Maria Golia on how Egypt´s development projects only benfits the rich
Go read Maria Golias new piece in the daily star, it´s on the topic why Egypt´s development project´s just benefits the rich.
Here´s a soundbite:
¨Instead of responding to the needs of the larger community - for good schools, medical facilities, affordable housing, proximity to viable employment - the decision-making elite that has successfully monopolized Egypt's direction for decades tends to choose the quickest, most self-enriching path. Moreover, it tries to sell its self-aggrandizement to the public as altruistic economic progress. The most commanding feature of Egypt's real-estate development since the onset of the 1990s reform is the fact that it couldn't be less real.¨
She ends like this:
¨Although the government trumpets these investments as economic achievements, it is nevertheless selling a priceless patrimony out from under its citizens' feet, as if it owned this land by sovereign right. Its willingness to award high-bidding foreigners with key developments that cannot significantly better the lot of average Egyptians betrays a failure to prioritize, conceive and finance its own infrastructure improvements. These major sales and their proposed developments should be seen for what they are: not seedling towns or economic cure-alls, but the last resort of an ethically and imaginatively bankrupt elite.¨
Maria Golia, Devolopment for the rich, development, Egypt
Here´s a soundbite:
¨Instead of responding to the needs of the larger community - for good schools, medical facilities, affordable housing, proximity to viable employment - the decision-making elite that has successfully monopolized Egypt's direction for decades tends to choose the quickest, most self-enriching path. Moreover, it tries to sell its self-aggrandizement to the public as altruistic economic progress. The most commanding feature of Egypt's real-estate development since the onset of the 1990s reform is the fact that it couldn't be less real.¨
She ends like this:
¨Although the government trumpets these investments as economic achievements, it is nevertheless selling a priceless patrimony out from under its citizens' feet, as if it owned this land by sovereign right. Its willingness to award high-bidding foreigners with key developments that cannot significantly better the lot of average Egyptians betrays a failure to prioritize, conceive and finance its own infrastructure improvements. These major sales and their proposed developments should be seen for what they are: not seedling towns or economic cure-alls, but the last resort of an ethically and imaginatively bankrupt elite.¨
Maria Golia, Devolopment for the rich, development, Egypt
posted by Ibn ad Dunya at 3:25 AM
1 Comments:
I'm not even sure saying it benefits the rich is accurate.
it seems like most things to only benefit the ruling mob, yeah it caters for the rich (the shoping malls, resorts and gated communities) but I don't think it's making your average well off Egyptian more well off.
that's the amazing thing about Egypt these days, any government even a dictatorship survives based on some social contract, it should be benefiting a wide group a whole class, doesn't have to be the majority, could be a minority but it should be big. at the moment while the poor suffer more this regime doesn't seem to be serving anyone's interests.
good article though Maria keeps getting better and better.
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