arab rising
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The Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority ( EFSA ) requested that all listed companies
disclose their damages. We compiled and analyzed those disclosures, and presented our
findings in this report.
The criteria we identified and assessed for each listed company are the following: Revenues,
Price, Direct Damage, Assets Under Investigation, and Shareholders' Frozen Stake. Adescription of each criterion is included in Appendix 1.
Throughout our study, we relied on the median as our primary measurement tool. The
findings reached include the following:
Regarding Revenues, the sector that included the lowest median percentage change is Travel
and Leisure (54% decline), while the highest median was that of the Chemicals sector (20%).
Regarding Price, the Real Estate sector witnessed the sharpest median decline (29%), while
the median in the Technology sector was an appreciation of 2%. 67% of the companies in the
Telecommunications sector were directly damaged during the revolution, with The Egyptian
Company for Mobile Servicesreporting the highest Direct Damage of around EGP 90 million.
Companies operating within the Banking, Financial Services, and Real Estate sectors had part
of their Assets Under Investigation by Egyptian authorities. On the other hand, 40% of the
companies belonging to the Basic Resources and Chemicals sectors reported that at least
one of their shareholders' stake was frozen, with Telecom Egypt reporting the highest
number of Shareholders' Frozen Stake (11 shareholders).
As a preliminary comparative criterion among all sectors, we studied the effects of the
revolution on each company's business operations. We labeled the category "Affected
Operations", which may be caused by any or all, but not limited to the following:
A slowdown or cessation in a company's business activities, scarcity and/or price
appreciation of raw materials, logistical difficulties affecting the distribution of products
and/or obtaining raw materials, logistical difficulties that led to employees being unable to
reach the workplace, etc...
Noteworthy, the charts, tables and ratios throughout the report are based on companies in a
given sector that released information regarding a certain criteria; for example, a 10% figure
for Affected Operations means that: out of the companies that disclosed information
regarding their operations in a certain sector, only 10% were affected.
The chart below represents the percentage of companies that were affected. The
percentages are based on the number of companies that actually disclosed information.
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The table below measures the period (in days) during which operations were interrupted,
across all sectors:
Regarding Opportunity Costs (forgone revenues in EGP), statistics are represented in the
table below:
It is crucial to emphasize that throughout this report, we are not stating or implying any of
the following:
-Investment recommendation
-Asset allocation strategy
-That the economic effects of the revolution are over.
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The Rise of Popular Sovereignty
The Egyptian revolution has swung the balance of internal and
international relationships in favor of the weight of people in all fields:
social, economic, political and foreign. If previously the basic entity in
the world was “the state”, in our time this has been revolutionized to
public or popular sovereignty. The supremacy of the people has become the distinctive characteristic of our world. Popular sovereignty
uses soft power — the ability to get desired outcomes because others
want what you want. It is the ability to achieve goals by means of
attraction rather than coercion. Or, more accurately, it is coercion
without violence.
The Egyptian Revolution inspires popular sovereignty internationally
Egypt’s popular revolution has changed the history of revolutions,
especially in the non-Western world, by confirming — after a long
period of disregard — the moral force of nonviolence. The
spontaneous character of this revolution confirms the doctrine of popular sovereignty with all of its charcteristics (leaderlessness, non-
professionalism, public scrutiny, masses vs. elites, people raising their issues — including personal and/or union demands — in the street and
seeking to resolve them there, …etc). This could not have happened
absent the impact of the population’s youth bulge, which comprises
over 60% of the total inhabitants. The ability to “organize” several
million protest rallies at the same time in different jurisdictions
throughout Egypt illustrates the full power of the winds of protest.
There are, of course, several grassroots factors of unrest throughout the
region such as: authoritarian regimes; non-democratic societies; lack
of opportunity; and rising expectations; to say nothing of widespread
corruption and injustice. Economic hardship, the spread of poverty and
the decline of the middle classes have been major causes for the
uprisings sweeping across Middle East. With the impact of
international financial and economic crises sweeping over developed
and non developed countries compounding the continuous price rises
of food and essential services, the economic factors have ignited the
revolution of popular sovereignty throughout a wide range of the
world.
Egypt changes The most important effect of the Egyptian revolution has been the
transition from the excessive use of violence inherited from dictatorial
regimes to the peaceful management of political disputes. Barriers of
fear and lack of self-confidence have been demolished, to be replaced
by "Egyptian pride". It is no longer acceptable for rulers — or
distinguished citizens — to evade accountability for their crimes and
misdemeanors.
