Do we hope to change?
I have an thought and moral conflict when I contemplate the big waves that the Egyptian reality is actually facing, which is the country that gathers 80 million people inside and about 7 million Egyptian emigrants in various parts of the advanced world.
My mind is full of worries pushed by currents of optimism and lassitude, but I am comforted by motives of optimism. This means that, despite the multiple aspects of negligence surrounding us, we must make many efforts and sacrifices, and abandon negativity and barbaric actions, obstruction of public services to face with all courage and credibility our vital problems, to fulfill the needs of citizens in savage areas in which more than 15 million people live. There must be a support for the marginalized classes in the Egyptian society whose percentage reaches up to 40 % of the Egyptian population. There must be care of the health of the citizen after spread of many diseases like cancer, renal failure, virus C, etc. We must face problems of housing, sanitary drainage, potable water and eliminate illiteracy of about 30 % of the Egyptian population who were deprived of education. We must confront drug trade and addiction. This is a summary of some problems eroding the structure of our country. We must invest all our potentials and capacities to solve them.
The change we hope in all issues of our life needs an internal volcano. The launch of 25th January revolution liberated us from an oppressing and destructive climate that killed the spirit of the citizen to deal with freedom, in a constructive and creative way. However, the question is: why did this revolution not ended yet? Because we actually did not change our human entity, our behavior, our practices, and respect all societal components including laws, concepts of our life, respect of difference, diversity and free choice.
In the course of the new era, we notice how confessional, political and social conflicts amplify. We create transcendental laws and we become genius in justifying and defamation. Some currents try, by their sterile thoughts, to make us regress to Midst Ages. Unfortunately, we struggle based on our religious concepts. We lost our revolutionary ambition, our forces and our values in illusionary struggles and we fight against the wind like Don Quichotte did.
Building the future of Egypt requires reaction and commitment of every citizen, whether great or small, for edification and giving. I remember the natural catastrophe that Japan faced few months ago (Tsunami), which occurred on March 2011. It was a hard hit for its economy. What was the response of Japanese citizens to support their country? They gave donations to rescue sinister areas of about 2 billion dollars (about 120 billion Egyptian pounds). The other example is when an economic crisis occurred in Asia in 1997, South Korea asked its citizens to donate the excess of gold they have to overcome the hard economic trial. Effectively, Koreans rushed to bring a part of their gold to support the economy of their country.
Here in Egypt, despite the revolutionary transformation made by the youth, we face an economic regression due to the context of tourism, stopping of many vital projects and increased rate of unemployed. We import more than 65 % of our needs of food. This phenomenon of our economy make us launch seriously towards the revolution of building, giving and effort, change our negative spirit in work, respect moralities and laws. We really need a revolution in science, a revolution in humanity.
Magdy Garas
20/7/2011
