The Passport Regime – by Kelsey Norman

We are ruled by an undemocratic, Foucauldian hegemon that we’re barely even aware of – citizenship. How did this come to happen, and why do we need to change it?

[mural by Ganzeer in Mechelen, Belgium for Newtopia: The State of Human Rights - photo by Kristof Vranken]

Citizenship is a dual construct. It encompasses both privileges—social, economic and political rights—as well as duties. But the relationship between rights and citizenship is rarely this straightforward. There are many cases where rights can precede formal citizenship, as well as too many cases where citizenship fails to guarantee basic rights. Citizenship is also about demarcating borders, defining who is ‘in’ versus who is meant to be excluded from a given society. And while citizenship may bring certain benefits like community cohesion or a sense of belonging, the exclusionary aspect of this global institution has come to far exceed its positive features. In fact, citizenship has effectively become the determining factor in regulating the movement of people globally and distributing life chances for the majority of the world’s population. But this role – the ability of citizenship to affect life chances from the moment of birth, and to regulate who can go where and when thereafter – is being challenged. Immigration and demographic realities are forcing governments to realize that citizenship, as a means of determining who is entitled to membership and basic rights, is a broken, antiquated concept that needs a drastic overhaul. 

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IMF Amnesia - by Avi Asher-Schapiro

[illustration by Ganzeer]

In September 2011, I visited the downtown Cairo headquarters of the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR) to interview its executive director Nadeem Mansour. This was just eight months after the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak and much of the international media was still focused on street protests and the inscrutable maneuverings of the ruling military junta.

Mansour and the ECESR were waging an underreported legal battle against the economic policies of the Mubarak regime. Chiefly, they opposed the privatization of state-owned enterprises and the subsequent erosion of wages and labor standards. During the regime’s last decade, hundreds of profitable state-owned enterprises were auctioned off at bargain prices to well-connected investors. This economic policy was adopted as part of an International Monetary Fund (IMF)-backed structural adjustment program designed to shift economic activity away from the public sector.

As I sat down with Mansour, the ECESR had just won a major case in Cairo’s Administrative Court successfully blocking the privatization of several state owned companies including the Tanta Flax and Oils Company and the Misr Shebin Al-Kom Spinning and Weaving Company. Although both companies had been profitable under government management, in 2005 after significant pressure from the IMF, the Mubarak regime auctioned them off to private investors.

The September ruling was the first of its kind. The court reversed a Mubarak-era privatization order and legally confirmed what Egyptian labor activists had been asserting for years – despite glowing reports from international financial institutions, Mubarak’s economic policies facilitated endemic corruption and resulted in an unprecedented transfer of wealth from Egyptian workers to a small group of capitalists.

Since 1991, Mubarak’s economic agenda was dictated by international financial institutions like the IMF and molded around the assumptions of the Washington Consensus. The conventional development thinking in the early 1990’s viewed Egypt’s massive public sector, feisty unions, and highly regulated financial markets as impediments to growth. Mubarak came under intense international pressure to remake Egypt’s economy in the image of the newly deregulated economies in Latin America by shifting economic activity away from public sector.

In Egypt, the inequities created by these economic policies resulted in an unprecedented decade of labor-action, yawning economic inequalities, rising unemployment, and eventually, a popular uprising.

Now, eighteen months after the Egyptian revolution, and eight months after the Administrative Court’s landmark ruling, Egypt’s newly elected government has requested $4.8 billion in economic assistance from the IMF to help stabilize Egypt’s floundering economy.

The loan request has been, with few exceptions, universally lauded as a sign of Egyptian political maturity and pragmatism. The myriad press reports announcing the recent visit of IMF President Christine Lagarde to Cairo all contained the same cloying praise for this move toward so-called “economic stability.”

Few Egypt-analysts seem willing to frankly confront the IMF’s checkered legacy in Egypt, its cozy relationship with the Mubarak regime, and its role in facilitating the very policies that sparked a popular uprising over one year ago. As Egypt’s newly elected government moves toward accepting IMF assistance, a close examination of the organization’s legacy is essential.

The IMF’s Disputed Legacy

The IMF’s role during the Mubarak years is thoroughly misunderstood and widely mythologized. International financial institutions and their constellation of development specialists have hailed Egypt as an economic “miracle.” Timothy Mitchell from Colombia University summed up the conventional wisdom this way:

“The conventional story is that by 1990-1991 the Egyptian economy was in crisis, no longer able to support loss-making public industries, an overvalued currency, ‘profligate’ government spending, an inflationary printing of money to cover the budget gap, and astronomical levels of foreign debt. After fifteen years of foot dragging and partial reforms, in 1990-1991 the government was forced to adopt an IMF stabilization… These ‘prudent’ fiscal policies were implemented more drastically than even the IMF had demanded, achieving a drop in the government deficit that the IMF called ‘virtually unparalleled in recent years.’”

