Egypt.. Naguib Sawiris enters the privatization debate and criticizes the failure of “Nasserite thinking”

(CNN) - Egyptian businessman Naguib Sawiris entered the controversy surrounding the allocation of land and the sale of banks in Egypt to solve the public debt crisis, criticizing the policy of former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, which he said led to “the bankruptcy or plundering of public companies.”

Naguib Sawiris's comment came within the controversy over the privatization of the Bank of Cairo and the allocation of a plot of land in the Red Sea Governorate in order to solve the crisis of the budget deficit and public debt, and after the Egyptian politician Hamdeen Sabahi expressed his rejection of that.

Sabahi wrote on his Facebook page on Friday: “No to selling Egypt’s land, no to selling Cairo Bank.”

Egyptian lawyer Khaled Abu Bakr said in response to Hamdeen Sabahi in a post on his personal Facebook page: “I love Hamdeen Sabahi and his family, but I ask him to speak about his specialty, and to stop using slogans that have become faded and we have only suffered a setback from them.”

In turn, Naguib Sawiris commented on Hamdeen Sabahi’s rejection, saying: “Nasserist thinking is outdated and proven to be a miserable failure!”, according to his description.

In the context of the controversy, one of the users of the “X” platform directed his words to the Egyptian businessman, saying: “Naguib Bey, Nasserist thinking was not a failure. Nasserite thinking is what raised the standard of living of Egyptians and created the largest industrial renaissance in the history of Egypt. These are things that you do not understand because you are interested in creating your wealth without any concern for the Egyptian people. You have never met Nasser, because you created for yourself and your class only,” according to him.

Naguib Sawiris responded to him through his official account on “X”, saying: “Your Excellency is a Nasserite, but you wrote in your profile that you are against individual rule.. Is there Abdel Nasser’s rule, where is there no individual rule?

Egypt seeks to reduce the proportion of public debt to about 69.5% of gross domestic product by 2030, by reducing the budget deficit, increasing public and tax revenues, rationalizing spending, in addition to setting specific ceilings for domestic and external debt and sovereign guarantees, and diversifying financing tools, within a government plan aimed at reducing the burden of debt service and making greater resources available for spending on priority sectors.

Recently, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi issued a presidential decree amending the allocation of an area amounting to about 26.69 thousand acres in the Red Sea Governorate, equivalent to about 112.12 million square meters, for the benefit of the Ministry of Finance, to include the purposes of the allocation to reduce public debt and issue sovereign bonds.