Freshly baked Baladi bread being delivered by bicycle to a street stall in the Al Hussein district of Islamic Cairo, a staple of Egyptian cuisine, Egypt. [Getty]
Egypt‘s political parties have stepped into the domestic supply chain to provide consumers with goods, especially food, at reduced prices.
Some of the Egyptian parties, particularly those with financial means, have opened commercial outlets in different cities where they sell consumers foodstuffs, including beef and chicken, at low rates.
The outlets, where foodstuffs, such as rice; pasta; lentils, and cooking oils, sell at around 25 percent less than their real market prices, entice consumers and offer them respite from skyrocketing commodity prices in the market.
“These outlets are a ray of hope in the middle of this unimaginable surge in food prices,” Mohamed Mahmud, a civil servant in his mid-forties, told The New Arab.
“I hope they will continue to be open all year round, not only before or during the elections,” he added.
A new commercial outlet sprouts in Egyptian capital, Cairo, and the other cities, every day, providing consumers like Mahmud with a chance to get their needs at affordable prices.
These outlets help these consumers put food on the table for their families, at least temporarily until they perish gradually when the elections start winding down.
They appear as rising inflation casts its toll on the prices of consumer goods, especially food, even as the government keeps boasting of a continual decline in inflation.
Nevertheless, this decline is yet to translate into lower food prices in a country where almost a third of the population is designated as poor.
Inside the commercial outlets set up by the political parties, beef, for example, sells for 300 Egyptian pounds (roughly $6) a kilo, whereas free market butchers sell the same quantity of beef for 450 pounds (around $9).
The same applies to all other commodities, a price difference that drives a huge number of consumers to these outlets, including Mahmud who has three children.
Campaigning tool
The ubiquity of these commercial outlets comes ahead of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which will start here on Saturday.
This is an extreme consumption time, even as it should be a time of fasting and rational food use.
Egyptians consume in Ramadan almost double the quantity of food they gobble up in any other month. Most of the spending of Egyptian families in this month goes to food and beverages.
The opening of the same outlets also comes as the nation’s political parties prepare for the elections of the House of Representatives (lower chamber of parliament).
The elections are slated for August, but the political parties seem to have decided to prepare so early for them and they are doing this by addressing the food, not the political or the legislative, needs of their constituents.
In doing this, the political parties use the same playbook of the nation’s Islamists who over the years used the provision of food to the poor as a political campaigning tool, political observers said.
“These political parties seek to create what I can call political capital,” Said Sadek, a political sociology professor at the American University in Cairo, told TNA.
“They offer social services ahead of the elections so that people can remember them at the time of the elections,” he added.
He noted that some of the political parties offer services, including free medical examinations and treatment, for the poor who are apolitical, but are badly in need of these services.
All the nation’s political parties, Sadek said, used the same technique over the years, including the party of late President Hosni Mubarak.
Egypt is still debating the system the elections will follow, even with less than six months remaining before the elections.
The political parties are divided on the same system, with some of them preferring a proportional representation system and others opting for the first-past-the-post system.
The debates, meanwhile, throw light on the crisis of Egypt‘s political parties: their lack of popularity on the streets.
This lack of popularity is rooted in the failure of the political parties to make themselves known among the members of the public.
The nation’s politicians blame restrictions placed by the authorities on political campaigning on the streets for their inability to communicate directly with ordinary people who cannot name a handful of the nation’s over 80 political parties.
Now, however, the political parties seem to have found a good tactic to introduce themselves to potential voters ahead of Ramadan and the elections, namely by being part of the food supply chain.
Masked political statement
The provision of food as a political campaigning tool has attracted many political parties so far.
The liberal Nation’s Future Party, which possesses a majority of seats in the parliament, is the most active of all the nation’s parties in providing food and basic needs for the members of the public.
The party distributed thousands of food boxes in different cities a few days ago. It was keen to put its logo on the boxes, along with a photo of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Other political parties are following in its footsteps, including the Republican People’s Party.
Founded in 2012 by a group of former government ministers and possessing the second-largest majority in the current parliament, this party has opened a series of commercial outlets in different cities in the past few days, where it sells all types of foodstuffs at reduced rates.
On 21 February, it opened a commercial outlet in Ayat, a town of Giza with a population of around 400,000.
The opening of this outlet was the latest in a series of initiatives the party took to address the food needs of the public, a mission the nation’s political parties are voluntarily assuming.
On 22 February, the party distributed 21,000 food boxes to the poor in the southern province of Assuit.
This came almost two weeks after the Republican People’s Party provided people in one of the towns of Giza province with free medical examinations.
Huge amounts of money seem to be going into these activities, but party officials say they are paying back to the members of the public who should be the main focus of every action by the government and the political parties.
“The party offers all these services to reduce economic pressures on people around our country,” Party Secretary-General, Gen. Mohamed Abu Hemila, told TNA.
“All these initiatives come within the context of the social role our party should be playing,” he added.
