No one in Zagazig wants to talk about what happened last week. The hundreds of railway workers who maintain the old, trash-ridden tracks and trains in this Nile Delta town whisper hurriedly about a strike that briefly disrupted rail traffic across the country of 80 million. But the workers won’t give their names or discuss it at length for fear of retribution from the soldiers and security forces that so swiftly put an end to it. And the man they point to as their labor leader says nervously that he knows nothing about a strike.
But maybe it’s better that way, say some Egyptians — particularly political leaders and the railway’s managers. “We’re against stopping business like this, because we’re trying to get stability back,” says Mansour al-Shitry, an accountant for the state-run railways. “Of course the government can’t meet the demands of all the people at once, and we don’t want to give the military council more of a burden than they already have.”
That’s the rationale echoed by many of Tahrir Square’s liberal, intellectual youth, politicians and, indeed, the military leadership. It’s an opinion that predominates among the educated classes in the debate over where the line should be drawn between revolution and transition. Protests for political reform are crucial, many argue, because the system of governance will define Egypt’s future on all levels. Labor strikes, on the other hand, can and should be postponed: it’s not the right time, they say; Egypt’s floundering post-revolution economy needs all the work it can get.
But the laboring classes — many members of whom have not received their salaries in months — feel otherwise. Dozens of strikes and sit-ins have stalled business across the public and private sectors in recent months. And to union leaders and labor activists, the core revolutionary demands of the working classes have yet to be acknowledged. Minimum wage has been raised and promises have been made, but most have yet to see concrete change on the ground. And indeed, amid the cracks, crevices, and gaping political and ideological fault lines that have shattered the early unity of the February revolution that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, is a divide that increasingly seems to define other debates as well. It’s about class.
“There is total class warfare going on in Egypt right now that I don’t even think [the liberal movements] can see,” says Joshua Stacher, a political scientist and Egypt expert at Kent State University. “If middle upper class, urban people in Cairo and Alexandria get some of their demands met, they could care less about minimum wage, or the fact that the healthcare system is complete crap,” he says of the competing array of post-revolutionary demands. “The dominant discourse that’s coming out on TV is that it’s not the right time to protest for these things. Like ‘You shouldn’t have a living wage right now, you’re being greedy.'”
Instead, political elites have prioritized political reforms. And one of the most prominent debates to grip Cairo’s political scene in recent weeks centers around the question of what needs to come first on the roadmap to a prosperous and democratic Egypt: a new constitution or a new, elected parliament. The debate has largely been split along Islamist versus liberal lines. The latter, fearing an Islamist majority in parliament, wants to ensure that certain rights and laws are guaranteed first. The Islamists argue that only an elected parliament can determine the next constitution, and a national referendum passed overwhelmingly in March specified as much. “Some people are trying to take a detour around the popular decision in the referendum,” says Mohamed Ezzat, a local Muslim Brotherhood official in Zagazig. “But the people have chosen a road map for what happens next in this country, and they want that to be respected.”