On the other hand, the collapse of the political system has triggered
excessive violence in other contested areas, with waning confidence in
the legitimacy of "current" laws as the best mechanism to resolve theseissues. It appears that the excessive confidence in the people’s role has
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inclined the Egyptian people to believe in only their own sovereignty.
The current dilemma is how best to determine who speaks for the
people when there is no consensus on a system to recruit
representatives of the people's sovereignty. The almost total absence of
any social contract to govern the conduct of citizens has underscored
the necessity of national dialogue.
This explains the non-stop confrontation between different factions in
Egypt with the aim of establishing "new" rules for the game. For
example, the strikes of civil service employees to secure permanent
contracts and raises; the work stoppage of other workers to increase
their minimum wage; the rallies expressing religious or social
demands in specific areas (like to rebuild destroyed churches; confirm
the rights of Christian girls to convert to Islam without interference of
the church; or proper medical care and compensation for those who
participated or lost relatives to martyrdom during the revolution).
It is important to understand that even though most of these requests
are justified, they still address non-collective demands at the level of
the state. Thus, internally, governance by popular sovereignty reflects
the persistence of confirmation of the pre-eminence of "active" people
over the state and any systems acting on its behalf. So, the intentions
were not only to change the political system but also to influence (if
not change) all of the legal, economic, security, social and cultural
systems in a way that satisfies the people.
This explains the competition among activist groups and individuals to
organize rallies of millions of supporters in the public squares,
especially AL-Tahrir square, to demonstrate their social power (not
political power inasmuch as they have not yet presented their political
programs) which is sometimes described as "show of muscle.”
Still, it is the search for "the national" consensus on the "national"
priorities or interests and "national" principles or standards which
characterizes the current turmoil in Egypt. Therefore, everything is on
the agenda for discussion — even proposals on the role of media, laws,
religion, women, modernity, tradition…etc. Some of these discussions
are really worrisome; there is an absence of mature debate and most of the orators tend to be raconteurs rather than experts.
Some important outcomes, however, are already apparent in the
Egyptian case. The most important being the demystification of the
Muslim Brotherhood opposition movement, the largest organized
group in Egypt that has long operated covertly. By virtue of having to
practice real-world politics and day-to-day bargaining, the Muslim
Brotherhood has been brought down to earth as a movement of
ordinary mortals among the opposition. The role of the army also, in
standing side by side with the Egyptian people, has had a remarkable
result in authenticating the sovereignty of the people. Unlike thetradition of military interventions in internal politics, where the army
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favors the ruling powers, the Egyptian revolution has reversed this
custom to the advantage of the people. The army is now a strict
guardian of civilian popular supremacy.
Through popular sovereignty, Egypt — the oldest nation on the earth
— rejuvenates itself, as will other civilizations. This time the impact othe Egyptian experience is not only for effect as were Egypt’s own
version of the 1968 student rebellions, for example. But this time
Egypt is a wake-up call for "old" and "aging" civilizations to
invigorate their nations. This is why the map shows us that it is the
"oldest" civilizations that have been affected most by the style of
Egypt’s revolution (like Syria, Yemen, Greece, Spain, China, etc.).
They all represent countries which have forgotten inherited
civilizations and have major youth bulges in their populations.
Global domino effect
Egypt’s revolution has polarized veryimportant trends in international relations
via the so-called “civilization effect”creating "the age of popular sovereignty". It
has forced world powers to adjust the
shortsightedness of their ideological lenses
after failure to predict or cope with the turmoil in the Arab World and
other regions. Popular sovereignty on the international level stimulates
the better understanding and promotion in foreign policy circles of the
principles of nonviolence as a powerful tool.
The first and most important product of the Egyptian evolution is
"localization" and the reacquisition of the power of identity. Popular
sovereignty acknowledges no centralization of civilization since
people vary from one region to another. It believes in the changes
achieved through mutual will and the sense of ownership of their
diverse creators. The "new" world, with its multiplicity of cultures,
will surely participate in realigning the international relations
paradigm.
