Has the Muslim Brotherhood’s Renaissance Project been laid to rest?
The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) claims that President Mohamed Mursi won the presidency riding the wave of their “Renaissance Project”. Mursi had been fielded by the MB’s Freedom and Justice Party, and the Renaissance was touted as the magic wand the Brotherhood would wave to get Egypt’s economy up and running in no time, and offer a vision for Egyptian prosperity all through to 2025.
The project
The Renaissance was said to rest primarily on the State, the civil community, and the private sector who should work together to build a political system that would lead to an effective development routine, communal empowerment, far-reaching human development, potent security establishment, and international leadership. The project was also to endorse a number of ‘special files’, among them the empowerment of women, a leading role for al-Azhar, citizenship rights and equality for Copts, a comprehensive bunch of laws to protect the environment, monetary and urban incentives to motivate Egyptians in non-planned neighbourhoods to move to well-planned districts that would legally secure their ownership rights.
The Renaissance called for shifting the Egyptian economy from a yield to an added value economy, and re-forming the banking system so as to assume a major role in supporting the national economy. Small and medium-sized projects should be supported through vocational training, structural and fiscal enhancement, and technical support. The State should work to ensure the legislation, unions, and markets required to enhance these projects are all accessible.
Ambitions, aspirations, and fantasies
The pledge by Mursi that Egyptians would feel a tangible boost in the quality of their lives 100 days into his presidency was based on the Renaissance Project. But the fact that this never materialised cast serious doubts on the project. Watani took the question to the experts.
“Any project on the scale of the Renaissance should have clear-cut specifics,” Dr Mohamed Hussein, Economics and Banking expert says, “especially when it comes to the size of investments, the geographical districts targeted, the poverty and unemployment rates that will be tackled, and the various investments to be adopted to boost the Egyptian economy. The technologies to be employed should be defined, as well as the origin of these technologies, their cost and how they will be transported to Egypt. The vocational development and training required to build a skilled work force should be specified. ” In a broader sense, Dr Hussein says, the resources required and goals aimed for, as well as the tools and policies needed to execute the project should be clearly spelt out in unalloyed figures.
So how does the Renaissance measure up to all the above criteria? “ According to Dr Hussein, what we have is no more than ambitions, aspirations and fantasies; but no realistic on-the-ground project.
Advice for Mursi
“Even if the Renaissance is a comprehensive economic and social outlook, it lacks the details to make its implementation possible,” Ussama Abdel-Khaleq, Professor of Economics at Ain Shams University and economic expert with the Arab League told Watani. The application of a project of this scale, he says, requires huge funding which the Renaissance says nothing about.
Yet this is not so impossible, Dr Abdel-Khaleq says. He suggests ideas that, if put into operation, would help provide sovereign resources. He calls for amending the natural gas export treaties to increase its price four-fold—Egyptian natural gas is severely under-priced which would achieve a 400 per cent quantum leap in gas export revenues. He also calls for the activation of treaties with the European Union since 2008, which entitle Egypt to aid and grants and legal emigration. This should contribute to increase sovereign resources by some EGP100 billion, he says, and could work to achieve a EGP70 billion to EGP80 billion increase in revenue of tourism.
Agricultural Economics expert Ashraf Kamal also has advice to offer Mursi.
Not specified in the Renaissance project, Dr Kamal told Watani, is anything regarding short, medium or long term support of the agricultural sector. “The private sector,” he says, “can play a pivotal role here in development and work opportunities, especially given that agricultural development has the potential to bridge the food gap shortage in Egypt and achieve nutritional self sufficiency.” President Mursi should take immediate measures, Dr Kamal says, to criminalise the abuse of agricultural land, and maximise food production.
Answers required
In a surprise—no, stunning—move days ago, the prominent MB leader Khairat al-Shater said there was no such thing as the Renaissance Project which was given so much publicity during Mursi’s presidential campaign. He explained that a ‘real’ substituent project is under preparation by the MB. Predictably, Shater’s declaration threw the entire Egyptian scene into disarray. The presidency didn’t so much as comment. So how can that be? And what now? are questions that require clear answers from President Mursi.
WATANI International
14 October 2012