3. A very small, alien, and impotent elite detached from the country's realities
The privileged elite put all the stakes on Egypt's modernization but they did not mean it as a means of overall social progress; satellite cities emerged around Cairo in the example of 6th October City (Rehab City, Kattamia, etc.) whereby the lifestyle would be far beyond the average Egyptian's craziest dream. This solidified the belief among average people that the socioeconomic elite were utterly immoral.
In the eyes of the average people, the immorality of the socioeconomic elite had more to do with the lavish villas with the latest California-level equipment and less to do with the non-observance of hedjab (Islamic veil) and the consumption of alcoholic drinks that characterized the elite. The state functioned exclusively to protect the interests of the few privileged, not only by serving and favouring them but also by preventing the middle class from profitable business; this reached the paranoid level of prohibiting anyone from opening a fish restaurant in the Corniche of Alexandria because this business activity would immediately signify lower income for the few elite businessmen who had already got a licence to run fish restaurants in the said area.
Egypt's socioeconomic elite was very small, the middle class meagre and duly subordinated, and the people totally dissociated from the former. Indicatively, an inhabitant of the lavish island district of Zamalek may have lived 30 or 50 years without crossing the streets of Imbaba, a poor district on Nile's western shore no more than 1km far from Zamalek.
In a huge country (the total area being ca. 1 million km2) of approximately 82 million people, the socioeconomic elite totalled at the most ca. 200000 people, who were scattered in a) few districts of Cairo (Zamalek, Maadi, Masr Guedida or Heliopolis, Madinet Nasr, Mohandessin, Dokki, and Mansuriya in Giza), b) the satellite cities of Cairo, c) few districts and suburbs of Alexandria (Shellallat, Kafr Abdou, Sidi Gaber, Semouha, Maamoura, Marina), and d) segregated resort areas in the Red Sea coast (Sharm el Sheikh, Ayn Sokhna, Hurghada, etc.). It is noteworthy that the aforementioned districts' territory does not represent even 0.1% of the country's area.
What would and did beat an observer was the said elite's renunciation of their own country; either youth, middle-aged or elder, these people really and deeply reviled their own country under a tragic-comical pretext: it was "'poor''. They never travelled outside the aforementioned areas even if 5 stars tourism infrastructure was available (notably in El Minya, Luxor, Aswan and Abu Simbel).
4. Egyptian Tourism: Embodiment of a Misconceived, Misplaced Social Model
The aforementioned situation did characterize all the economic sectors; I will herewith offer an example taken from the sector of Tourism. In Mediterranean countries like Turkey, Greece and Italy, Tourism is viewed as an essential tool of socioeconomic progress and development for the entire population. Ministries and/or organizations of Tourism spearheaded tourism development by duly educating and effectively capacitating local people in rural settlements, small villages, isolated islands, and remote mountain hamlets to turn their own houses to small local hotels featuring standard services and nice cafes & restaurants.
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