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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 2 - 8 November 2000 Issue No. 506 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 2 - 8 November 2000 Issue No. 506
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region Interview International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters When the public is transported
By Nigel Ryan
There is a tendency -- most noticeable in economic circles -- to insist on underlying similarities between Egypt and Turkey. Economic fundamentals, the argument runs, are, if not interchangeable, at least sufficiently similar to allow investment decisions in Egypt to use results in Turkey as convincing evidence of the likely fall out of similar decisions in the local market. It was a line that began to be towed by practically everyone during the initial opening up of the telecommunications sector, as those seeking mobile franchises pored over the Turkish experience before finalising their positions. And since that time it has become almost a mantra among certain sections of the investment banking community: repetition, in the right tone, and sufficiently relentless, can make dogma of the most spurious bits of nonsense.
One should not be surprised at the recalcitrant obtuseness of the investment institution economist -- be they from the World Bank, the IMF or the regional head-quarters of Chase Manhattan: tendentious, temperamentally disinclined to call a spade anything other than a unit capital investment in the agricultural sector (or, for that matter, view individual livelihoods as anything other than unitary labour costs), they are among the elect few who have managed to retain a comfortably cosseted position behind the fortress-thick walls of their particular ivory towers. Sitting comfortably, they wield an immense amount of power, and remain thoroughly insulated from the impact of their decisions on anything more than the balance sheet. They need never sally forth, need never examine the evidence on the ground. And the fact that every few decades or so economic systems come a cropper, and have done throughout modern history, registers not even a blip on computer screens.
It should be relatively easy, in macro-economic terms, to puncture the Turkish/Egyptian comparison: the indicators -- not least the figures for per capita GDP, three times higher in Turkey -- are, after all, well-known. There are, though, more convincing non-parity arguments to be made or, more precisely, seen, though these would require a short, though non-blinkered, stroll through the streets of Istanbul, which is only an hour and a half's flight from Cairo.
Forget, for a moment -- it is hard, I concede -- that for a millennium Istanbul was the centre of the world, an imperial capital that has retained many of the accretions of that past. Forget the monumental mosques and the vast churches. Forget the palaces, now museums, and open to the public, rather than having been annexed by the government and its officers and clearly off-limits. Forget the parks, again public, and used. Forget all the architectural manifestations of empire, of wealth and power, even though they greet you around almost every corner. That they are monuments deeply embedded in the urban landscape does not make them any less monuments from the past. Forget too that the last decade has seen a massive programme of restoration, locally contracted, locally funded, efficiently executed. Forget, even, that the city is clean, which with the best will in the world one cannot say about Cairo.
Look instead at the cars surrounding you in one of the inevitable traffic jams. It takes a moment to work out what is going on, to make sense of your apprehension of difference. And then it hits you -- every single car is being driven by its owner. This is not a chauffeur driven city.
Even more telling are the queues at bus stops, and the crowds rushing across the road towards the ferry stops that dot both shores of the Bosphorus. Smartly dressed, middle-class commuters, mumbling into mobile phones telling whoever is at home to put on the potatoes, they'll be back in an hour. Which is hardly a scene that is repeated in Cairo, where the middle classes, by and large, would rather keel over dead than clamber on board a bus and share a seat with their poorer compatriots.
Compare as well the downtown areas. Here it is possible to argue that there is a degree of stylistic overlap, as well as a similar, commercial residential mix. The continuing degeneration of the built environment of Cairo's downtown has been the subject of several articles in this newspaper, and there is no sign that the process is slowing, let alone that any reversal is in sight. Indeed, given the sluggishness of attempts just to consolidate the appalling conditions afflicting the far more venerable, and vulnerable, monuments of Islamic Cairo, any hopes that the downtown area be restored are thin indeed. Engineering any reversal in the fortunes of Cairo's downtown has become a question of engineering a return of the middle classes. Yet the development of modern Cairo has, for a century and a half, involved the exodus of the middle classes from the centre, and it is a trend that shows no sign of slowing despite the reassuring failure of those awful gated communities that have sprung up along the Desert Road to Alexandria and its environs.
So the next time an economist near you drags out the hackneyed comparison, suggest he or she takes that hour and a half flight. It only takes a day to see the lie at the heart of the argument.
Not until I see Cairo's middle classes queuing at bus stops, ready to board buses like anyone else -- though admittedly buses rather better maintained than is the case at the moment -- will I be able to see the logic of the economic comparisons. And I am certainly not going to hold my breath until that particular bit of social engineering comes to pass.
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