until New York quieted down for flights to resume. [The world remains volatile – the Arab world is in flux. Will the capture and death of Bin Laden raise or diminish the threat of terrorism? And closer to home, they talk of a possible unrest in Thailand?]
Egypt finds itself “united (WSJ, Apr 21st) in this bewildering period . . . by the conviction that ousted President Hosni Mubarak, sons Gamal and Alaa, and their friends fleeced the country. Thousands have come back to Cairo's Tahrir Square in recent weeks to demand justice . . . [and thus] put the three Mubaraks in 15-day custody for questioning. Steel oligarch Ahmed Ezz and other confidants were already in jail. Corruption indictments came down Sunday against former Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif and his finance minister, Youssef Boutros-Ghali. All these men claimed to champion economic reform. So, not surprisingly, people are now hostile to it . . . Any new elected government will likely be pushed to provide jobless benefits and boost fuel, food and other subsidies—what passes for welfare in a developing country. With privatization off the table probably for years, there's talk of building up "national champions," large, usually state-owned companies that demand monopolies, tariff protections and other perks . . .”
It’s a pity – adding insult to injury? Economic reform is the common denominator among the Asian tigers and new economic powers, China and India. Even East Germans who are still a long ways away from reaping the fruits of reform and unification remain committed. But the leadership and the cronies appropriated the spoils of economic reform unto themselves – making people hostile to the ‘goose that lays the golden egg’?
“Crony capitalists deserve to be rebuked, yet the backlash carries a price. It keeps investors and capital away. And it poisons the political atmosphere, pushing off already overdue changes necessary to meet the great expectations of better jobs and wages. What's too often overlooked is that the foundations of capitalism are those of democracy as well: rule of law and an independent judiciary, a private sector able to thrive free of state favor or caprice, competition and open borders for goods, people and capital . . . To the public at large, Gamal Mubarak symbolizes obscene wealth for the elites, while roughly half of Egypt lives on less than $2 a day and can't read or write. "Egypt did very well—just for 100 people," says protest organizer Abdullah Helmy. As Russia showed in the 1990s, privatization without proper domestic competition and rule of law enriches insiders, enrages the rest, and yields limited economic benefits . . . There's a democratic imperative to market reform. The military, secular elites, the Islamists and now Peron-style populists are no friends of political pluralism. Growing economic opportunities and middle classes can help guard against reversal. South Africa and Turkey are good examples of imperfect democracies bucked up by strong, competitive economies. As scholar Valerie Bunce noted in the context of post-communist Eastern Europe, liberalization helps to "disentangle political power from economic resources and thereby constrain the state, empower society and create competitive political and economic hierarchies." [ibid]
What’s the curse of Marcos-style crony capitalism? Did it cut us by the knees – the political will to push reform for a better life for the Filipinos has been upended? We’ve accepted and internalized a very narrow economy as destiny, reduced to moving a few pieces on the board? It does not take a genius to see how slippery that slope is – and why our downward spiral is confirmed by one international-rankings index after another? Thank God for the ‘resiliency’ that we have to develop – or the pain and the loss of human dignity for millions of hungry Filipinos would be hard to bear?
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