The real history of the IMF in Egypt is vastly more complex. The Mubarak regime introduced IMF proposed reforms in a number of stages. In the early 1990s, Mubarak implemented some of the less controversial aspects of the IMFs policies including currency and banking reform. Still, domestic resistance was intense.

Writing in the beginning stages of the structural adjustment regime, World Bank economist Hans Lofgren predictedthat reforms would only take root if the population remained “quiescent.” Lofgren goes on to admit that many of the IMF’s proposals would be to the immediate detriment of “most of the population.” Nonetheless, Lofgren reasons that domestic resistance could be quashed because “since the 1970s, businessmen have emerged as a strong and unified force, independent from government control, while trade unions, pro-democracy organizations, and opposition groups remained ‘divided.’”

Lofgren proved to be prescient and Mubarak was able to thoroughly neutralize domestic dissent. As Eberhard Kienle illustrates in his groundbreaking book, A Grand Delusion: Democracy and Economic Reform in Egypt, economic reform in the 1990s coincided with a wave of political repression designed to anticipate and squash any potential political opposition. The early 1990s saw an uptick in raids on NGOs and mosques and a systematic neutering of trade unions. In 1993, the government officially took over Egypt’s professional associations, which had formerly been one of the only outlets for independent political mobilization. At the same time, the regime began to haul the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood in front of military tribunals.

By the late 1990s, the first wave of economic reforms had failed to deliver results. From 1990 to 1991 and from 1995 to 1996, both rural and urban poverty increased by over 10% and real wages sagged. IMF economists argued that Egypt needed to increase the pace of reform by accelerating the privatization process. In 1996, the IMF reached a deal with the Mubarak regime to extend additional credit to Egypt in exchange for an aggressive privatization agenda.

Privatization, Repression, and Corruption

Between 1996 and 2011, nearly 345 Egyptian public companies were privatized and sold on the Egyptian stock exchange. Under the premiership of Ahmed Nazif from 2004 to 2011, Egypt experienced the most intense wave of privatization with 172 state-owned businesses sold for nearly 60 billion Egyptian pounds.

This privatization process amounted to a massive transfer of resources from the public to the private sector. IMF experts predicted that the shift would unleash an explosion of productivity. Yet, the process of privatization took place under a cloud of political repression and intense corruption. In the end, the promises of increased productivity proved to be illusory. Many of the privatized companies were liquidated or significantly downsized, and many Egyptians associate privatization with employment insecurity and abuse. One of the most iconic cases of privatization gone wrong is the 2007 sale of the state-run department store Omar Effendi to a Saudi Arabian holding company. The holding company rebranded the company as a budget clothing store, closed several historic branches, and rescinded the employees’ long-term contracts.

According to the Administrative Court’s September ruling, a significant portion of privatized enterprises was sold to regime cronies at a fraction of their real value. The Shebin Textile Company, for example, sold for 175 million Egyptian pounds, despite being valued at over 600 million Egyptian pounds. The Al-Nasr Company for Steam Boilers and Pressure Vessels sold for 17 million Egyptian pounds even after a government audit valued the company at over 35 million Egyptian pounds.

The process for auctioning off these public enterprises was opaque and characterized by massive corruption. The most famous case is that of Ezz Steel. The government sold the formerly public steel company in 2001 to Ahmed Ezz, a National Democratic Party politician and friend of the president’s son, Gamal. Ezz was seen as a rising star in the Egyptian political scene, and he was easily able to leverage his political connections to get a bargain deal on the massive steel enterprise.

Under new private ownership, the management of newly privatized companies proceeded to gut the labor force. At the Tanta Flax and Seed Company, for example, the new Saudi Arabian owners cut the workforce by half and reduced health benefits. Naturally, the privatization program provoked a wave of strikes. Between 2004 and 2010, there were more than 3,000 labor actions in Egypt. In addition, for the first time, Egyptian labor unions demanded the ability to operate independently of state-controlled labor syndicates. Political oppression escalated as Hosni Mubarak moved to transfer power to his son, Gamal.

Meanwhile, the IMF applauded Egypt’s progress. Although the new economic policies failed to raise standards of living, they did produce record-level GDP growth averaging nearly 5% annually. The sale of hundreds of public companies did, indeed, generate short-term macroeconomic growth and attract significant foreign investment. In February 2010, exactly one year before the popular uprising, the IMF issued a glowing report praising Egypt’s commitment to economic reform and trumpeting the country as an example of a successful economic transition.

