Valuing diversity

Mohamed El-Sayed Said argues that a radical shift in official and public preconceptions is necessary to escape current stagnation

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Egypt is in the grips of a huge problem. It is one that has readily lent itself to US initiatives for reforming Egypt and the rest of the Islamic world. The problem did not begin a few years ago, with the onset of the economic slump that dimmed the early hopes raised by the success of the 1990-1995 economic reform programme. Nor is it a problem that has arisen over the past couple of decades. Rather, we face the dilemmas that have accrued over two centuries of modern Egyptian history.

Egypt began to modernise well before many other nations, including Japan, yet other nations quickly surpassed us, succeeding in forging ahead in terms of economic and social progress. In comparison it often seems as though Egypt was simply running on the spot, completely unable to tackle the causes and symptoms of underdevelopment and poverty.

Such a pitiful reality demands our fullest attention. Indeed we are compelled to ask ourselves why it is we continue to debate the same political and cultural questions our political and intellectual leaders were attempting to resolve over a century ago.

Then, as today, a hapless citezenry was left prey to a cumbersome government bureaucracy that seemed intent on the humiliation of ordinary people, on alienating them from government, marginalising the possibility of any political involvement and treating them as though they were little more than an unwanted encumbrance.

Popular culture, and a goodly segment of middle class culture, harboured grave misgivings over the value of progress and the need for a resolute transition to modernism, basing its reluctance or resistance to change on ostensibly immutable customs and traditions or on conservative interpretations of religious scripture and law. After improvements in the state of the economy and standards of living following the boom in cotton exports during the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th economic growth rates began to plummet again. At the same time Egypt failed to industrialise or promote technological know-how and innovation. An entire century passed without achieving any restructuring of the nation's economy, or any attempt to tackle the twin plagues of underdevelopment and poverty.

Egypt's manufacturing base, levels of production, labour skills, education and the development of human resources are so low as to place us at the lower end of the development scale among nations categorised in the middle to lower income bracket. Because we have failed to achieve any significant progress in industrialising we suffer from a severe and chronic balance of trade deficit. And while there is no denying that the second half of the 20th century saw significant improvements in a number of indicators -- average life span, better health and higher educational standards, for example -- in relative terms our is at once more complex and, perhaps, more intractable than ever before. The gap between Egypt and other countries, including Malaysia and Southeast Asian states, let alone China, has grown enormously.

This situation is aggravated by a popular culture that appears to have thrown us back to the 19th century, and compounded by the religious fundamentalism that has pervaded the middle class. The combined effect of these has been to generate a climate that inhibits the pursuit of knowledge and creativity.

These economic and social circumstances are not the sole result of political factors but rather of the complex interplay between all aspects of life. The upshot is that only rarely have we summoned the appropriate spirit of sacrifice necessary to secure rapid progress. State and society appear to have converged, if only in their resignation to scrape by from day to day, thereby obviating any genuine opportunity to devote serious thought to the future of our country.

Politically, this situation has been perpetuated by the priority placed by the political elite of successive regimes on perpetuating themselves in power. The consequent focus on security over all other considerations flies in the face of one of the first lessons we should have learned -- that no society can be steered towards progress under the shadow of an overly dominant security apparatus. In every country that achieved rapid progress that progress was spearheaded and given impetus through political movements -- channeled through democratic processes in some of countries, through non-democratic processes in others.

Egypt can no longer afford the iron grip policy embodied in almost 60 years of uninterrupted martial law. Democratic political reform has become an urgent imperative: if such a process is not implemented meaningfully and effectively the morale of the Egyptian people will continue to plummet, further inhibiting the drive and sense of purpose that is essential to any meaningful pursuit of progress.

Nor can progress be achieved by a rigid political and administrative elite that takes refuge in the power of the state without playing their part in contributing to the state through their effective powers to lead society. Our current form of government may have succeeded in ending the spectre of terrorism at home but it is driving more and more people from all classes of society towards religious extremism including -- and this is a relatively recent development -- a growing segment of the upper classes who are now embracing a trend that had been largely restricted to the middle class.

