When in 2011 the people of Egypt realized their government was
getting too cozy with foreign entities, they told their president “erhal” which
is Arabic for leave.
When the aging president dragged his feet, some 30 million
Egyptians marched into the streets of cities and villages, calling on their
beloved army to remove the recalcitrant president from office. Despite the
huffing and the puffing of foreign voices that warned against such a move, the
army listened to the people it is serving and did exactly what they asked for.
A new president was elected in Egypt, and when he too became too
cozy with another set of foreigners, the people asked him to leave. When he
refused, they once again descended into the streets and asked the army to
remove him from office. The army did just that, a new president was elected …
and he happened to be from the military. His name is Abdel Fattah el-Sisi ...
affectionately referred to as Sisi.
Sisi made a bargain with the people of Egypt. He said he'll give
them what they asked for, which is strict adherence to the independence of the
country, a booming economy, and transparency in the form of constantly
explaining what the government is doing and why it is doing it. In return, he
wants the people to use the proper channels to voice their descent if any. He
said that serenity was the necessary prerequisite to having a government that
can implement the difficult program the country needs at this juncture, and he
wants the people to help him achieve that serenity.
The people of Egypt said amen to that, and Sisi formed a
government that immediately began to implement a program so ambitious, the
foreign haters that wished to see Egypt fall into chaos, began to wail their
despair. They said modernizing the Suez Canal will change the marine ecosystem
of the region. Building a dozen new cities, including a new capital, is a pipe
dream that will never be realized. Adding a million and a half acres of arable
land to the existing eight million cannot be achieved because there wasn't
enough water to do so... etc... etc... In other words, they were saying that
Egypt had died, and it was time to bury it. But Sisi managed to achieve all that
he promised and more; did it in record time, and did it with flying colors.
Because two back-to-back “revolutions” had taken their toll on
Egypt's foreign currency finances, the Sisi government had to do what the
people never wanted to see happen. Egypt accepted the IMF offer to loan it 12
billion dollars over a period of time. The big deal was not the size of the
loan for, Egypt could do without it. Rather, it was the fact that a loan from
the IMF represented a vote of confidence in the solidity of the Egyptian
economy; something the foreign investors wanted to see return to Egypt before
doing business with that country again. Well, Egypt had not yet received the
fifth two-billion tranche from the IMF when foreign money to the tune of 160
billion dollars had already poured into the country.
Now that the world has recognized that Egypt is on its way to
become the next economic tiger — as predicted on this website even during the
country's darkest moment — the braying agents of doom and gloom, are back again
playing their tricks. Because they got smart enough to hide their faces and
refrain from using their own voices, they recruited a new crop of junior doom
and gloom agents, and taught them how to bray the anti-Egypt refrain. You see
an example of this in the article that came under the title: “Egypt's Economy
Rising, Rights Declining,” written by Barak Barfi, and published on November
19, 2018 on the website of the Washington Institute.
This is a “yes but” kind of article. It says that yes, Sisi has
delivered on his promise to bring the economic boom that Egypt deserves, as
well as the stability that the people have yearned for after 5 years of turmoil
… but all is not well in the land that comes back to life every time it is left
for dead, say the doomsters. If you want to know what's wrong with Egypt, they
go on to explain, it is that—unlike Chicago where people are free to kill each
other; unlike America where the police are free to shoot them in the back—the
people of Egypt behave well, and turn against the handful that misbehaves.
In a country that's surrounded by out-of-control armed settlers,
checkpoints of humiliation, walls of apartheid and desperate suicide bombers,
Egypt remains as stable and serene as a pyramid. Its people need not be told to
say something when they see something; they do it on their own. They even
turn-in those who would endanger the security of the country.