Interest in the superficial rather than the core, preoccupation with the pointless, and focus on form rather than content are distinguishing features of the struggle taking place between active forces on the Egyptian political stage. Indeed, each side believes itself to only be doing what is right, and thus distances remain far and wide between them all. There are many examples of this, as well as numerous stances, among them what took place last week. Most surprising of all is the nature of the debate taking place over the loan requested by Egypt from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), on the background of a visit by the head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde. Regardless of Egypt's desire to raise the value of the loan to 4.8 billion dollars, a sum larger than what had been put forward last year, namely 3.2 billion, the debate, and perhaps the quarrel or struggle, over the loan has been focused on matters of form, as has been the case for important issues in Egypt since the January 2011 Revolution. And despite the importance of the issue and its impact on Egypt's economy, and subsequently on the political situation as well as on the standard of living of Egyptian citizens, the focus during the debate over the issue was on matters far from the real interests of the Egyptian people, with all of its sects and social segments. The issue of the loan has thus become part of the mechanism of the battle between, on the one hand, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), in addition of course to the government and the Presidency, and on the other all those opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood from various movements. Indeed, those opposed to the Islamists focused on contradictions in the Brotherhood's political and media discourse, because it had rejected the issue of the loan during the transitional period managed by the Military Council and had in fact exploited it to wage a crushing attack against then Prime Minister Doctor Kamal Ganzouri. Similarly, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamists in general were gauged on the issue of usury and the legitimacy of loans from a religious perspective, and of whether borrowing from international financial institutions was permitted or forbidden by Islam! The issue reached such an extent, on the other hand, that some prominent Salafist figures considered the interest rate imposed by the IMF on the loan to represent mere “administrative expenses", thus making the loan halal (permissible according to Islamic law) – and if the IMF were to increase the interest rate by an additional one percent, the loan would become haraam (prohibited by Islamic law). On the whole, the issue of the loan is still being addressed “in form" while the Egyptian government waits for the arrival of an IMF delegation next week to discuss the approach that will be implemented by Doctor Hesham Qandil's government to solve the problems of the Egyptian economy and the reform measures which the IMF has asked the Egyptian government to pledge to take, in addition to the ways in which the loan would be spent, and the government's plans for paying it back. These important matters which the delegation will discuss should have been presented to the public by the Egyptian elite. Their battle should have revolved around the conditions placed by the IMF on the government before approving the loan, and around the nature of the reforms the Qandil government would be pledging to enact, or even the pledges that have already been made by President Doctor Mohamed Morsi to Mrs. Lagarde, and the extent of their impact on the lives and basic needs of citizens – especially as some of the most logical and basic demands made by all international financial institutions concern reconsidering policies of subsidizing essential goods, in particular fuel and bread, and returning to implement a strict privatization program that would get rid of companies and institutions owned by the state that do not provide lucrative economic returns. These are matters that would increase the burden already suffered by ordinary citizens, who were strongly affected after the Revolution as a result of reduced production revenue and foreign investments, and of some factories halting production. Another issue no one has addressed is whether the amount of the loan would be reserved for compensating Egypt's budget deficit and for spending on essential consumer goods, or whether it would be exploited to achieve economic growth that would allow the government to pay back the loan without increasing the burden on citizens. Indeed, the Egyptian government is facing a major crisis with regard to balancing the budget, the rising cost of loans and the fact that local banks bear the greater burden of the government's loans. Moreover, the Egyptian economy is suffering from extreme erosion in terms of foreign currency reserves. All of these are matters which political forces and economic elites should have addressed, explained and analyzed, so as to enlighten citizens and warn the government about whether such a loan would represent a threat to the Egyptian state. And if the elites have been preoccupied with their own struggles, and if some of them have exploited the loan in order to undermine the Muslim Brotherhood, it is strange that Prime Minister Hesham Qandil did not himself take the initiative of explaining to people the reasons for the loan, the ways in which it will be spent and the resources the government will be working on in order to pay it back in the future. Even stranger is the fact that not one of those in power (as a group, as a political party and as a government) has so far come out to offer people a timetable for moving forward with the renaissance project, on the basis of which President Morsi waged the presidential elections, and to explain the difference between the IMF loan and the contents of the renaissance project, in order to prove to them that there is no contradiction between the two courses of action: achieving growth and borrowing from the IMF.