Conclusion: Looking Forward

To her credit, Christine Lagarde has acknowledged that the IMF made mistakes in Egypt. Speaking in Cairo in August 2012, Lagarde explained that “One thing that the IMF has learned as a result of the Arab transition…is that numbers do not tell the whole story and we have to really examine precisely what is behind the numbers. Who benefits from growth? Who benefits from subsidies? How are the fruits of growth allocated in a particular country?”

In the coming weeks, an IMF technical team is slated to land in Cairo to set conditions for economic assistance. No details of the conditions have yet been made public, but Adam Hanieh, a political economist at the School for Oriental and African Studies in London, is not optimistic. “The conditions will likely be the usual set of ‘reforms’ – privatization, deregulation, and opening up to foreign investment flows, ” he said. “I don’t think the IMF has changed its approach at all. We just have to look at the policies it is advocating elsewhere round the world (e.g. Greece). It may be becoming more astute in how it tries to present these ideas – partly in recognition that these policies have had such disastrous consequences and thus need to be wrapped in a different rhetoric – but they remain the same policies in essence.”

Egypt’s newly elected leaders are under tremendous pressure to deliver results. The Egyptian economy is in crisis with currency reserves plummeting and unemployment spiking. After exhausting the largess of friendly Gulf States, Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are looking elsewhere for an economic boost. The IMF is an attractive and obvious source for economic assistance.

In the absence of an active parliament, President Morsi has been conducting the negotiations unilaterally. Even without formal channels for dissent, the looming IMF deal has already sparked significant domestic debate. Some Islamists are voicing opposition to the deal on religious grounds while leftists are expressing concern about the IMF’s respect for unions and public sector employees. Meanwhile, Morsi and the Brotherhood are doing their best to perpetuate IMF amnesia and paste over the IMF’s legacy in the interest of a quick economic turn around.

But in a time of mass mobilization and widespread political participation, the high level IMF deal is bringing back memories of the backdoor dealing of the Mubarak years. Going forward, the IMF’s penchant for elite-based decision-making appears to be on a collision course with Egypt’s ongoing political awakening.

—

This article first appeared in Muftah. 

NAZIR TANBOULI TAKES OVER THE KING’S LAND

The King’s Land from GILLIAN MCIVER on Vimeo.

This is a short film of a project in progress.

A 22 minute documentary about Egyptian artist Nazir Tanbouli’s project to create a site specific mural installation all throughout a semi derelict East London housing estate.
April 2012.

Murals Nazir Tanbouli, Music Massar Egbari, Film by Gillian McIver.

 See also the website http://www.kingslandmural.co.uk  and http://kingslandmural.wordpress.com/site-specific/

Rana ElNemr’s Giza Threads: The Ambition of Space - by Doa Aly

I had a dream many years ago. It was set in a big kitchen. I was with a group of friends, none of whom I knew from waking life. 

One of the girls walked to the fridge. She turned to me and asked if I wanted anything to drink. I nodded and squeezed my head and shoulder together; it was a “yes, maybe.” A shrug towards agreement. 

She handed me a glass of something orange; I took it and went to stand outside by the kitchen’s door. As I waited, Raphael (I knew that was his name) came and stood opposite me by the other side of the door. 

There was a long silence, his intense look. Another half-shrug, and eventually he opened his mouth as if to speak. Instead, he let out a filament of blue smoke. It hovered above his head and settled exactly between us. It slowly took the shape of an embryo, suspended in midair, exactly at eye level, translucent blue, slightly fluorescent. “Raphael, what do I do with this?” I asked. No answer. We both waited in equal awe, transfixed by the event.

Dreams are by definition made of unlikely events. However, the event here came to interrupt familiar spaces and gestures, challenging me to accept it as “real,” its very existence depending on my bewilderment. It was an event in progress and I greeted it with a question. The question confirmed its presence. 

An event in progress—in life as in my dream—is a shy proposition, hovering unborn, endearing and most fragile. It is visible, but unfixed like a nagging ghost at the threshold of our perception demanding to be integrated, to be loved. A work of art is never finished in this sense; it is never assertive and confident of its presence. It is hesitant, and that’s why it needs an audience. The hovering breath is not to an audience; it is with and waiting for an audience. 

Very little art today is conscious of the importance of fragility and incompleteness. And very few artists are sensitive to the subtle interactions in the space created by these important motions. 

