The blessed 25 January revolution has succeeded in toppling a corrupt regime that had oppressed the sons of Egypt for many years, and the Egyptian people, the owners of the ancient civilization, will succeed – God willing – in toppling the corrupt system that has spread in the veins of the Egyptian society, and contributed to a great extent to our political, economic, social, and cultural backwardness. For this reason, the Muslim Brotherhood Group announced the establishment of the Freedom and Justice Party.
The Freedom and Justice Party, together with the rest of the sons of the Egyptian people, shoulders the responsibility of: building a modern constitutional national democratic state that expresses the will of the people; repairing – with the participation of all the efforts and creativity of the strong loyal sons of the nation in all fields – what has been corrupted by the tyrants; installing a new constitution; confronting all the laws that have allowed injustice and tyranny; and installing a quick way of dealing with unemployment, poverty, health, education, and other urgent problems from which the Egyptians suffer.
The challenges facing Egypt now will not stop the march of democracy that has started by the blood and sacrifices of the great martyrs of Egypt in the 25 January revolution in which all the sons of Egypt from all political parties, coalitions, and alliances have participated.
The Freedom and Justice Party, since the first day of its establishment and entry into the Egyptian political life in June 2011, has undertaken the mission of rebuilding Egypt anew. This new structure respects freedom, and protects the basic rights of every Egyptian within the framework of the original religious values, not to mention the protection of the political and social freedoms that are indispensable in practicing the rights and advancing the society. The new structure also establishes non-discrimination between citizens in rights and duties on grounds of religion, ethnicity, or color, and it also gives women all their rights in a way that establishes balance between their rights and duties. The structure will legislate the laws that criminalize corruption and nepotism, and guarantees equal opportunity, support and consolidation of political pluralism, and entrenching the bases of partnership between the state and the civil society institutions in order to undertake the burdens of rising and construction.
The fact is that there are numerous challenges that face the Egyptian society at the current times, which the party tries to deal with during the upcoming period through the objective concepts included in the program of the party. The most prominent of these challenges are represented by the following:
First: The principle of freedom and equality: The party stresses that it pursues releasing the freedoms, protecting the basic rights of every Egyptian, and amending all the practices or legislations that contradict or restrict these freedoms or violate these rights, because freedom is one of the duties of Islam, “We have honored the sons of Adam [Sura al-Isra, from Verse 70].”
Second: Security: Since the eruption of the revolution, Egypt has been suffering from the lack of security, despite the fact that security is necessary for life, work, and production. Therefore, the party stresses the need for restructuring the Ministry of Interior, and purging it from all the officers who have been involved in oppressing the people and practicing corruption. This is in addition to changing the mission statement of the job, starting from the students at the Policy Academy and the honest among the police officers, in order to provide security and protection for the people, and not only for the ruler alone. This is in addition to drawing up a security policy to protect all the national institutions, raising the financial standard of the soldiers and junior ranks, instituting a maximum for the salaries of the senior officers, and supervising the ministry through parliament in order to guarantee good performance.
Third: The economic problems that are more deserving of care. The party believes that the Egyptian man is the base and target of development, and hence he has to be rescued from the state of poverty, and the low level of health and education services offered to him.
The party believes that the dignity and freedom of man are subject to the extent of the level of dignified life offered to him, and that frees him from the shackles of exploitation and poverty.
The party stresses that confronting the problem of unemployment requires combining the efforts of many society institutions to provide job opportunities, such as the banking system, the education institutions, the civil society, and requires the businessmen community, and the sponsoring of the major national projects, and at the same time it requires supporting the youths to establish small businesses so that we would be able to increase the rates of economic growth in order to absorb those entering the job market, and to provide jobs for every unemployed, a suitable wage for every worker, and social security for every one unable to work.
Fourth: Social problems: The party takes into consideration that there is a sector of the society whose financial abilities do not allow them to satisfy their needs for a dignified life. For this reason, the party’s economic program proposes – in addition to the existing charities and solidarity among the sons of the society – to activate the mechanisms of alms to deal with the dysfunctions in the economic and social life; together with the mechanisms of alms the mechanisms of religious trusts will operate.
Fifth: Curing the dysfunction in the structure of wages: The issues of the dysfunction in the wages structure in the Egyptian market is one of the issues to which the party attaches great attention in order to secure a minimum and a maximum for wages that will guarantee dignified living for the Egyptian citizen. The increase in wages ought to be linked to the inflation rates, and the higher state administrators ought to be prevented from occupying more than one job, and should be prevented from being on the board of directors of more than one company or fund in order to allow the others the opportunity of benefiting from what is spent on these jobs.
Sixth: the issue of environmental pollution: With regard to the issue of environmental pollution, the party considers that the environmental balance between man and what he builds in his rural environment and what God created in the natural environment is the framework that governs the construction of earth, for which God commissioned man. Therefore, the party has laid down the priorities and policies for dealing with the types of environmental pollution starting from limiting the impact of environmental pollution, and then the mechanisms of treatment, up to the preventative policies to prevent the repetition of the pollution. This is done by establishing a national council for protecting the River Nile, a council that combines all the institutions concerned in order to unify the responsibilities, avoid conflicts of powers, and pursue the legislation of a bundle of laws and regulations that criminalize the pollution of this great river, and be firm in implementing these laws.
