Egypt's new prime minister faces labor crisis, strikes
Egyptian Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb risks inflaming unrest if he takes a tough stance on the current public sector strikes.
CAIRO — "Security and stability in the entire country and crushing terrorism will pave the way for investment." So Ibrahim Mehleb introduced himself as Egypt's new prime minister on Feb. 25, promising that security solutions would finally bring economic prosperity to a country very much ready for it.
But the mass Cabinet resignation announced by former Prime Minister Hazem el-Biblawi Feb. 24 means a consensus on how to deal with growing labor unrest may now start to crumble, complicated further by the reported exit of leftist Kamal Abu Eita as Egypt's manpower minister. Mehleb, housing minister under Biblawi and a member of deposed President Hosni Mubarak's disgraced National Democratic Party before that, has a difficult road ahead.
Mehleb must negotiate a way out of the burgeoning labor unrest that has workers armed with a range of demands, including the 1,200 Egyptian pound ($172) public sector minimum monthly wage originally promised by the government by the end of January. As noted by Al-Monitor’s Bassem Sabry, some have pointed to this wave of strikes as a contributing factor in the Cabinet resignation, of which some ministers were not even aware before Monday's announcement.
"It is time we all sacrificed for the good of the country," Biblawi said in his 15-minute address. "Rather than asking what has Egypt given us, we should instead be asking what we have done for Egypt."
