Utopia of the North; How Does Sisi Contribute to Increasing the Misery of the Poor and the Wealth of the Rich?
"We are a people, and you are a people; although the Lord is one, we have a God, and you have a God.” Words written by the author Medhat al-Adl, sung by singer Ali al-Hajjar, angered Egyptians following the military coup that hit Egypt on July 3, 2013.
These words reflect the state of societal division that Egypt has been experiencing for eight years of the coup, and reveal the disparity between two peoples, one representing the majority but poor and the other forming a minority but wealthy and influential.
These differences are evident in the conversations of millions of Egyptian simple people about the loaf of bread, which the authorities decided on August 3, 2021, to raise its price after reducing its weight in the same month of 2020.
On the other hand, the country's social media and satellite television screens are teeming with tweets and advertisements about the second half of Egyptian society, the wealthy of the North Coast region (Northwest), in a scene closer to what is called utopia, a city made up of an ideal society full of comfort and happiness.
Some Egyptians expressed their anger at the state of societal contradiction and criticized what is happening in the resorts and villages of the North Coast and the state of extreme waste experienced by the least numerous and wealthiest part of Egyptian society.
According to the World Bank's May 2019 ranking, 60 percent of Egypt's population is either poor or vulnerable to poverty.
Egyptian writer and novelist Ammar Ali Hassan said: "Whoever wants to know one of the reasons for the scourge of our country, go to the north coast and see how the new wealthy speak and behave."
The north coast is an area extending from the west of Alexandria to Marsa Matrouh, passing through the cities of Hammam, Al-Alamein, Sidi Abdurrahman, Dabaa, Fuuka and Ras al-Hikma, 250 km long.
These areas were dominated by a religious tribal character that tended to be Salafist, which was evident in the victory of the Salafist Nour Party in large proportions of the seats of the 2012 Parliament in Marsa Matrouh and Alexandria.
Westernization and Secularization
However, there has been a surge and significant change in the region, which is highly priority by the ruling regime and is launching giant projects, such as the New City of Alamein, Alamein Airport, Ras al-Hikma tourist village and resorts along the coast.
The system establishes a network of roads to connect the coast to the delta and the administrative capital, with the development of the 160 km Cairo-Alexandria desert road, the coastal road to Al-Alamein airport and the 130 km "Wadi Natroun-Al-Alamein" road.
In January 2021, regime president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi decided to launch a 360-billion-pound electric train to serve the north coast resorts, marina cities and al-Alamein, linking it to the Suez Gulf resort of Ain Sokhna and the new capital.
The North Coast Armed Forces own a range of tourist villages and major hotels, while each of its subsidiaries owns a tax-free tourist resort group on its revenues, a lucrative investment for the army.
This construction boom was followed by a surge in the visit of the wealthy to the resorts of the north coast, punctuated by the emergence of a state of alienation and secularization imposed by resort owners and tourist villages on Egyptians.
Once you read the news of the North Coast via Google, a collection of videos and pictures of gatherings of young men and girls appears to be actions, situations and clothing rejected by Egyptian society, which is described as "religious in nature.”
Issues have always erupted of preventing veiled women from entering or attending parties, as well as preventing burkini from swimming pools in Europe's beaches way, in a case that occupied public opinion in July 2021.
Ruby's concert on July 16, 2021, sparked controversy with the organization's announcement that the organization would allow the wearing of a women's headdress, which some saw as a sign that veiled women were not entering.
Hossam Saleh, media spokesman for United Media Services, expressed his anger at the strangeness and secularization of north coast resorts away from the customs, traditions and religion of Egyptians.
A representative of the company responsible for media and artistic production in Egypt, which belongs to Egyptian sovereign authorities, criticized one of the famous villages of the North Coast, for preventing him from buying a chalet there on the grounds that his wife and daughter were veiled.
Saleh wrote on Facebook: "The worst question I've ever heard from the sales of a very well-known North Coast village. Is your woman or daughter veiled? Because I can't buy them if my daughter or wife is veiled."
Saleh, a figure close to the regime, said, "This question has made me sick that our country is asking such a humiliating question."
In the same context, activist Magda Rashwan spoke about the state of extreme alienation in Coast societies, evading everything that is Egyptian and changing its name to a foreign language.
She pointed to the state of extreme waste, that the young man's allowance is 1500 pounds per day, and that restaurants serve any food in a loaf for 1,000 pounds, pointing to the strange names of restaurants, meals and villages.
The "burkini" was strictly forbidden, noting the state of extravagance in which women were shown wearing jewelry and diamonds, as the ticket to the evening places was 1,500 without food and drink.
Coast Concerts
Singer's concerts are another factor in the anger of visitors and residents of Egypt's northern coast in exchange for economic and social crises and disasters for Egyptians.
