Egypt rails against general strike call
CAIRO (AFP) — Egypt's government warned Saturday it will take firm action against anyone protesting or striking, in response to snowballing calls for a general strike the following day.
The interior ministry threatened "immediate and firm measures against any attempt to demonstrate, disrupt road traffic or the running of public establishments and against all attempts to incite such acts".
A call for a general strike on Sunday has been circulating for more than a week on the Internet, via text messages and on the social networking site Facebook.
It is unclear who initiated the call which snowballed after some 25,000 employees at a textile plant in the central city of Mahalla announced plans to go on strike from Sunday over low salaries and price hikes.
The interior ministry accused "provocateurs and illegal movements" of having "spread false rumours and called for protests, demonstrations and a strike on Sunday."
It stressed that it will be business as usual on Sunday at all public institutions, including schools and state-owned factories.
The call for a strike comes just two days before key local elections on Tuesday, amid a general climate of tension and frustration with soaring prices and shortages of subsidised goods.
A Facebook group called "April 6" calling for the strike has attracted over 64,000 members.
Protest movement Kefaya has called for a sit-in against the price hikes across Egypt's 26 provinces, one of its leaders George Ishak told AFP.
"The Strike" was the bold headline in Egypt's independent daily Al-Destour whose editor Ibrahim Eissa wrote: "The people have decided to talk, and it's a political discussion."
The state-owned daily Al-Ahram for its part warned that those inciting or participating in the strike could face prison.
The outlawed Muslim Brotherhood has said that it supported the strike but would not be participating.
The group says it has been pushed out of municipal elections through a government campaign to block members from running as candidates, amid a massive crackdown.
The government has been scrambling to avert more unrest after being hit by an unprecedented wave of strikes and protests even from its own employees over soaring inflation and low pay.
The UN's World Food Programme said this month that average household expenditure in Egypt had risen by 50 percent since the start of the year.
Liberal economic reforms and price hikes have led the social gap to grow, Cairo University's Mohammed Kamel Al-Sayyed told AFP, but said "a large social explosion" was unlikely.
"Violent local tensions, it's probable, but a national explosion, I don't think so."
International organisations in Cairo, including the United Nations, the French embassy and the American University in Cairo have issued warnings to staff to avoid the city centre on Sunday afternoon where a protest is planned and security is expected to be heavy.
"We've already seen in the past the massive deployment of police," a senior WFP official told AFP.
Sky-rocketing food prices in Egypt since the start of the year have been matched in recent weeks by a rumbling wave of popular discontent and unprecedented strikes and demonstrations.
