Egypt’s Future Between Two Halves By Hossam Badrawi

Egypt’s Future Between Two Halves
By Hossam Badrawi
Because I like to learn all the time, and because I analyze the past and present to see the future, I share with you the philosophy of half in ruling the country.

Every ruling regime has advantages and disadvantages that we see and know. Dictatorship in governance, despite our disapproval of it, sometimes has benefits. Democracy, despite our call for it, sometimes has disadvantages. Dictatorship may take the country through the strait of backwardness in a short way, and democracy may make the majority of the ignorant choose the worst of society and not allow for taking important measures that may be in line with the majority of the moment but do not serve the future of the country.

We see in Western society now, and especially in the American model, that the power of money, Zionist influence, military and intelligence institutions, and the institutional interests of large companies largely control the choices of the American people, and it comes to choices between bad and worse, not the best for the American people.

I return to the model of dictatorship and let us take the example of Mahathir Mohamad in Malaysia, Lee Kuan Fu in Singapore, the rulers of China in its tremendous economic renaissance, Kemal Ataturk in Turkey, and I dare say the example of Adolf Hitler in Germany after World War I before the madness of World War II.

If we take examples from our region, Abdel Nasser was a dictator, and with all his mistakes he gave hope to the people, and he could have moved the country to a civilized leap, but personal glory was his priority, and Habib Bourguiba was a dictator, but he also moved his country to a great civilized leap in women’s rights, education, and others.

Most dictators’ terms of rule ended either with calamities or some kind of defect, or with the collapse of their countries, and few of them, whose reforms were sustained.

What protects the people and the ruler from the euphoria of power, influence, and hypocrisy that arises around it, is the transfer of power, as everyone around the ruler knows that the matter is not sustainable. Let me take Singapore as an example, a country that only came into existence as an independent country in 1965. Could it have reached what it is today without its founder Lee Kuan Fu? Who said: The renaissance of nations begins with education. This is what I started when I took over power in a very poor country. I cared more about the economy than politics, and about education more than the system of government. I built schools and universities, and sent young people abroad to learn, and then benefit from their studies to develop the interior of Singapore. Singapore has continued to achieve its distinguished economic growth. Since the beginning of 1980, it has been able to reduce the unemployment rate in the country to 3%, and the gross domestic product rose from $7 billion in 1965 to $87 billion in 2000, and reached $400 billion in 2023, and per capita income rose from $435 annually to $30,000 annually in the same period of time, and today it has reached $80,000.

Could China, whose national income today exceeds that of the United States, grow and invest within a framework of formal equality that makes the entire country poor and stands in the way of decisions taken by the ruling party that it could not have taken in a Western democratic climate?

Absolutely not….

Of course, I do not call for dictatorship and far from that, but I monitor events.

There are benefits to dictatorship sometimes? Especially in countries where corruption, poverty, slums and scientific backwardness are widespread, because it simply represents the majority that will vote against change and will want things to remain as they are despite their complaints about it because they do not have a vision for the future.. Yes.

There are disadvantages to democracy, especially when the rule of law is absent and debate prevails, and every discussion ends in no decision or direction and the ruling authority works to exclude all alternatives before the people and threatens to erupt in chaos were it not for its existence? .. Yes.

Without a firm application of the law, I do not see a building council, a residential neighborhood, a local council, or a university department council capable of making a decision and imposing it on others, but rather a division, and most likely with little, everyone swings in the middle.

We have seen an increase in the number of unemployed state workers after the January revolution under pressure from the street against the interests of the nation and hypocrisy or fear of minorities revolting or threatening in the name of democracy.

We have leaned towards keeping the public sector, which loses billions, and we have rejected domestic and foreign investment and creating job opportunities under the slogan of protecting the poor. We have danced in the middle in the name of democracy and social justice, which is achieved by providing citizens’ rights and not by the state competing with the private sector, and we are repeating the ball with new names.

The state says we encourage the private sector, and everyone who works in the private sector suffers from the disruption of their work or the taking of their rights and the draining of their resources with arbitrary taxes and considering their profits as theft that deserves punishment.

We replaced the public sector with institutions with other names, outside the state budget, but they still have the same philosophy.

We were not able to change the education system for the benefit of our future or prevent corruption in its management without any excuses other than the difficulty of harming the interests of some or the fear of confronting those who are afraid of change despite their complaints about the status quo. We are in the middle, we say but do not implement, we call for the priority of education and hinder its development.

We chose half democracy that makes it impossible to make any decision in an attempt to please everyone, so we got everyone’s anger..

We accepted half democracy and half dictatorship, so neither good nor advantage came to us.

As Gibran Khalil Gibran said with some of my own actions

“Do not sit with half lovers, do not befriend half friends, do not read to half-talented people, do not live half a life, do not die half a death, do not choose half a solution, do not stand in the middle of the truth, do not dream half a dream, and do not cling to half a hope.

If you are satisfied, express your satisfaction, do not fake half satisfaction, and if you refuse, express your refusal.

Because half rejection is acceptance.. Half is a life you did not live, a word you did not say, a smile you postponed, a love you did not reach, and a friendship you did not know.. Half is what makes you a stranger.