The Egyptian people must overturn another overbearing force that has marginalised them for generations: top-down government control of budgets and development.
By Dr Yossef Ben-Meir, a sociologist specialising in global development; he is based in Casablanca, Morocco
The Egyptian people must overturn another overbearing force that has marginalised them for generations: top-down government control of budgets and local development.
Egypt’s central government administration consumes the vast majority of public resources, allocating just 15 per cent for local administration spending, which is less than half of the average per cent spent by developed countries.
Three quarters of Egypt’s local spending goes toward wages and salaries, leaving just 6 per cent of the remaining for local capital expenditures over which local officials have minimal discretion.
The centralised system in Egypt denies the people’s decision-making in prioritising resources and projects in accordance with their needs. The cumulative effects of this centralisation are a main contributor to stratifying Egyptian society along economic, gender, regional, and sectarian lines.
Egypt can decentralise authority and catalyse democracy-building and human development by passing the long-delayed Local Administration Law. The draft law transfers power from non-elected governors to people’s representatives on the Local Popular Councils, to manage sub-national jurisdictions and public service delivery.
Unfortunately, with Egypt’s parliament dissolved, the law’s passage is currently impossible. However, when national institutions are in a position to pass this law, knowing that they have already been humbled by the people ought to create a conducive environment to negotiate through the passage of laws and the enactment of policies that decentralise power.
Egypt’s Supreme Military Council and leaders should not make the same mistakes as the ousted Mubarak regime and miss their opportunity to help usher-in this law; Morocco’s case provides the alternative lesson.
King Mohammed VI has been regularly speaking about decentralisation for more than two years, and has been constantly travelling the country particularly since 2005 to promote human development projects. The credibility he has built over the years in regard to his personal commitment to people’s participation and development is shaping in vital ways Morocco’s comparatively stable experience in the Arab Spring.
If the Local Administration Law and other frameworks for decentralisation are not enacted in Egypt, then a second grassroots democratic resurgence could construct them from below. For people to proactively build an empowering society, community meetings in villages, towns, and city neighbourhoods need to be organised so that local members identify, and then ultimately create and manage, development projects that improve their lives.
Local development that is democratically-driven can make decentralisation an operational reality by encouraging essential features like building people’s critical skills and confidence, and forming new sub-national partnerships and democratic organisations that can feed into a local federal system that becomes the bricks and mortar of the decentralised structure.
This kind of democratic resurgence unfolds in an evolutionary way that accelerates under its own steam. Community-controlled projects intended for local benefit can respond much more quickly and economically than centralised control, to different human needs in different areas of the country.
Egypt’s successful revolutionary groups should find a way to come together again to jointly create a civil national unity organisation dedicated to development and democracy that reverses top-down control.
This non-government organisation, with the networks of its founders, would:
1) Establish agencies at each administrative jurisdiction, at the 29 governorates, districts, and local administrative units;
2) Forge horizontal and vertical private and public partnerships that assist community-driven development and build up a decentralised system.
Decentralisation is advocated by a spectrum of political and social groups, including Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, and could be a unifying position among them.
People’s participation in decision-making to improve social conditions is an enduring global, social and political principle that relates directly to the Islamic concepts of shura: consultation in governing, involving the whole community regarding all matters; ummah: a decentralised, integrated, and diverse worldwide Muslim community that furthers social justice by increasing unity and cooperation; and tawhidi: a society that recognises the indivisibility of humanity.
On a related matter, the incredible courage of Egyptian youth brought on by their passionate belief in justice, and the ingenuity that they showed during the uprising, are qualities that have been attributed to the success of youth globally as facilitators of social change. Sub-national agencies in a national unity organisation should include youth on their staffs as much as possible, especially in positions that involve interaction with local communities.
The knowledge and skills acquired by members of a unity organisation while they assist the difficult and transforming process of empowering people and communities are likely to be applied by them again in future endeavors, including politics.
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