There you have it. This is how the Muslim Brotherhood (the Ikhwan, in Arabic), through its official twitter account, sums up its policy about one of the most contentious issues in our economic policy making:
Our gut feeling is always righteous. Though it may be the beans we ate last night.
Or, to paraphrase:
Nah, we sorta feel we can actually do without aid. Fuck aid, we say! Those cunts are giving us oodles of money just so they can hurt our dignity. We feel we don’t need the wheat! What, you say, people are literally killing each other as they wait for hours on end to get subsidized bread? Fuck poor people! We feel they don’t really need bread either.The ‘dignity’ of the Ikhwan is more important, we feel, than poor people finding bread!
See the gut feeling of an Ikhwangi is better, of course, that economists’ assessment. Or financial reports, or balance sheets. All that is heathen stuff! Economic forecasting models? Humbug!
Prepare for half a decade of rule when the ‘feeling’ of Badie and Aboul Fotouh (I know, he was fired from Ikhwan last year for disobeying, but he never disavowed them or their ideas) will determine whether the Egyptian people will find bread or not.
Lucky their Evian wasn’t included in the aid package. If it were, they’d feel we could do without national dignity.
