I reviewed last week the outcome of the public call in Egypt for a boycott of brands the parent companies of which support Israel in its war against the Palestinians in Gaza. That brutal war, which Israel started in retaliation to the Hamas strike against Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023, has ravaged the land of Gaza, displaced millions of Palestinians, and killed and injured tens of thousands. Once a few-day-truce that brought direly needed relief and humanitarian aid into Gaza expired, Israel resumed the savage bombing, defying international law and humanitarian values, under the satanic cover and blessing of the US and its European allies. All the while, cities in the US and Europe and in many countries around the world have been witnessing angry public demonstrations boiling with rage and demanding an end to the annihilation of the Palestinian people, an end to the Zionist tyranny, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian State based on the foundations of rights and peace and the resolutions issued by international bodies.
The gruesome events led to public calls in Egypt to boycott brands that belong to businesses which support Israel. Egyptian public response to these calls was remarkable and unprecedented. It gave birth to a communal national momentum that largely achieved the goal from the boycott, sending a message to the world regarding the solidarity of Egyptians with the Palestinian people.
This extraordinary reaction whet my appetite to explore how we could use the momentum it created and redirect it towards another crucial issue burdening the Egyptian public. I talk about the spiralling prices of all products on the market, be that basic commodities such as food, or industrial or service products. There appears to be not a glimpse of hope of controlling these prices or restraining the greed of merchants. The question on every Egyptian’s tongue is why the government does not intervene to protect hapless consumers. But the bitter answer is that the government cannot monitor each and every shop or outlet to curb the unruliness of merchants. Through its apparatuses, ministries and executive bodies, the government is required to inform its citizens of the fair prices of products; citizens should in turn figure out how to stand against merchants’ insatiable greed.
I am not exempting the government from the responsibility of imposing fair prices to cover the basic needs of Egyptians, but now is the time to admit that this might be impossible to enforce on the ground. It is time to rally the people themselves to take matters into their own hands to empower the official prices or the official guides to fair prices. This can be done by rejecting the unchecked prices imposed by merchants, through boycotting the unfairly high prices they demand. I am betting that the same path trodden by Egyptians to boycott brands that support Israel may be yet again taken to control prices on the market.
There are two pivotal factors for the boycott against unfairly high-priced goods to succeed. First, official government agencies must provide clear, regular, and publicly available information regarding guideline price lists for all goods and services, and this should be regularly posted on social media to be known to all. Second, the public should be rallied towards monitoring shops so that the ones applying the guideline prices may be promoted, whereas the ones that do not would be boycotted.
Egyptians now feel helpless to do anything about effective price control, but it does not have to be that way. Whether or not the government is able to impose a blanket monitoring of merchants, the ‘helpless’ culture is actually behind the bitter reality of our markets. And this is where the ‘boycott culture’ comes in. Let no one assume that countries that preceded us in adopting public boycotts to bring down prices and achieved effective results through that, relied on national policies or government decisions. No, this is not true. Rather, the ‘boycott culture’ depends mainly on establishing one-on-one relationships between a citizen and his or her immediate neighbours, in the building, street or neighbourhood. This makes it possible to monitor the imbalance in the prices of goods and to what extent they exceed the official guideline lists, and to accordingly take decisions to boycott. This should lead to the stagnation of trade of overly greedy merchants, and force them to review their price structure to comply with the guideline price lists.
There is a huge untapped potential when it comes to communication of Egyptians with their neighbours in the building, street or neighbourhood, regarding collective action vis-a-vis commercial goods and services in all forms. Egyptians probably feel unable to change the reality, but believe me, each of us must explore this path, which succeeded in many other countries that preceded us in curbing price fluctuations. However, if we give in to our incapacity, and place the responsibility on the government, we gain nothing but staying put, crying and wailing over spiralling prices.
Watani International
22 December 2023