Seventh: Housing issue: The party believes that this thorny issue disturbs every family and every young man. Thus, the party is committed to finding an effective solution for the problem through the geographical redistribution of development and the population so that the manpower resources become compatible in quantity and quality with the factors of development and the requirements of national security. This can be done through dividing the state into development regions, and working to attract population and qualified people from the more densely populated regions with fewer resources to the regions with less population and more resources.
Eighth: Transportation and communications problem: In its program, the party sponsors integration among the four means of transportation: land, river, sea, and air transportation in order to raise the standard of this sector at home and abroad. This is done through: The Ministry of Transportation plays the principal role in the complete supervision of all the activities of the sector, and the drawing up of the necessary policies for this sector to play its role with high efficiency. This supervision by the ministry is aimed at avoiding the existing conflict between the various authorities currently supervising this sector, which include the Interior Ministry, the Tourism Ministry, the Environment Ministry, the local authorities, … etc.
Ninth: The issue of education and scientific research: In its program, the party attaches special attention to human development, which guarantees the dignity of man. The party recognizes the right of every citizen to education in order to build a generation capable of carrying the standard of rising and development for this society.
The party considers that reforming and developing the education and the scientific research colleges and institutions would strengthen the national belonging and deepen the Arab and Muslim identity. This is because it represents the way to intellectual and cultural unity within Egypt and among the Arab and Muslim countries, as well as increases the development that will achieve progress and supremacy of the nation.
The party aims to make education and scientific research the principal tool to respond to the needs of the society and the nation, and to fulfil the nation’s aspirations and progress at home and abroad. This is done through many programs and mechanisms, the most prominent of which are: providing education for all members of the society, coupling good upbringing with education in all stages of education; expanding education quantitatively, qualitatively, and geographically including the open learning, the distant-learning, the electronic learning, and other means; providing continuous learning in order to keep pace with the amazing and accelerating scientific and technical advancement; focusing on the development of the creative thinking abilities and the building of skills; and developing and modernizing the curricula and activities in a way that is compatible with the times, develops the abilities and talents, and achieves the required aims and specifications through adopting the method of thinking, dialog, research, and discussion in education, rather than the method of instruction and memorizing alone.
Within the same context, the party has laid down solutions for dealing with the problem of illiteracy, which is considered a tarnish that soils the reputation of the society, through the following measures: Drawing up a national plan for eradicating illiteracy within a few years (five years) and mobilizing all resources to implement it; allocating a budget appropriate for this plan; compelling the large companies and factories to organize illiteracy classes for their workers, and giving them appropriate tax exemptions for this; encouraging the children, especially in the countryside, not to resort to truancy; and also supporting the poor families so that they are not compelled to withdraw their children from education and send them to work in order to get money.
Tenth: Developing the health sector: The party has laid down an ambitious program to develop the health sector by providing health-care mechanisms for all citizens regardless of their financial abilities or place of residence in a way that guarantees the freedom of the citizen to choose the place in which he receives treatment, focusing in this respect on those who are unable to provide for their own health care. The program also aims to raise the standard of health care, secure the fairness of its distribution in a way that provides those with limited income suitable health care, and expand the health-care cover to include all Egyptians within a specific period of time.
Eleventh: Developing tourism: Tourism occupies its appropriate place in the program of the party, because of Egypt’s civilization heritage, pharaonic, Greek, Roman, Coptic, and Islamic antiquities, enchanting nature, and hospitable people that have no equal in the world. Tourism as an industry and export activity is considered a very important source of foreign currency, a fundamental constituent of the national revenue, and a principal pillar for creating productive job opportunities for thousands of our youths.
The program is carried out through protecting the tourist areas in the old Egyptian cities, and on the coast of the Mediterranean and Red Sea on modern tourist bases, preventing the random growth of buildings in these areas, encouraging the private sector, attracting foreign investments to the tourism sector, and guiding the service ministries linked to tourism – such as the Ministries of Aviation, Transportation, Information, Culture, Environment and other ministries and departments concerned with tourism activities in Egypt – to support tourism and promote it as part of the most important aims of their annual plans. All this necessarily requires caring for those working in this field, tourist guides, and public and private tourist companies, caring for their problems, and finding objective and radical solutions for these problems.
Twelfth: Deepening the cooperation with the Arab countries: the party stresses that it is pursuing the consolidation of the joint Arab plans, integration and action in all fields. The party also stresses that the Palestinian people have the right to liberate their land, and the peoples have the right to obtain their rights, and govern themselves according to what they decide and consider appropriate, as the nation ought to be really the source of power.
Finally, we hope that through these brief words we have succeeded in answering some of the questions arising in the minds of all. We stress that the Freedom and Justice Party will do its utmost in all sincerity during the upcoming period to turn the hopes and aspirations of the great people of Egypt into a practice reality to benefit all without discrimination in order to make Egypt stand on its own feet and to establish the real modern constitutional national Egyptian State that is based on freedom and democracy, and that will be truly the new Egypt.
Tomorrow comes soon for those expecting it and God can make this happen.
“And God hath full power and control over His affairs; but most among mankind know it not [Sura Yusuf, from Verse 21].”