Egypt: Fewer Curses, More Sense

Helicopters dropped thousands of balloons bearing the image of Nasser, while tanks and self-propelled artillery thundered past the reviewing stand. It was Victory Day in Port Said last week —the ninth anniversary of Egypt’s little Suez war with France, Britain and Israel. After parade’s end, the crowd waited expectantly to hear whether President Gamal Abdel Nasser could top his performance of a year ago, when he pounded the lectern for the benefit of visiting Soviet Bigwig Aleksandr Shelepin and told the U.S. to go “drink the sea”—the Arab equivalent of “Go jump in the lake.”

But Nasser had a surprise in store. Not once last week did he curse his enemies in the Arab world. And not once in his 21-hour speech did he bait the West. Moreover, he made only a perfunctory reference to “liberating” Palestine. Instead, he talked calmly and sensibly about Egypt’s economic problems. The country has run up a foreign debt of nearly $3 billion, and the gap between exports and imports has widened to a record $500 million for 1965. “We are facing difficulties,” Nasser conceded. “We must all work harder and make sacrifices. I have no magic button that I can push to produce the things you want.”

Show of Force. Lacking a magic button to push, Nasser has done the next best thing. The new Premier whom he appointed last September to replace left-leaning Ali Sabry has begun a reform of Egypt’s stagnant economy, and Nasser has so far given him full support. To increase government revenue, Premier Zakaria Mohieddin has sharply raised Egypt’s inadequate personal income tax and has added a “defense tax” on all sales to help defray military costs. He has jacked up tariffs on nonessential imports to save foreign exchange. He has also hiked the cost of luxury goods 25% (to reduce demand) and set low price ceilings on most foodstuffs (to curb inflation). To show that he means business, into Cairo’s marketplaces he sent 400 plainclothesmen who arrested 150 shopkeepers for price violations in a week. The others got the message.

Idea of Firing. For a longer-range solution, Mohieddin has started a birth-control program that he hopes will eventually reduce the number of mouths to feed. He also vows to crack down on the country’s notoriously inefficient government-run factories. “We must make it honorable to do a day’s work,” he says. “And we must get used to the idea of firing people who will not work.” As the 70,000 Egyptian troops return from Yemen, Mohieddin intends to demobilize many of them and retrain them for jobs in industry.

Though nominally a socialist, Mohieddin is above all a pragmatist. His tough policies for the nation (which he calls “Egypt,” rather than the grandiose “United Arab Republic”) have created such a favorable impression abroad that the U.S. has resumed its food shipments, and France, Kuwait, and the Chase Manhattan Bank have kicked in $75 million in emergency credit as a vote of confidence in Egypt’s new direction.