Propagandists often exaggerate things in the media and give hope to people, only to leave them frustrated when they realize the reality of things. This gives the enemies of the state a chance to strike.
I have reservations on the New Suez Canal thing:
1. The name is misleading because it is not a new canal as such, but rather an extension of it, which is not something to be ashamed of.
2. August 6 is not a proper date for the opening ceremony because it coincides with the 70th anniversary of the 70,000 people who died as a result of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.
3. Finishing it in one year is an engineering miracle (35 kilometers of digging, 30 kilometers of expansions in the Bitter Lakes and 7 kilometers of deepening in the Balah branch), but is not really strange for the people who dug the original channel (194 kilometers) in 10 years without modern tools. Not to mention that finishing it in such a short period of time must have cost a fortune.
4. We should know how much the project costs and how the rest of the LE64 billion collected will be spent.
5. The project proves that the Egyptian will can achieve great things because it was financed and carried out by Egyptians. It is a continuation of an unmatched ancient civilization, as the Egyptians dug waterways as far back as the reign of King Pepi I of the 6th dynasty.
6. The project stops any Israeli ambitions for an alternative project in the future. It also facilitates trade from the west to the east through the tunnels that were dug under the canal.
7. The project will not yield the large returns some are claiming it will (regardless of the fact that it will take 96, as opposed to 50 ships per day, which is the size of a global trade that we cannot control). What is more important, is that the development projects of the region as a whole will attract investments.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