Rana ElNemr is. In her recent photography series entitled Giza Threads, began in 1999 and exhibited at the Townhouse Gallery, she set out to find the unlikely interruptions in the landscapes of Giza and surrounding vicinity. She photographs open spaces, private and public. Spaces defined by ambiguous ambitions to enclose or expand them. Quiet ambitions tucked in behind fences, or wild ones springing out of tight containers. Every ambition is an event, and every event is a negotiation over—and hesitation with—space. 

There are many events in progress in Rana ElNemr’s photographs. These events slowly take shape before our eyes. Absurd events, powerful enough to drive their own narratives, odd enough to disappear altogether. They are isolated and integrated. They are at the threshold waiting to be seen, nagging. It is the subtlety that if we chose to see them, they reveal themselves and a sense of completeness—a sense of sense in and of themselves. 

ElNemr’s photographs are not cryptic, nor are they illusions of perception. We see the image’s elements very clearly but still fail to comprehend the photograph’s temporal logic. They are images of compressed, fleeting time, and we can only experience them as durations. We are gently led to discover how life pierces through like bamboo shoots imposing upon a new landscape. Plastic flower shops growing on highways. Two axes collapse into one another, the when and the how, the extension of time and intensity of life. Barely contained and barely containing. What remains is acceptance. 

Life here could be as unsettling as one clay flamenco and three mushroom-lamps planted by the side of the road. What happened? Who abandoned the cotton candy? The dinosaur forever fixed in ridicule by the house gate: what is he waiting for if not love? Love, life, whim or necessity, are no longer the only options. ElNemr is not concerned with binaries, side-by-side juxtapositions, or clean-cut distinctions. There are regularities of space and irregularities of ambition, but they are felt at once, whole, emerging entangled onto a single visual plane. 

When one watches intensity and humor—in a place, surrounded by creatures and gestures that seek only to displace time—the viewer finds himself or her/himself to be post-interruption. The various parts of Giza ebb and flow and interrupt each other. We are asked to see through the cracks created by these flailing movements. This vision must be achieved with least bravado and most delicacy. We must stumble upon it, maybe like the artist did. She claims no authority, not even with her compositions, but merely points there and allows us the journey. 

Rana ElNemr, Giza Threads. Townhouse Gallery for Contemporary Art, Cairo

26 February – 4 April 2012

Nation of Sons of Bitches

“Allah Yenawwar” or “May God light your path” says the smiling police officer to me as I work on a four-meter high mural together with Ammar Abo Bakr. The mural is an image of a protester being dragged by two Military Police officers and its based on a sketch that Ammar drew just last night, which is based on a photograph taken in Alexandria and posted online only yesterday afternoon.

People hanging around the near by parking lot bring us tea and coffee, and the guy running the public toilet close by tells us we can pee for free. At least six Central Security trucks are parked in close vicinity, but we work away without trouble. Nothing can seemingly go wrong today, I think to myself.

Five hours later, however, I am proved wrong. A crew from Japanese television shows up and starts filming. A little commotion starts around the crew and a debate about the Egyptian military leads to a debate about the mural-in-progress.

“This is wrong!” some people proclaim. Others ask “why don’t you draw something nice about the military?”

Ammar and I try to explain that we are merely drawing a factual scene, not even expressing a personal opinion. Someone proclaims “well maybe the military police is arresting a thug and protecting the country.”

Okay, I say. So if I’m drawing military police arresting a thug, you shouldn’t be offended. The mural should make you proud of military police, I argue.

“Well, it doesn’t say that he’s a thug in the drawing, does it?!” he notes.

Exactly, I respond, so you will see him as a thug if you think they’re doing the right thing. Someone else might think they’re arresting an innocent protestor. It’s up to the viewer to decide.

“No, I don’t like it! ERASE IT NOW!!” he commands us.

Why do you want to blind people from the truth, I ask? Let them see it, go home, and think about it.

“WE WANT TO STAY BLINDED,” he screams, “WE’RE A NATION OF SONS OF BITCHES, OKAY?”

Okay, I say. And we pick up our things and leave, as hordes of people rush to deface the incomplete mural.

The Art of Storm-Riding - by Yahia Lababidi

I could not decipher the living riddle of my body
put it to sleep when it hungered, and overfed it
when time came to dream

I nearly choked on the forked tongue of my spirit
between the real and the ideal, rejecting the one
and rejected by the other

I still have not mastered that art of storm-riding
without ears to apprehend howling winds
or eyes for rolling waves

Always the weather catches me unawares, baffled
by maps, compass, stars and the entire apparatus
of bearings or warning signals

Clutching at driftwood, eyes screwed shut, I tremble
hoping the unhinged night will pass and I remember
how once I shielded my flame.