First I would like to emphasize that I personally wish the current cabinet success because I sympathize with its members intellectually and emotionally rather than seeing it as the most appropriate for the current stage. I believe that the current cabinet’s success will be monumental for the success of the roadmap. Since we have no option but to work to make the roadmap succeed or else enter into a long dark tunnel from which we might not ever emerge, I do not think any patriotic Egyptian would want the current cabinet to fail.
Nevertheless, what we hope for might not necessarily be what we have. The cabinet is already approaching its 100th day in office, and yet has failed to make its presence felt, particularly among the poor and marginalized groups who have not witnessed any improvement in their living conditions or have not even felt that they are likely to improve in the near future. I have absolutely no doubt that a feeling of frustration has snuck up on us again only much quicker. After a brief period of optimism, increasing numbers of Egyptians feel that the current cabinet does not differ much from its former and that it is handling Egypt’s accumulated and complicated problems the same way as previous cabinets, with the same lack of vision, transparency and with insufficient enthusiasm to face up to the challenges.
I am not claiming that I have reached this conclusion after an exhaustive study of public opinion orientations or the use of scientific approaches and tools to gauge changes in the public mood. Regrettably, we do not have scientific centers to gauge public opinion with polls whose results can be trusted, despite the efforts exerted in this regard. However, there are other tools that may be primitive in form but may be have no less credible results. Among those tools is following up and analysing changes in the elite’s political discourse as reflected in the different media and direct observation through daily interaction with people from different social strata. Any analyst who follows the elite’s media discourse and the popular discourse will be quick to realize the discrepancy between what is being said about Prime Minister Hazem al-Beblawy’s cabinet now and what was said about it right after its formation.
It seems that PM Beblawy’s cabinet has not yet realized that it is a “wartime cabinet” and cannot afford but to be successful or else it would be wasting away the revolution launched by the people and the army on 30 June and 3 July. It appears to be acting as a temporary or caretaker cabinet with no capacity to build strategies or long-term policies, when it is in fact a cabinet that will lay the foundations of a new regime that all of the previous successive cabinets over two transitional periods have failed to do. If it does not succeed, the country will be bound for disaster.
I advise the cabinet to review and assess its plans: what it has achieved and what it plans to achieve over the coming months to ensure the success of the roadmap. It has to realize that the success of the roadmap is dependent on formulating a constitution appropriate for post-revolution Egypt that fuels high turnout for the referendum and conducting parliamentary elections characterized by integrity and capable of creating a majority that expresses the fresh Egyptian spirit and sidelines radical powers and former regime remnants without resorting to suppression by security. It also depends on holding presidential elections that are also characterized by integrity and that would bring a strong president who is able to take this country to safety.
So far, I cannot detect any signs of the success of the roadmap and since it is my right to express fears for the future of my country, I hope Beblawy’s cabinet and interim President Adly Mansour will consider my article an alarm rather than an attempt to belittle their efforts.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
