Dissent in Egypt's professional syndicates
The country’s professional syndicates are witnessing a slow and gradual revival of political activism, which we should carefully follow.
In December of last year, the lawyers pressured their syndicate leadership, to endorse the thousands-strong protests they organized in the capital and provinces, against a new electronic invoicing system, proposed by the Finance Ministry. In the following month, they staged a national strike in solidarity with six detained colleagues. The detainees were released after four days.
Two months later, in March, Khaled el-Balshy, a leftist dissident managed to win the Press Syndicate election, defeating the regime-backed candidate. Independent candidates also won four out of the six contested syndicate board seats, inflicting what one observer described as “the first political defeat suffered by the regime in 10 years.”
Today, it was the Engineers Syndicate’s turn. Attempts by the regime to impeach the syndicate head, Tarek al-Nabarawi, who is by no means a radical, yet has been trying to limit the security services’ interventions, failed. Thousands of engineers mobilized to defeat the no-confidence vote the regime-backed syndicate officials tried to pass.
Historically, while blue-collar trade unions have been completely dominated by the successive regimes, (to be more precise since 1957), the professional syndicates which represent middle class jobs — like doctors, journalists, pharmacists, lawyers, etc — had a bigger margin of liberties, and were hotbed for opposition groups.
Ten years ago, following the military coup, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi completely destroyed Egypt’s civil society and eradicated dissent in the syndicates and elsewhere, as he desertified the political scene. The above-mentioned mobilizations may be small victories, but are very important steps on the road to the revival of dissent.