Egypt's Population Doubled in 30 Years

Who's fault is that? Not the Moms and Dads, of course.

Egypt’s GDP per capita has almost doubled since 1981 — an achievement all the more impressive because Egypt’s population has doubled over those same 30 years, from 42 million to 81 million.

Dictatorships are not stable. So they do not make reliable allies over the long term.

[Are the policies of a democracy stable?]

Egypt’s friends should have planned long ago for a transition to a more representative form of government.

The Western world should be urging the regime against its plans to bequeath Egypt from Hosni Mubarak to his son Gamal, like some kind of family estate.

In 2008 there were local council elections. There were 52,000 open seats. After government disqualified candidates 43,600 seats were uncontested. They went to the ruling party which won 99% of the seats.

The constitution was amended to remove judges from supervising the electoral process. In the 2007 elections for the upper house of Parliament 88 seats were open. The results: 84 seats for the ruling NDP. 3 seats for NDP members who ran as independent candidates.

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