The increasingly conservative trajectory is a reflection of both the stagnation in political life and the failure to secure advances in our economic and social life. Egypt quite clearly faces a situation that demands change, and ambitious change: the country is in urgent need of a vision that looks beyond day to day concerns to focus on the future of our people.

It would, of course, have been better had we come up with such a vision before the launching of US and European initiatives. Then, at least, we might have been spared the humiliation of having others regard our society as though it were a terminal basket case.

Whether or not we agree with their assessment we cannot deny that our problems are obdurate and our performance in handling them has inspired little confidence at home and abroad. We must also own up to having procrastinated so long that we are now in he embarrassing position of having become the subject of others' initiatives and pressures.

Unfortunately we now have only a few years to do what we should have been doing for several decades. The stakes could not be higher: indeed, so much is at risk if we fail to institute radical reform that we can no longer afford even to question the imperative. Rather, discussions must henceforth focus on the approach and means.

Our problems have become so grave that we may well wonder whether reform is an appropriate term to describe the processes needed to tackle such stagnation. Perhaps we should notch up our ambitions, expand our horizons, and think more in terms of national revival. Immediate reforms are, of course, vital: in the longer term, though, nothing short of national revival will allow us to restore to our country control over its fate.

But at this juncture is it possible to even speak of revival as opposed to reform? Some feel that the most we can do at the moment is to attempt to nudge the country out of its longstanding torpor. It is next to impossible, they argue, to even think of revival given developments over the past 25 years, particularly in the cultural realm.

Those who occupy the upper echelons of the state's cultural apparatus may believe strongly in the rhetoric of enlightenment and revival: that belief, however, hardly reflects the propensity towards myth, superstition, resignation and fatalism that currently pervades mass culture, more often than not in a curious pact with religious extremism.

It is difficult to imagine another society where the young are so obsessed with such books as The Torture of the Grave. Nor can there be that many societies in which so many people believe that it is worth taking whatever risks necessary to emigrate and thus escape the hardships and lack of opportunity at home.

Few societies remain in the world in which people feel that apathy is better than the kinds of peaceful action that might constructively alter the quality and conditions of life at home -- particularly the way they are treated by their government and its security apparatus.

The above are only some of the reasons why it is difficult to speak of a new socio-political alliance emerging that might prove capable of implementing a modern, authentic and rational vision for change that promotes innovation, creativity and intellectual freedom and which values the acquisition of knowledge and know-how. Yet this is precisely the kind of alliance we must establish within the context of the reform process.

Democratic processes alone cannot guarantee the emergence of such an alliance. Our only hope resides in giving impetus to a spirit of enlightenment that will enable such an alliance to coalesce and then support sustained and comprehensive economic growth and social development. The function of political reform, in our context, is to unleash the energies necessary towards accomplishing this end. Only through economic development can we open up the horizons to an extent that will encourage the acquisition of new mental habits and inspire the drive and optimism necessary if the broad masses are to be introduced to a truly rationalistic, humanitarian and creative culture.

Successful industrialisation, modern management, higher standards of living, new approaches to education and the dissemination of information are all necessary if we are to show that national and cultural identity is better served by progress than by refuge in the past. We must instill people with confidence in themselves, in their unbounded human capacities and in contemporary values.

But why democracy? Democracy is conducive to freedom and freedom is a prerequisite for individual and collective self-realisation. It would be sheer stupidity for the state to persist in a rigidity that has repeatedly shown itself counterproductive. The wide scale human rights abuses to which this rigidity has given rise is nothing less than scandalous. And if the broader public is not effectively included in the major decision-making processes for reform and revival it will refuse to make the sacrifices needed to make reform and revival work. Any reform programme, however limited in scope, entails an element of self-sacrifice.

