- There really is a magic bullet that can make sure Egypt's
revolution triumphs, discovers Eric Walberg
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- The Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt's Debts was launched
at the Journalists' Union 31 October, with a colourful panel of speakers,
including Al-Ahram Centre for Political & Strategic Studies Editor-in-Chief
Ahmed Al-Naggar, Independent Trade Union head Kamal Abbas, legendary anti-corruption
crusader Khaled Ali, and the head of the Tunisia twin campaign Dr Fathi
Shamati.
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- Moderator Wael Gamal, a financial journalist, described
how he and a core of revolutionaries after 25 January started the campaign
with a facebook page DropEgyptsDebt. The IMF offer of a multi-billion dollar
loan in June was like a red flag in front of a bull for Gamal, and their
campaign really got underway after that, culminating in the formal launch
this week, just as election fever is rising.
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- "Just servicing Egypt's debt costs close to $3 billion
a year, more than all the food subsidies that the IMF harps about, more
than our health expenditures," Gamal said angrily. "We are burdened
with a $35 billion debt to foreign banks, mostly borrowed under the Hosni
Mubarak regime, none of it to help the people."
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- Ali explained the basis of the campaign, which does not
call for wholesale cancellation of the debt, but for a line-by-line review
of the loan terms and useage to determine: whether the loan was made with
the consent of the people of Egypt, whether it serves the interests of
the people, and to what extent it was wasted through corruption. He explained
that the foreign lending institutions knew full well that Mubarak was a
dictator conducting phoney elections and thus not reflecting the will of
the people when they showered him with money, and they should face the
consequences -- not the Egyptian people.
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- These are the internationally accepted conditions behind
the legitimate practice of repudiating "odious debt", which were
used by the US (though mutedly) in 2003 to tear up Iraq's debt, and by
Ecuador in 2009. "Ecuador had an uprising much like our revolution
and after the next election the president formed an audit committee and
managed to cancel two-thirds of the $13 billion debt," noted Gamal,
leaving the conferencees to ponder what a truly revolutionary government
in Egypt could do for the health sector and for employment.
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- Al-Naggar told how the loans propped up the economy as
it was being gutted under an IMF-supervised privatisation programme from
1990 on, allowing foreign companies and Mubarak cronies to pocket hundreds
of millions of dollars and spirit them abroad. Meanwhile, what investment
that trickled down from the loans went to financing prestige infrastructure
projects like the Cairo airport expansion, which was riddled with corruption
and serves only the Egyptian elite. Virtually all the loans from this period
should be considered liable for writing off.
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- No government officials deigned -- or dared -- to come
to the conference. On the contrary, Egypt's Finance Minister Hazem Al-Biblawi
told Al-Sharouk that it defames Egypt in the world's eyes, saying, "like
the proverb 'It looks like a blessing on the outside, but is hell on the
inside'."
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- Both Gamal and Al-Naggar criticised Biblawi for distorting
their intent, which is not to portray Egypt as bankrupt, like Greece, but
to shift the burden of the bad loans to the guilty parties -- the lenders,
and thereby to help the revolution. "It is the counter-revolution
that is discrediting Egypt. And they are the old regime that got the loans
and misused them, and are now trying to discredit the revolution. The international
community should willingly write off the odious loans if it wants the revolution
to succeed," exhorted Al-Naggar.
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- The enthusiasm and sense of purpose at the conference
was infectious. Indeed, this campaign is arguably the key to whether or
not the revolution succeeds. But it requires a political backbone that
only an elected government can hope to muster. The fawning of Al-Bablawi
-- this week he hosted another IMF mission -- looks like the performance
of someone from the Mubarak era, not someone delegated to protect the revolution.
He welcomed the delegation and "the possibility of their offering
aid to Egypt".
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- Al-Naggar pointed out that the purpose of the IMF is
not to aid the Egyptian people, but to tie the government to international
dictate. Rating agencies are part of this, downgrading Egypt's credit rating
after the revolution. Why? Because Egypt is less democratic? Or because
it will be harder to ply Egypt with more loans to benefit Western corporations,
and to keep the Egyptian government in line with the Western political
agenda. "Silence is golden," Al-Naggar advised Biblawi, meaning,
"If you don't have something good to say, don't say anything."
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- Shamati brought Tunisian warmth to the meeting, though
he further incensed listeners as he explained how the Western debt scheming
is directly the result of 19th c colonialism. He told how France colonised
Tunisia, stole the best agricultural land, and then how the quasi-independent
government in 1956 had to take out French loans to buy back the land that
the French had stolen, thereby indenturing Tunisia yet again, in a new
neocolonial guise. The foreign debt really exploded with Zine Al-Abidine
Ben Ali's kleptocracy, just as did Egypt's under Mubarak. Shamati eloquently
expressed how "debts are not for our development, but to make us poor.
To create a dictatorship of debts."
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- Tunisia's first democratic elections brought the Congress
for the Republic, which supports the debt revision campaign, 30 seats.
So far in Egypt, according to organiser Salmaa Hussein, Tagammu, the Nasserists
and Karama support their efforts, along with presidential hopefuls Hamdeen
Sabhi and Abdul Monem Abul Fotouh.
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- There is an international campaign dating from the 1990s,
the 2000 Jubilee debt relief movement, and the Cairo conference heard a
report from London about efforts on behalf of many third world countries
-- now including Egypt and Tunisia -- by public-spirited Brits. The Arab
Spring success stories now have a determined and politically savvy core
of activists who know what the score is and will be pushing their respectively
revolutionary governments to repudiate the debts from the corrupt regimes
they overthrew at the cost of hundreds of lives. As the fiery Independent
Trade Union head Abbas cried, adding an apt phrase to Egypt's revolutionary
slogan: "Topple the regime, topple their debts!"
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- Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/
You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com/ His Postmodern Imperialism:
Geopolitics and the Great Games is available at http://claritypress.com/Walberg.html
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