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Mursi, army debate imposing martial law as strike wave shakes Egypt - Morsi et le débat dans l’armée sur l’imposition de la loi martiale pour écraser la vague de grèves qui parcourt à nouveau l’Egypte

Thursday 28 March 2013, by Robert Paris

Mursi, army debate imposing martial law as strike wave shakes Egypt - Morsi et le débat dans l’armée sur l’imposition de la loi martiale pour écraser la vague de grèves qui parcourt à nouveau l’Egypte

By Thomas Gaist and Alex Lantier

In advance of a possible bread strike, as workers struggles spread throughout Egypt, Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi is in talks with the army to impose martial law.

Bakers are threatening a strike, protesting a government decision to withhold 400 million Egyptian pounds ($59 million) in government payments to bakeries that prepare low-cost bread for the poor. The loaves sell for 5 piastres, or less than 1 US cent.

Bakers expect to meet Prime Minister Hesham Qandil of the ruling Muslim Brotherhood this week to discuss terms. Last week the Mursi government threatened bakers with legal action if they strike.

Numerous transport workers have also gone on strike over the last week, with bus drivers in Mahalla, Cairo, Giza, and other cities protesting fuel shortages and rising fuel prices.

Mursi is moving to cut subsidies, above all for fuel and food, which make up approximately 25 percent of the Egyptian budget. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is demanding deep cuts in these subsidies, on which the Egyptian working class depends, as the precondition for a $4.8 billion loan to the Mursi government. US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Cairo last month, pressing for Egypt to agree to the IMF loan.

In Tahrir Square, banners protesting Kerry’s visit read, “Kerry, member of the Brotherhood,” or “Kerry, you are not welcome here.”

Strikes and protests have since spread throughout Egypt. Over the last week, an estimated 1,300 factories have closed amid strike action in the Nile Delta industrial center at Mahalla in protest at the Islamist government, according to the state-run daily Al Ahram .

School and university students have also protested, demanding the ouster of the regime and of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Yesterday university students clashed with security forces at Misr International University (MIU) in Cairo. They were joined by students from German University in Cairo, American University in Cairo, the British University in Egypt, and members of the Ultras White Knights, an association of fans of Cairo’s Zamalek football team.

Protests against the Brotherhood have spread around Egypt since Port Said erupted in protests on January 26, over death sentences handed down to Port Said football fans accused of participating in a deadly, police-instigated football riot in Februrary 2012 against fans of the Al Ahly football club. (See also: “Deadly clashes erupt across Egypt after Port Said court verdict”)

In February the protests spread throughout the Suez Canal region, including to Suez and Ismailia, escalated after the March 9 judgment acquitting seven police officers of involvement in the riot.

The ruling also split the police, with sections of Egyptian police and the notorious Central Security Forces refusing orders to attack protesters, which intensified fears in the ruling class. Earlier this month, the Cairo courts suspended elections scheduled for April 22.

This was in particular demanded by the bourgeois “left” parties, who are terrified of the renewed upsurge in the working class. Former UN diplomat Mohamed ElBaradei of the National Salvation Front (NSF) backed the cancellation of the election, and warned that elections would place Egypt on a “road to total chaos and instability.”

On Sunday, Mursi announced that he was considering whether to “impose exceptional measures to restore domestic order,” and saying he was “afraid” he might have to do so.

According to Al Ahram, Mursi met for a one-hour, closed-door session on Monday with Defense Minister Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi. Mursi reportedly asked El-Sisi whether he would approve imposing exceptional measures. Apparently, El-Sisi refused to give Mursi his approval.

El-Sisi later stated that “the economic, social, and security challenges that Egypt faces require that all forces of society unite and work together to overcome the current crisis.”

The capitalist parties are desperately trying to re-assemble a functioning apparatus of repression against the working class. Far right-wing groups affiliated with the Brotherhood have proposed plans for para-military squads or “security militias” to defend the regime.

Saber Abul Fotouh, the head of the labor committee of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the MB’s political arm, asserted the necessity for developing “alternative methods to maintain security in the country in light of a recent wave of police strike”. “Alternative methods” clearly refers to the mobilization of far-right groups for violent attacks against the Egyptian working class.

Brotherhood members are reportedly forming militias in more rural areas, such as the southern provinces of Upper Egypt.

The NSF and other pro-capitalist opposition parties, meanwhile, have raised the possibility of a coalition government between the secular parties, with an expanded role for the military, to replace the Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood crackdown comes amid signals that US imperialism is looking for more secular forces to wage its proxy war against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in particular, and more broadly throughout the region.

