A former truck driver with just a secondary school diploma, Ahmad Abu Baker Sadeq is convinced he has a common touch that appeals directly to the factory workers in Port Said, the heavily industrialised Mediterranean gateway to the Suez Canal.
The independent candidate for parliament tried to woo voters in Egypt’s parliamentary elections with calls for better working conditions in factories, expanded job opportunities and reduced air pollution.
“Everyone should have work,” Mr Sadeq said as he spoke to voters outside a polling station near a detergent factory and bottling plant. “We have a lot of youthful energy that’s wasted.”
His message resonates, but his candidacy will probably fail to galvanise voters. Industrial workers in cities such as Port Said and Suez played a critical role in the revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak in February. Their strikes, especially in and around the Suez Canal, threatened to cripple the economy of Egypt, convincing many that Mr Mubarak’s leadership was unsustainable.
But workers have been unable to build on this political momentum. Instead Islamist parties making vague calls for social justice appear poised to reap the spoils. And that has outraged some labour advocates.
“This is a phrase everyone uses,” said Bakr Hassan Bakr, a lawyer and labour activist in Port Said. “But what does social justice mean to the liberal, the leftist or the Muslim Brotherhood? To the Brotherhood it means charity, giving out bread and rice. Our vision is to create decent work and equal chances for getting reasonable jobs.”
However, Islamist appeals to Egyptians’ cultural identity appear to have won out over more practical issues. Many workers said they would vote “with their hearts” for either the Brotherhood or the Nour Party, which represents a puritanical strain of Islam. Labour advocates fear that the Brotherhood would not expand the rights of workers.
“I will vote for the Nour Party because it uses Islam as its basis,” said Araby Abu Ayad, a 25-year-old electrician working at the Suez Canal. “A Nour victory will give us an Islamic life. I don’t want a higher salary. I am grateful for what I have.”
At Port Said’s polling stations, workers had plenty to complain about. Badry Mohammad Badry, a 42-year-old railway worker, said he had been unable to manoeuvre through the layers of corruption at his state-owned firm to advance his position since 1997. Mr Badry said he did not like the programmes of any of the parties, though there were a few local independent candidates that he supported.
Others complained of stagnant wages, substandard healthcare and poor education for their children. Living conditions in some parts of the city’s industrial outskirts resemble a scene from a dystopian science fiction film. Along Port Said’s Abutti Street, the lower middle classes inhabit rotting apartment blocs surrounding a vast trash-filled lot. Sitting in the centre is a gleaming former state security building protected by barbed wire, on alert for any unrest.
The Brotherhood says it has a plan for improving the economy of the city. It has plucked some of the best ideas from economists for its platform, including partnerships between companies and vocational schools and training for the city’s fishermen.
“We tried these things a lot under the old regime but there was always a higher authority that stopped it,” said Mohammad Khudairi, a Brotherhood spokesman in Port Said.
But labour advocates complain that the Brotherhood’s approach rarely speaks about expanding the rights of workers or redressing the perceived imbalance in the relationship between labour and management.
“Since the January 25 revolution, no one has implemented a law that would allow workers to form their own unions,” said Adel Zacariah, editor of Industrial Word, a labour magazine in Cairo.
The elections will probably do little to change that. Labour advocates complain that they had too few resources to prepare for the poll. “Right now none of the parties represent workers,” said Mr Bakr, the lawyer and rights activist. “And we didn’t have the time to organise for the vote.”
Not all workers voted for Islamists. Mohsen Abdull Ghaid, a crane operator for Maersk, the Danish shipping group, said he voted for the liberal Wafd Party, one of the oldest in Egypt, which traditionally represents the bourgeoisie.
“I want everything to be good – better education, better living standards, democracy, freedom of expression,” he said.
Informed that Wafd was sometimes considered a party for the rich, he shrugged. “I would like to be rich.”