The confused state: Govt institutions reflect conflicting policies

Privately owned Al-Shorouk newspaper published parts of a report by National Security on Wednesday, which urged the presidency, intelligence and other state institutions to take action against non-governmental organizations recently in contact with Western embassies. The report perceived this communication as “suspicious” attempts by NGOs to conspire and create unrest against the government.

The National Security report accuses the Revolutionary Socialists and the April 6 Youth Movement by name — while asserting that other organizations are also involved — of conspiring with foreign agents to spur chaos in Egypt's streets, “similarly to what happened in 2011.” The report specified the US, European countries and Canada as conspiring powers and urged state institutions to instruct the embassies of these nations to stop interfering in Egypt’s affairs.

Gamal Eid, the head of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, says that the crackdown on civil society is still on the rise as state institutions continue to disagree on how to handle it.

The Ministry of Social Solidarity embarked on a strong campaign against civil society, warning organizations that they would be legally liable if they didn’t register under the controversial NGO law before November 10 of last year. However the ministry backed out shortly before the deadline.

Eid says the National Security report is not the only signal of the renewal of a crackdown on civil society. He says that five organizations have received visits from authorities in the last 10 days inquiring about their documents and their activities.

Eid speculated that blaming civil society could be a preemptive blow from the state, enabling it to blame conspiracies in case of civil unrest.

He adds that the report's accusations of conspiring with foreign forces rely on public meetings that members of civil society held with foreign officials lately.

“Meeting with foreigners is at the heart of our jobs, we have to provide information to any officials who ask for it. Cooperation in and of itself is not a crime, the state cooperates even with its enemies sometimes. There's only a problem when this is done in secret or there’s a proof of harmful intentions,” he explains.

The news comes as conflicting reports of an imminent Cabinet reshuffle continue with a report in privately owned Al-Watan newspaper stating that Prime Minster Ibrahim Mehleb has submitted a report to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi addressing the failures of eight ministers.

Hisham Fouad, the spokesperson of the Revolutionary Socialists, says that there seems to be a lack of alignment between state institutions on how to handle growing public frustration, with some government factions pushing for appeasement while others insist on sticking to the "iron fist" approach.

Fouad says that the regime has found itself in a crisis as the economic situation keeps deteriorating and social frustration is building. Concessions by the government, such as the cabinet reshuffle, are meant to absorb some of this public anger, he explains.

“It appears that there’s another faction that says that these signs of appeasement have to stop, and that the state must return to a security solution with an iron fist,” he says.

Civil society is an easy scapegoat and one that the state is fast to resort to whenever it’s in crisis, Fouad says.

“Dictatorial regimes need to create enemies to survive, they have to announce that there are conspiracies against them,” he adds.