For a quarter of a century, now, we have prevented the public from assessing alternatives in terms of the costs that must be sustained in exchange for the benefits of progress in a particular domain. For example, any economic reform programme must aspire to achieve, within a reasonable period, a growth rate of at least seven per cent in order to absorb unemployment and, hopefully, double the current domestic savings rate. To achieve this, however, will require radical change in consumer patterns: this, alone, is sufficient reason to engage society in the decision-making process. In turn, this means generating a new political climate based on representation and negotiation conducted in good faith -- in short it demands a fair and just democratic environment.

It will be impossible to persuade the Egyptian people to do their part in economic and social development without practically affirming individual dignity and respecting human rights and the sovereignty of law. This means ending the various forms of corruption, bureaucratic tyranny and lack of transparency that plague us all. Effecting the transition to a "participant society" is the minimum goal of any democratic reforms seeking to salvage a future for our country.

Full scale revival, however, will require much more. It requires confidence in the Egyptian people, and must furnish an opportunity for the people to regain confidence in themselves. This requires an overhaul of our constitutional and legislative edifices so that authority is spead more equitably throughout society and new generations are able to rise to positions of leadership.

This is only a first stage in a much longer process. In the short run we must make a break with the outmoded and unproductive social and economic structures that have been in place for nearly a century. The only way we will be able to enter the global economy and, by extension, international cultural life, is by focussing on the acquisition of knowledge and know-how, unleashing our powers of technological and aesthetic creativity. To do this we must make the crucial shift from a socio-cultural system that imposes uniformity and homogeneity and restricts personal growth, replacing it with a system that encourages diversity, creativity and open-mindedness and that promotes social harmony through effective channels of communication and a more creative organisation of social activities. This transition will be impossible to achieve under prevailing cultural trends, or under a government that regards public participation as a headache and a source of instability.

The economics of creativity do not fear diversity: rather, they capitalise on it. Our immediate goal, then, must be to set in motion a powerful drive towards reform capable of opening up the possibility of an alliance able to restructure the economy and society. Generating a more robust cultural order, with new frames of reference and more sophisticated modes of religious practice, will be an indispensable part of the process of breaking with the stagnant past. We will not be in a position to embark on national revival until we achieve a minimal level of these kinds of reform, for only when they are in place will we be able to take the vital decisions that will put the reins of our fate in our own hands and allow us to set, in the most rational way possible, the best course for our future.

Simultaneously, any reforms we implement must be worked out in detail. Generalities, such as those we find in outside initiatives, are of little practical use. We might agree in principle to the safe, gradual transition to democracy, but this must not be used to justify prolonging the status quo. Any change involves an element of risk: without learning to live with risk you cannot learn how to avert the potential perils. This maxim is diametrically opposed to the prevalent official attitude, which holds that anything deemed as a potential risk must be stamped out. It is an approach that favours violent repression and inertia over the more dynamic processes of interaction that can actually change the givens of the situation. It is an approach that ultimately amplifies the dangers rather than eliminates them.

It is possible to reconcile stability with rapid political reform if we devise and agree upon a specific formula for constitutional change that can be put into effect immediately. No one objects to reasonable measures aimed at guaranteeing political and constitutional stability. But there is a vast difference between such guarantees and the conditions stipulated by the mindset that insists on freezing a political and constitutional order that entrenches immobility and despotism. Perhaps we should seriously contemplate the Turkish model or, better yet, summon the courage to go the way of Spain following Franco, bearing in mind that the very real spectre of terrorism in Spain has not derailed that country's rapid progress towards democracy and economic development. On the contrary, in Spain the situation was measured carefully and rationally. Terrorism would have been far worse had it not been for the freedom and openness made available by democracy and the optimism and drive made possible by economic recovery. As for Egypt, we have little cause to exaggerate the political dangers. There is probably not another society on earth as intrinsically peaceable as ours.