When [Egyptian workers and activists] took to the streets last year it was not only against tyranny and political repression, but also against the neoliberal economic order – designed with the help of the United States – that has generated hunger, poverty and inequality in Egypt since the 1980s. If we measure these elections against the people’s initial aspirations for a new society, it’s clear that they fall far short of success.
Neoliberalism first came to Egypt when Mubarak signed structural adjustment agreements with the IMF and the World Bank in 1991. But the United States had been pushing for neoliberal reforms long before then. In addition to $1.3 billion per year in military aid, the US disbursed around $815 million per year through USAid in order to remake Egypt’s economy in line with Washington Consensus policies. In 1994 USAid paid to reshuffle the cabinet and bring in a new prime minister – Kamal el-Ganzouri – who would endorse a neoliberal vision of private, export-oriented growth. When the new leaders assumed power in 1996, USAid praised them for their commitment to “liberalising the economy by deregulating the trade sector, increasing competition in the financial sector and accelerating the pace of privatisation”.
To push this process along, USAid gave $200 million each year in handouts to Egyptian policymakers to encourage tariff reductions and the privatisation of healthcare, education, and more than 300 state-managed companies. In addition, USAid devoted some 25 per cent of its budget to establishing bilateral free trade with the United States to ensure a market for American-made goods. And, perhaps most importantly, according to Columbia University professor Timothy Mitchell, USAid pushed to “reform” Egypt’s agricultural sector by shifting capacity away from staple foods and toward export crops for US markets, taxing the production of staples by small farmers, eliminating subsidies on essential consumer goods, and opening the gate to (subsidized) grain imports from the US.
If we cut through the Western media hype it becomes clear that these elections are not elections at all. People will be forced to “choose” between an Islamist ideologue and a Mubarak crony, both of whom are certain to uphold Washington Consensus policies. The aspirations of the revolution have been cut out of the picture entirely, dashing any hope for real democracy and an economy that benefits the people rather than a narrow set of elite interests and foreign companies. This has caused a crisis among voters, many of whom will either cast void ballots or boycott the elections entirely; indeed, activists are already organizing along these lines, and it’s quite possible that turnout in the next round will be less than 30% of registered voters. If nothing else, these elections have made one thing certain: the revolution is not yet over.
