Political and Intellectual Prostitution.

By Ahmed M. EL NAHAS, November 25^th 2011.

You know of course that among the essential pre-conditions set for any government to merit loans from international financial institutions, like the “International Monetary Fund” (IMF) or the “World Bank” (WB), is what you will find in their “Structural Adjustments Programs” (SAP) in the labour section under that vague grey title: “Flexibility”; presented as a necessity to “re-launch the economy and guarantee the growth”!!!

In case you don’t know what that is, allow me to briefly point out that the term refers to imposing the complete subordination and submission of the “Employee” to the “Employer”. In other words an employer may lay off (fire) any number of employees at any given moment almost without prior notice and totally free from any sort of liabilities. Clear now?

But that’s not all! “Flexibility”, in any SAP’s protocol’s footnotes would also require:

·         Reducing the lay time notice to 30 days,

·         Dismissing the employee with “Scarce or Low Personal Performance” thus denying him the constitutional protection of the “Just Cause” right, and

·         Eliminating any possibility for the employee to seek justice in tribunal against “Arbitrary Dismissal”.

One more detail will be added as of next April, bringing the necessary work period, for an employee that enables him a justifiable case in tribunal against his employer, to two consecutive uninterrupted working years instead of one.

Well, with the existing complicated interlaced spider web galaxy of contractual terminologies, types of contracts and conditions which prevailed through the labour market over the past decades, you can imagine the results. No employee will have the chance to obtain for himself and his family an open contract to secure a future, and no labour dispute will ever cross the threshold of a tribunal.

Productivity, competitiveness and quality are not my issue here. My concern is what has been, and is still going on in Egypt; for I have no recollection whatsoever of any politician or intellectual to have ever even raised an inquisitive eyebrow in face of the clamorous paradox which I will phrase in the following simple question: “How can free dismissal create new jobs?”!!! Logic evades my comprehension.

Professional politicians in flagrant collusion with a “Régime” who domesticated intellectuals over the past sixty years, have certainly betrayed the nation by allowing such continuous denial for our basic citizenship rights; and no matter what their reasons were, I would simply brand them as defectors from their mission of “Guiding” and “Enlightening”. Those are the ones who turned their eyes and remained silently watching while the Constitution was systematically being raped. The very same individuals who consumed their repeated mandates voting in parliament to allow tailor made electoral bills with their regulatory norms to pass over decades and deafened by the orchestrated applause of intellectuals on TV, in films, in songs, in newspapers, in schools and almost everywhere.

Now you want to vote in the coming elections with the same laws and regulations under the same constitution for the same faces and you hope for a different outcome?

My third grade elementary school science teacher, the Honourable Monsieur Cilontos, always reminded us that “Matter would convert and mutate but it never perish”, like when you boil the water.. It may disappear from the pot but it remains exactly in its same identical volume but in a different shape, in vapour.

So these parasitic opportunists, they may change the pin on their jackets, they may refine their linguistic skills, they may dress in casual jeans or unbutton their shirts, but they will remain the very same short-sighted small persons who will surf on the wave crest for as long as permitted to do so.

Without “Purge”, by any possible way and mean, a “Revolution” will remain a crushable “Rebellion” that will never be able to change things or hope to achieve the minimum acceptable thrust to make any kind of political, economic or social reforms.

Mr. Mohammad Hassanein Heikal in an interview with Mr. Fahmy Howeidy last February rightly said: “Those looking for a role to play in the NEW should seek support in their actual proven share of active participation and commitment to induce and impose the CHANGE, not on their long history of submissive subordination to the OLD and their continuous compromising failures to defy or even oppose it”.

Valiant men of honour like Ghandi and Mandela taught humanity that:

“Changes can come from the power of the MANY, but only when the many come together to form that which is invincible.. The Power Of ONE”.

P.S.: Years ago when I was younger, and more foolish, while performing a Managerial role with multinational firms; I did use that cruel sword of “Easy Dismissal”.. As my ambition obscured my reason in two occasions, I admit and confess that I was wrong, and I am profoundly sorry for that.  

Pass On The Word.