October chill in the Cairo air

This rarely happens in mid-May, but we have a nice chilly evening for a jacket in Cairo. Headed to celebrate my last-ever promotion at a nearby rooftop restaurant.

But first I thought I would share the political views of my taxi driver from the airport tonight. Most of the Egyptians I hang out with are professors and students, and I’m never sure how representative they are of the populace as a whole. So, I tend to ask lots of political questions of secretaries and taxi drivers, who are of course closer to the average income, living conditions, and presumably political outlook.

Tonight’s driver was a very kind elderly Coptic gentleman from the vast neighborhood of Shubra. Very religious guy: lots of icons in his car that he wanted to show me. (St. George is a particular favorite among Christians in Egypt, and this guy had a “Guirguis” icon of his own.)

He seemed especially bothered by the vast looting of Egyptian wealth by regime figures. He rattled off the names of perhaps 15-20 officials, beginning with the Mubaraks, and in each case he cited an exact number of Egyptian Pounds that they were responsible for stealing. Not sure where he got the numbers, but he had them completely memorized.

Like everyone else, he also blames former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly for orchestrating the January 1 church bombing in Alexandria. That’s one conspiracy theory that is now so universally accepted that it’s not even a conspiracy theory anymore: it’s either stone-cold truth or mass hysteria, nothing in between. I haven’t honestly read what the evidence is, but I have yet to meet even one Egyptian who denies it, no matter their religion. There may be some who don’t believe the theory, they simply haven’t said so in my presence.

The minor good news for al-Adly is that this taxi driver was the first I’ve had since February who didn’t make the knife-across-the-throat gesture when mentioning al-Adly’s name. However, I sensed that this driver was simply a very nice guy who wouldn’t want to see anyone executed, so that may not reflect any change on the Egyptian street.

I then asked him his top choices for the next President. (At first I was always hearing either El Baradei or Amr Moussa, with Moussa leading slightly among taxi drivers and El Baradei among secretaries. But lately I’ve heard less about both of them.)

The driver’s first choice tonight was one I’ve heard from no one else before– Samir Radwan, the Finance Minister. Interesting suggestion. Radwan is sufficiently well-liked that no one seems to be holding it against him that he was part of Mubarak’s final new cabinet and even spoke in favor of keeping Mubarak while the Revolution was ongoing. He’s a labor economist and comes off as a very sincere champion of the poor and an excellent communicator in both Arabic and English. He wants Egypt to shoot for full employment rather than GDP growth. I met him briefly a year ago because he was the keynote speaker at our annual conference, though he was simply another economist at the time. It was a shot in the dark, but he gave an outstanding lecture that left everyone in the room impressed. I’ve not seen him mentioned as Presidential timber anywhere else, but the driver (who seemed rather poor, being the owner of the most dilapidated taxi I’ve ridden in for maybe the past 3-4 years) may be representative of a poorer section of the working electorate who are perhaps beginning to rally slowly behind Radwan. I don’t know, but I’ll keep my eyes open.

His second choice seemed more likely: Prime Minister Essam Sharaf, who is viewed by everyone I’ve met as an all-around good guy. He was the former Mubarak Transportation Minister from some years ago who resigned, went back to being an Engineering professor at Cairo University, and in that capacity had the guts to lead a march of professors to Tahrir during the Revolution. Many of my Egyptian colleagues at AUC know and love Sharaf. Maybe he’ll go for it. I haven’t been paying close attention for the past 10-12 days due to all my obligations.