The August 10, 2019, ceremony of international singer Jennifer Lopez, days after a bombing that killed 20 Egyptians at the Central Cairo Oncology Institute on August 4, 2021, was a painful irony.
On the occasion of her 50 years of age, Lopez performed in Al-Alamein city at a ticket price of 5,000 pounds, in the presence of three Egyptian women ministers, while social media posted pictures of the victims as well as pictures of Lopez and the three ministers.
The large public attendance at Sahel concerts at a time when authorities are banning any mass gatherings at football stadiums and imposing restrictions on prayers in mosques, activists have been prompted to criticize the lack of precautionary measures at the events.
In the summer of 2021, there were many concerts for senior singers, while ticket prices ranged from 500, 850, 1250, 2500, 3,000 pounds and 4,000 pounds, while Egypt’s minimum wage was 2,400 pounds (about $150) per month.
Performants who sang in the Coast include: Tamer Hosni, Saad Al-Saghir, dancer Dina, Wael Jassar, Cheb Khaled, Mahmoud al-Laithi, singer Amina, Mahmoud al-Assili, Ruby, Nicole Saba, Hassan Shakush and Omar Kamal.
On August 13, 2021, Amr Diab's concert will be held at the Diamond Music Arena with the new flags, with a ticket price of between 750 to 4 thousand pounds
Mohamed Mounir performs in the second half of August 2021 in Porto Marina and then Mohammed Ramadan on August 20, 2021, at a ticket price of up to £2,000.
Islamic researcher Mohamed Ahmed Azab said on Facebook: The large attendance of singers' concerts in the Sahel, which are priced at more than 4,000 pounds, gives you "the impression that the people who are fleeing poverty simply pay this amount in the evening."
He asserted that some of Egypt's poor go to garbage cans to collect what is suitable for eating, and some sold his furniture to spend on his children, stressing that this contradiction applies to him the song Ali al-Hajjar: "You are a people, and we are a people. You have a God, and we have a God"
On the rental prices of north coast villas and chalets, the al-Estiklal correspondent continued with Flowers Real Estate Marketing, which confirmed that the villa rent is 7,000 to 8,000 pounds, and the chalet from 1800 to 2500 pounds per day.
He stressed that there are things that everyone now knows, the most important of which is the conditions for the sea going down in the clothes allocated to it, pointing out that non-bikinis are prevented, especially swimming pools.
Egyptian local sites confirmed that the rental prices of north coast chalets start from 1,000 to 8,000 pounds a day, while the rent of villas ranges from 14,000 to 20,000 pounds, while hotel accommodation rates reached up to 4,000 per night.
Contradiction
Egyptian television director Ihab Marjawi spoke about the high cost of north coast resorts and compared them to European countries, indicating that they are equivalent to residence in Albania, Malta, Cyprus, and Turkey.
"The majority of the people are meant to be imprisoned in a particular place and in certain living conditions that facilitate the process of dividing the country into economic zones according to the socio-class level," he said in a Facebook post.
"As a result of the economic and social actions of the Egyptian regime in previous years, there has been a change in the demographics of society by income," said Mustafa Khadri, a researcher.
"Many Egyptian families have descended into the lower economic classes," said The President of the Egyptian Center for Media and Public Opinion Studies, Integration of Egypt, to al-Estiklal.
According to the 2021 Social Index for "Egypt Integration,” "the demographics of Egyptian society are divided by income."
1.6 percent of the population belongs to the rich class, compared to 8.5 percent of the upper middle class and 14.3 percent of the middle class, he said.
"46.9 percent belong to the class (below the global poverty line), while 28.7 percent belong to the destitute class (eating only two meals or less a day, not housing and not under the umbrella of real health insurance)," he said.
In response to the question: "How was the wasteful state of the Coastal rich causing a false image before the regime of the Egyptians?" "North Coast visitors cannot be seen as an expressive image of Egyptian society," Khadri said.
According to his center's database, "there are approximately 157 tourist villages on the north coast with approximately 45,000 hotel units (chalets)."
These villages use about 400,000 families (owning, gifting and renting), representing only about 1.5 percent of Egyptian society, according to an expert in opinion and information analysis.
"They even represent only about 8 percent of the classes that are able to own and rent on the coast (the rich, above-middle and middle classes)."
According to these data: How was that class the reason for the regime's continued decisions to raise the prices of fuel and goods, most recently bread?
"The Integration of Egypt Center has monitored this phenomenon in terms of the volume of media coverage, promotion methods and behavioral groups that are exported in the media," he said.
According to the center's estimate, it is "a deliberately false media image, created by the Egyptian regime to suggest that there is economic prosperity and well-being enjoyed by Egyptian society under his rule.
It is also "used as a cover for the economic and social decisions it implements as instructed by the World Bank.”
