Press Release
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On Wednesday 9/27/2023, the Egyptian Coalition for Human Rights and Development issued its first report on the presidential elections in Egypt under the title “Political, Economic and Social Atmosphere That Take Place in The Presidential Elections”. The report reviews the political, economic and social context in which these elections are held through several axes:
Economic Atmosphere: The reality of the Egyptian economy and the challenges it faces.
The report indicated that Egypt, like other countries in the world, went through the repercussions of the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, which appeared at the end of 2019, and the resulting storm waves that swept the global economy and caused the largest global economic crisis that had a severe impact on poverty and inequality rates at the level of the world,
The Egyptian industrial sector has also witnessed significant growth over the past years, to meet the needs of national projects, promote economic growth, and increase job opportunities. A list of 100 measures to stimulate the advancement of Egyptian industry was completed, including 58 short-term measures, 33 medium-term measures, and 9 long-term measures. These measures contributed to achieving positive indicators for Egyptian foreign trade, in terms of increasing exports, decreasing imports, improving the imbalance in the trade balance, and achieving the highest historical rate of Egyptian exports, with a total of $32.4 billion, an increase of 46% during the year 2021, and exports in the first 9 months of 2022 reached a value exceeding 27 billion dollars, amid expectations that total industrial and commodity exports will reach more than 33 billion dollars by the end of the year.
Regarding the human rights file, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi launched the first national strategy for human rights, which aims to enhance social, economic, political and cultural rights within the country. The human rights strategy is the first integrated, long-term self-strategy in the field of human rights in Egypt, as it includes developing the state’s policies and directions in dealing with a number of files related to human rights, and building on the actual progress achieved over the past years in the field of maximizing rights and freedoms and overcoming challenges in this context.
President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s call in 2022 for a political dialogue on national action priorities also came to represent a new step added to a group of important steps within the framework of building an Egyptian model of openness and political reform.
This call resulted in the start of a wide debate within Egyptian society, and among political and intellectual forces and movements, on press and media platforms, about the motives of the call and its ultimate goals. The call also raised controversy about the forces that should or should not be included in the national dialogue, the basic references governing it, the nature of the issues that it should include, the criteria for determining the participating political forces, the criteria for their representation within the dialogue, and other methodological and procedural questions.
Since the call for the national dialogue, the Civil Democratic Movement has called on various opposition parties and forces to take urgent measures to build confidence before participating in the dialogue, the most important of which is the release of political prisoners. Indeed, dozens of prisoners imprisoned in political cases have been released.
With regard to the file of pretrial detention, which has become inevitable to be closed after security has been restored, as quickly as possible, by immediately releasing all those in pretrial detention who have not been brought to trial and who have not been proven to have committed murder, sabotage, or called for it. This is an urgent popular humanitarian demand.
With regard to the social aspect, the report monitored the suffering and challenges faced by the Egyptian citizen due to the rise in price increases, as well as the effects of increasing inflation rates on livelihood. The report presented the package of measures announced by President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi last March, to mitigate these effects, including: increasing salaries and pensions as part of an improvement package. The income of workers in the state administrative apparatus and those with private cadres, as of April 1, 2023, and raising the minimum wage by 1,000 pounds per month. The government aimed to increase salaries to mitigate the impact of implementing the necessary financial and economic reforms on citizens, and in line with the size of inflation and the increase in prices resulting from successive global crises. In a way that achieves a real increase in the incomes of workers in state agencies by targeting an annual growth rate in wages that exceeds the inflation rate, which has reached record levels.
To view the report, follow the following link
