Price protests

A new protest movement against rising prices has appeared in Egypt. Does it have a political dimension, asks Mona El-Nahhas

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A group of prominent opposition figures led by George Ishaq, coordinator of Kifaya, has founded a new protest movement called Citizens against Soaring Prices in an effort to mobilise public opinion against the government.

Kifaya, launched in 2004, was the first political movement to stage public demonstrations against Egypt's government and encourage members of the public to join its protests, although with limited long-term success.

While Kifaya's impact has been declining since the 2005 presidential elections, with the government disregarding calls for political reform, stifling freedoms and neutralising opponents, popular demonstrations against the government have not stopped and have even taken on another, apparently non-political dimension.

Teachers, doctors, workers, and even garbage collectors across the country have started to organise sit-ins and threatened to stage work- stoppages if their demands are not met.

People who have lost a place to live or who have been without drinking water for years have started to raise their voices and demonstrate for their rights.

With public demonstrations becoming an outlet for a frustrated population, nearly 40 per cent of which lives beneath the poverty line, the founders of the new movement have realised that the time is now ripe to attempt to mobilise the public.

They have also realised that they should use a language different from tht employed by Kifaya.

Unlike Kifaya, which protested against alleged electoral fraud and other political issues, the new movement will restrict its activities to protests against soaring prices and to improving the living conditions of those on low incomes.

"The movement hopes to attract a wide sector of society and teach it how to protest," Ishaq said, adding that the new movement is not intended to replace Kifaya.

"The two movements will work on parallel lines," he said, "one focussing on the public's daily concerns and the other on political issues."

The drafting of the new movement's programme is expected to be finished in a few days time, according to independent MP Gamal Zahran, one of the founders.

Zahran told Al-Ahram Weekly that once the programme was finished, the movement's founders would take steps to organise the movement. The first such steps would include publishing a "blacklist" of the names of businesses accused of greedily raising prices.

"The movement will expose businessmen who monopolise the market and raise prices, relying upon their relationships with high-ranking state officials to do so," Ishaq said, giving the example of senior ruling NDP official Ahmed Ezz, who controls some 60 per cent of the nation's steel production.

Ishaq said the new movement would call upon the public to boycott dealing with such businesses and to stop buying the commodities they produce. It would also organise sit-ins before the headquarters of chambers of commerce in protest, he said.

The question that remains is what the public will do if prices of basic foodstuffs continue to rise, as is the case now. Sugar, rice and meat have all soared in price in the wake of the annual bonus many employees get in July.

"In this case, the public will be mobilised against the government, which takes the side of the rich and disregards the basic needs of the poor," Zahran said, stressing that unlike Kifaya the new movement intends to carry out step-by- step protests.

"We are not going to start by staging street demonstrations," he said. "Our target is to activate civil society and to spread the policy of protest in a gradual way."

This policy would ensure longer-lasting impacts, Zahran said.