Press Release: 'We Reject the Economic Program Presented by Ganzouri's Cabinet to the IMF'

[The International Monetary Fund Building in Washington, D.C. From Wikimedia Commons.] [The International Monetary Fund Building in Washington, D.C. From Wikimedia Commons.]

Press Release: "We Reject the Economic Program Presented by Ganzouri's Cabinet to the IMF"

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following press release was issued by the Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt`s Debt on 20 March 2012.]

No to reproducing Mubarak’s failed economic policies!

MP Saad Al Hossaini, head of the parliamentary Plan and Budget Committee, received in his office a delegation from the Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debt (PCDED), to discuss the issue of Egypt’s foreign debt in light of the discourse around a new loan the interim government intends to draw from the IMF.

In an hour and a half, the meeting addressed how the Parliament could support the Campaign’s demands of monitoring and audit of all debts contracted in the Mubarak era, and discussed the so called economic ‘reform’ program whereby the IMF would agree to lending Egypt 3.2 billion dollars.

Based on that meeting, the Campaign has submitted a memo to MP Saad Alhosiny, rejecting this program, for the following reasons:

  1. The government’s main objective in the program is to shrink the budget deficit and not to create employment and social justice: This objective is a continuation of the same approach of Mubarak’s previous governments, which resulted in impoverishing Egyptians and in an increase in budget deficit. How can the government attempt to decrease the deficit succeed by raising borrowing rates, producing an additional burden of debt payment and servicing, thereby exerting more pressure on the budget?

  2. The program mentions amendments on income tax laws without providing any details: This lack of transparency is a cause for concern – the choice of who pays income tax in itself is a socio/political stand, either directed against the poor or against the rich.

  3. Resorting to Sales Tax is the manifestation of taxing injustice: A Sales Tax is paid by everyone buying any commodity, paid equally by the rich and the poor. Worth mentioning here is the fact that taxes in Egypt are higher than in the USA. The program states an amendment of Income Tax Law to expand the taxing base, meaning more tax exemptions for rich investors under the pretext of discouraging tax evasion – Yousef Boutros Ghali’s approach - instead of imposing progressive taxation to promote social justice.

  4. Raising agricultural land rents: A policy that resulted in the concentration of poverty in rural areas (40%) and the destruction of small investors when first implemented during Yousef Wali’s tenure in 1996. Added to that is the negligible subsidy directed to farmers (L.E. 250 million), which has remained the same for over 4 years, as opposed to a subsidy of L.E. 4 billion for exporters.

  5. Lifting of the energy subsidy was vague in the plan presented to the IMF by the government: As it did not touch upon the subsidy on petrol fuel 95 and 92 or any other subsidy except to undertake the improvement of butagaz drum disbursement. The government also did not undertake to lift the subsidy from heavy usage factories – only 40 plants such as steel and cement works receive the same amount directed to butagaz drums that service millions of people.

This comes at a time when the IMF visits Egypt to meet with representatives of the government and the main political parties and NGOs, where the government presents an economic plan to meet with the IMF’s approval. The IMF has stated that its acceptance of the plan is conditional upon the approval of the party of parliamentary majority, before signing the loan agreement.

The parliament has still not discussed this plan to date, but it is doubtful that it will be accepted in its present layout.

Therefore,

  1. The PCDED calls upon the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and all other Egyptian political parties to reject this economic plan and to exchange it with another that is based upon channelling the resources of this loan to increase public spending on high employment projects in the fields of education, health, housing and public transportation.

  2. The Campaign has noted that total foreign debts contracted by Egypt after the revolution has exceeded 8 billion US dollars (details attached), and they are loans that have not been approved by the parliament or any elected body can therefore be considered corrupt and or odious as per international law.

Accordingly, the PCDED therefore demands the following:

  1. That the government should declare the full amount of foreign debt contracted by all post-revolution governments during 2011 and 2012 and their contractual obligations, conditions and disbursements.

  2. That parliament monitor those debts closely as not one mention of them has appeared on the Central Bank’s website or any official document released by the government.

Lastly, PCDED strongly criticizes the government for keeping its economic reform program veiled in secrecy until today – not having been presented through the media or to public civil discourse, further confirming the continuation of the non-access to information policy and lack of transparency and preventing the people from contributing to the formation of economic policies.

PCDED also affirms that reviewing previous debts and dropping the corrupt of them is a sure method of making foreign currency available and lifting a burden off the Egyptian economy.

 

  • ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR

    • Emergency Teach-In — Israel’s Profound Existential Crisis: No Morals or Laws Left to Violate!

      Emergency Teach-In — Israel’s Profound Existential Crisis: No Morals or Laws Left to Violate!

      The entire globe stands behind Israel as it faces its most intractable existential crisis since it started its slow-motion Genocide in 1948. People of conscience the world over are in tears as Israel has completely run out of morals and laws to violate during its current faster-paced Genocide in Gaza. Israelis, state and society, feel helpless, like sitting ducks, as they search and scramble for an inkling of hope that they might find one more human value to desecrate, but, alas, their efforts remain futile. They have covered their grounds impeccably and now have to face the music. This is an emergency call for immediate global solidarity with Israel’s quest far a lot more annihilation. Please lend a helping limb.

    • Long Form Podcast Episode 7: Think Tanks and Manufactuing Consent with Mandy Turner (4 June)

      Long Form Podcast Episode 7: Think Tanks and Manufactuing Consent with Mandy Turner (4 June)

      In this episode, Mandy Turner discusses the vital role think tanks play in the policy process, and in manufacturing consent for government policy. Turner recently published a landmark study of leading Western think tanks and their positions on Israel and Palestine, tracing pronounced pro-Israel bias, where the the key role is primarily the work of senior staff within these institutions, the so-called “gatekeepers.”

    • Long Form Podcast: Our Next Three Episodes

      Long Form Podcast: Our Next Three Episodes
      Long Form Podcast(Episodes 7, 8, & 9) Upcoming Guests:Mandy TurnerHala RharritHatem Bazian Hosts:Mouin RabbaniBassam Haddad   Watch Here:Youtube.com/JadaliyyaX.com/Jadaliyya There can be

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412