Whenever I go spend my vacation in Dakahlia, people there keep asking me about the next Cabinet reshuffle, the next Governor and even if the next President would be Gamal Mubarak, thinking that I am a well informed man. They also ask me why prices all over the world have gone down except in Egypt, and why there are monopolies of strategic commodities like construction material, fertilizers, food and even fire extinguishers and furniture.
And they ask me why the government raised gasoline and diesel prices twice when the world oil price went up, but did not lower them when it went down. Those good people expect firm answers from me because I am a journalist working for the biggest press institution in the Middle East and because I write for the most influential and credible newspapers. To them, this means that I have connections with ministers and governors, and that I am in the heart of events among intellectuals and officials who know more than the ordinary people. Although I always try to get hold of information so as to predict certain decisions before they are announced, I still find myself completely incapable of understanding the Egyptian political nature. This is not because it is beyond my ability to understand, but because it is not governed by any logic, as it is subject to the whim of a group of people in power that put down plans in complete secrecy.
Proof of that is the decision to give the people shares in public companies that the government would privatize. The government said that it has been studying this for three years, which no journalist, nor even the devil himself, did know about. In other words, no one can claim that he knows anything or that he can predict what will happen tomorrow. An Egyptian expert at the World Bank for Reconstruction and Development said during his recent visit to Cairo that the Egyptian political situation can serve as a model of chaos and lack of transparency. “There is a deep feeling that there is a certain clique that manipulates all public and private assets. Only the devil knows what that gang wants,” he said.
While I was stuck in the traffic for half an hour the other day, I read a sticker on a car that I think best describes our political situation. It read: Whoever understands, please explain to me. This reminded me of another sticker that a friend of mine told me about, which read: I bet no one understands a thing.