Fearful of losing ground to rivals inside the Egyptian political establishment, the Brotherhood is threatening to cut off bourgeois “left” parties’ sources of funding and proceeding with a crackdown against them.

The FJP is pushing strict laws against foreign-funded Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) operating in Egypt. Washington works closely with NGOs, forging ties with petty-bourgeois groups and trade unions, to suppress working class struggles and advance US imperialist interests.

The regime has also issued court summons for five activist bloggers and against 169 additional persons, including party leaders, alleged “thugs” and political figures. These include Egyptian Social Democratic Party leader Mohamed Abul-Ghar, Free Egyptians Party member Mahmoud El-Alaily, and former Revolution Youth Coalition member Khaled Telima. Those summoned for questioning are accused of inciting demonstrations against the Brotherhood on March 22.

“If investigations prove that certain political figures are implicated, the necessary measures will be taken against them, whatever their status,” Mursi said on his Twitter account on Sunday, also carried on state television.

He added, “I am a president after a revolution, meaning that we can sacrifice a few so the country can move forward. It is absolutely no problem.”

At the same time, sections of the military are apparently considering whether to oust Mursi and install the bourgeois and pseudo-left parties in power, calculating that these forces are better able to control the situation than the Brotherhood.

General Mohamed Ali Bilal criticized “the clear inefficiency of the current administration,” attacking the Brotherhood for using “methods similar to those that were adopted by the old regime” of Hosni Mubarak, whom the working class toppled in mass protests in February 2011.

Forum posts

  • A wave of renewed workers struggles – including a number of strikes in key industrial sectors – hit Egypt in the days that followed the election of Mohamed Morsi as president of the country in June.

    The timing of the strikes reflected the fact that millions of poor and working Egyptians hold high expectations that Mohamed Morsi – who defeated Mubarak-era General Ahmed Shafiq – will fulfill his pledge to fight the January 25 Revolution goals of ‘Bread, Freedom and Social Justice.’

    In fact, strikes, sit-ins and workers protests fell in the months of April and May, according to the labour rights research center, Walad-Al-Ard. Workers were waiting out the intense presidential race, which dominated the country’s political scene, to see which president they might be able to pressure for demands.

    In the month of Morsi’s election, two major workers struggles exploded, forcing themselves into the public discourse and all media outlets.

    In Mahalla Al-Kubra, the historic citadel of Egypt’s textile industry, which still employs 20% of all industrial workers, 24,000 public sector workers went on strike on June 15th – for the first time since 2011. They put forward a host of grievances with regard to wages, benefits, medical care, and a demand to fire the CEO of the holding company.

    Secondly, less than four days after Morsi was inaugurated, 1,500 Ceramica Cleopatra workers took their one-year long battle against Mubarak-era businessman tycoon Mohamed Abul Enein from Suez, to the presidential palace in Cairo. At the doors of the presidential palace, they demanded the government force Abul Enein to meet the terms of prior agreements, the last of which was brokered in the spring granting the workers concessions on profit-sharing, wages and work conditions.

    Meanwhile, tens of smaller workers sitـins and strikes, which have been a stable feature since the fall of Mubarak, are floating in the background of the Mahalla and Ceramica work stoppages.

    These smaller actions by groups of workers whose numbers vary from tens to hundreds can be broadly divided into four general categories.

    1) Strikes by government workers/clerks to achieve better wages and working conditions by switching affiliation from one ministry to another.

    The recent strike by the staff at the Real Estate Notary Agency for higher salaries and against continued affiliation to the ministry of justice is an example of this type of struggle, which has mushroomed across various state administrative agencies since the fall of Mubarak.

    2) Workers protests in various state agencies or state-owned companies to gain promised wage increases that could allow them to reach an LE700 minimum wage. The government conceded this minimum wage in 2011, but habitually fails to deliver on time if at all.

    3) Widespread struggles by temporary workers to win full-time and permanent status after languishing for years under conditions of low wages and job insecurity.

    The plight of temporary workers at the Torah Cement Company in Helwan, south of Cairo, is a case in point. The company employs 1,200 workers and was 80% privatised in 2005. Hundreds of Torah’s workers have worked in the company for as long as 17 years under temporary contracts.

    In early July, the temporary workers occupied the factory to demand permanent contracts. The strikers kept the machines running – from 11 to 25 July, but then to force the owners to listen, they pulled the plug on production lines, thus cutting off 30% of the cement supply to the Egyptian market.