Meanwhile, in a contradictory trend, which nonetheless still underlines
the importance of localization, the idea of racial and religiousdiscrimination has prospered and grown in the shape of calls for the
purification of race or region (holy war) from the impact of other
races, religions or even cultures. Consider, for example, the widening
support for supremacist groups (like white supremacy in USA, or anti-
Islam and anti- immigrant movements in Europe represented by
"rightist" or conservative groups). Recently, it no longer requires mass
movements or groups to launch such holy wars; individuals can be
very influential catalysts for these tensions that can easily escalate to
violence. The Oslo attacks of July 22, 2011 dramatically illustrate such
an individual war. This represents the most destructive and
counterproductive outcome of re-acquired lost identity. At the sametime, on the other side, oppressed groups have reached their limits
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with their inferior and injustice situation and will no longer tolerate
further offences to their dignity and pride.
Localization in the global arena means the Islamic perspective will
contribute, once more, its great values of constructiveness,
benevolence and justice to international relations. It also means that"new" Islamist countries, now fueled by democratic ideals, will be
accepted as the Jewish country of Israel has been. The religious factor
is by no means diminished but, rather, prospers as the main "local"
factor. This also means the civilizing role of the state returns to play an
essential role in the balance of values that soon will replace the
customary balance of the traditional power system.
On the other hand, a truly multilateral system has finally had the
chance to be applicable as demonstrated lately by the high
coordination between BRIC group (Brazil, Russia, India, and China),
along with Germany — but outside the hegemony of the United States — in taking decisions (i.e. on war and peace in Libya). This raises the
issue of the “public war” concept and develops “public diplomacy”
tools. Regionalism or regional powers now have the preeminence over
their regions and their problems and it is certainly their responsibility
to find solutions.
The leaderless nature of the Egyptian revolution and the emphasis on
individualism versus institutionalism has affected the whole world in a
series of "rebellious events". An immediate example was the
crackdown on the concept of "collective bargaining" and the immense
difficulty of reaching "consensus". This effect was noticed in
democratic countries as the failure of social groups (unions for
instance) or even political parties to achieve results expected by their
members and supporters in confrontation with their opponents. We
have seen this demonstrated by the occupation of the Wisconsin State
Capitol by angry teachers; or by street demonstrations by labor in
Europe — especially Greece and Spain — surrounding their
Parliaments, Government and even union premises.
In addition the Egyptian revolution has shifted public diplomacy from
the state’s domain to private sector and non-institutional domains. For example, the mission to Uganda of the Egyptian Public Diplomacy
delegation — formed from a totally non official group — has
succeeded in convincing Uganda to postpone the entering into force of
the “new” Nile treaty between the Nile’s source countries that had
been signed without the consent of Egypt and Sudan one year ago.
On the Global Economic side, popular sovereignty persists in
prioritizing the moral aspects of the consequences of economic
growth. The price of democracy will surely burden the budgets of all
countries especially United States, in the form of humanitarian
assistance and military aid to toppled dictatorial rulers. Europeancountries should do more to establish much needed social justice
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among their southern borders, to help these countries in developing
their economies and create much needed jobs for the youth to fight the
spread of social malaise. With the ongoing financial and economic
crises, the passive side of globalization will prevail economically, and
the huge negative effects on poor classes will induce another wave of
revolution.
Meanwhile, within the economic domain, popular supremacy, as a
result of these popular revolutions, has confirmed the changes in the
economic concepts of development and the weight of the economic
indicators for welfare and growth. According to the World Bank, for
instance, Tunisia and Egypt were on the right track economically. If
so, why there have been deep economic roots for these revolutions?
This means development from now on should be concentrated on
targeting peoples’ welfare, not merely on statistics of resources and
production. This is not communist theory and is certainly more than
any traditional textbook model welfare state. The World Bank hasrecently announced that the experiences of the third world are
important to the World Bank’s including concepts of social justice andemployment to the role of the state, and their use of anti- poverty
measures and others tools to the formulation of new World Bank
strategy.
Regional Effects:
It is without any doubt that the impact of the Egyptian revolution
affects a wider region. The enormous impulse of the Egyptian people
to protest has inspired the climate of revolt. Huge waves of revolution
reflect the prevalence of deep socio-political problems. It also
emphasizes the role of Egypt as the cradle of all civilizations and the
leader of the Arab world so that when it rises against its rulers, all
other Arab nations do. While this does not necessary revive the idea of
Pan-Arabism, it does raise awareness of the unsettled problems that
present areas of vulnerability. Foremost of these problems in the Arab
region is the protracted Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In spite of the
absence of slogans or calls addressing the Palestinian issue during the
Arab demonstrations in general, it has always been the most important
issue that matters in any denunciation of Arab rulers. After the Arab
revolutions, Israel is no longer the only democracy in the Middle East.The pressure for a Pale