    4) Struggles to force private capital including foreign investors to respect labour laws and basic workers rights, as minimal as they are in Egypt.

    For example, in the industrial city of Kafr Al-Dawar in the northeast Delta, hundreds of workers have been fighting to force the management of Tetco to reopen the factory. The Turkish-owned textile company closed the factory in the spring in order to avoid paying years-overdue bonuses and profits to the workers.

    The workers are also demanding that the management recognise their elected union and rescind their decision to terminate nine of its leaders. Tetco workers tried to take their grievances to the Turkish Consulate in Alexandria, as well as the Ministry of Labour Power but to no avail.

    Meanwhile, Tetco management refuses to restart operations until workers sign addendums to previously signed contracts stipulating the company owes them practically nothing. At this point, representatives of the ministry recommend workers sign the addendums to at least regain their jobs while local Brotherhood members of the dissolved parliament informed locked out workers that there is no one to pressure because the investor is a foreign body.

    Despite all the variations and gradations in workers demands, all recent workplace actions from the largest to the smallest, and whether in the public or private sectors, share two common interrelated features:

    1) They stem almost universally from the inability or unwillingness of employers to concede or deliver promised reforms on longstanding grievances that date back to the year, or even years, before the outbreak of the January 25th Revolution.

    2) Most labour protests put forward demands that aimed to pressure successive post-Mubarak governments from Essam Sharaf to El-Ganzouri to at least partially revise the free market neo liberal policies of the Mubarak era. These are policies that rely on high levels of exploitation of labour by curbing wages and job security.

    Both governments since the ouster of Mubarak have acquiesced, under pressure from workers, and granted some reforms. These touch on the issue of wages, (such as 15 per cent annual bonuses at the beginning of fiscal years), and the question of job security of a small portion of temporary labour (conceding full-time status to clerks in the administrative section of the state machinery).

    However, all of them have refused to deviate in principle from an overall commitment to neoliberalism. They therefore show more intransigence towards any demands which challenge the heart of a free market approach. The mentality of that approach today centres on the idea of ‘austerity is the solution to crisis’ (read, stay away from raising taxes on the rich and make the workers tighten their belts and pay for the economic crisis).

    This intransigence on the part of employers towards workers’ demands (which is not necessarily a result of the financial inability of employers to dash out money for this or that demand) means bosses always take a number of hardline positions on certain issues.

    These are issues that are important to labour but threaten the neoliberal consensus among both politicians (liberal or Islamist) and employers: no granting of permanent status universally to temporary workers, no commitment to free healthcare for all, no progressive tax system, no discussion of a living wage, and, of course, no serious attempt to implement the LE700 minimum wage in the 19 million workers strong private sector.

    Given this overall context, the Mahalla and Ceramica Cleopatra disputes, despite their high profile status, represent the norm in the current labour/capital standoff set of relations, and not unique cases.

    Both the Mahalla and Ceramica Cleopatra workers, like most strikers and labour protesters elsewhere, were not attempting to gain radical new ground. They were simply acting on a heightened level of expectations of a better life after the fall of Mubarak, and restating to bosses their insistence on the fulfillment of past promises and the implementation of tangible economic reforms to improve their standard of living.

    This refusal on the part of government and employers of the attempts of workers to challenge the logic of neoliberalism has been reflected in a slow and partial shift in tactics by bosses. They went from quickly granting demands in order to placate labour (for example by sending army officers in the first half of 2011 to speedily impose undesired settlements on capital in labour disputes to end strikes as fast as possible) to outright rejection of demands, ignoring promises made, dragging out strikes, the use of physical power (either by the state or hired goons) to discourage workers from fighting in the first place and to crush strikes when they do happen.

    In the case of the Ceramica Cleopatra dispute, for example, despite signing agreements to meet workers demands on more than one occasion over the past year, Abul Enein sensed no actual will from the state to force him to comply. And so, he regularly informed workers at the conclusion of every round of negotiations that he would cede nothing of what was just agreed upon, before his signature on the settlement papers was even dry.

    The management of Torah Cement, meanwhile, hired armed goons to terrorise the strikers and attempted to force open the factory in mid-July.

    At a strike at the textile factory of Sanoli in the city of Mahalla, the company encouraged armed thugs to open fire on strikers killing one of the labourers, Ahmad Hosni.

    Back in Suez, during the last strike at Ceramica Cleopatra, the government sent central security forces to use tear gas to disperse the workers who had stormed the governorate headquarters.

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