Amr Adib and “the Organic Eggs”: The State’s Media Professionals Spread Sisi’s Message

Hani Mohamad
Egyptian Journalist
Published on 21.03.2022
Reading time: 6 minutes

The Middle East’s highest paid journalist, Amr Adib, advised Egyptians to stop buying organic eggs and pastrami to deal with the ever increasing food prices. Most Egyptians have never tasted either. They can hardly pay for the basics. For them even koshari is a luxury …

The sharp rise in food prices in Egypt has led to a wave of discontent on social media platforms. The regime’s response, as usual, has come through the media affiliated with it. They blame the Ukraine war, which has affected the whole planet from the bottom up, so why not Egypt?

Egyptian journalist Amr Adib, one of the loudest pro-government voices, has made statements that only increased the anger and made him an object of ridicule.

Adib called upon Egyptians to change their eating habits in order to reduce the effects of the high prices.

“Do not buy organic eggs,” he said. “Be happy with regular eggs. They do not taste that different from your pastrami.”

So, Adib, who works for the Saudi MBC channel, assumes that Egyptians daily eat eggs with pastrami. And not just any eggs. Organic eggs. From the comments on social media, however, it becomes very clear that the vast majority of Egyptians do not even know the difference between regular eggs and organic ones.

Adib also called upon Egyptians to make their bread at home and stop buying it in a bakery. He argued that this “happens a lot in America,” following a long discussion about the financial difficulties Americans are currently facing.

A True Egyptian Tradition

Adib’s attack on the Egyptian people is part of a tradition. State institutions tend to condemn citizens whenever prices rise, and hold them responsible for inflation.

Three state-run newspapers Al-Ahram, Al-Akhbar and Al-Gomhoria recently defined social unrest as “a communist scheme to create unrest and confusion in Egypt and overthrow the regime.”

Parroting the regime’s version of events, they have no consideration for the actual reason for the demonstrations, which is the inability of people to bear the high cost of life.

In his speeches, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is always quick to ridicule the citizens and explain any economic crisis by pointing at the abundance of children. In one speech he spoke sarcastically about an Egyptian woman who had told him she is the mother of numerous children.

“Life is difficult,” she complained.

Upon which he replied: “I have 100 million [children]. Tell me what to do.”

Sisi closely follows what is happening on social media. On one occasion, he decided to raise gasoline prices when Egypt was in the middle of banning the viral ‘Kiki dance trend’ online, which would require a car in order to film it.

“People are driving cars and doing the Kiki dance,” he said at the 2018 Ask The President conference. “Engineer Tarek, increase the prices of gasoline, don’t even worry about it.” Tarek is Tarek el Molla, Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources.

Sisi believes that people who own cars and have a lot of children can afford paying high prices. Adib and the state’s other media stooges address the same people, people who know about “organic eggs,” thereby completely ignoring the fact that the high prices mostly affect ordinary people who can hardly pay for the basics of life.

The Koshari Throne

In one online video an Egyptian woman explains how she went to the market and returned home crying, wishing any car would run her over so she can just relax.

Most Egyptians have a bleak life, which is totally overlooked by the president and the state media. Their lives do not appear in TV talk shows and dramas. It is as if that class of people needs to be forgotten. No one even wants it to appear, or hear it speak.

The media are used to addressing this category of people in a certain way, suggesting they save their money under the tiles of their home, and are always able to face life.

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The state follows upon a principle set by Sisi in a previous interview: “Only buy your most necessary needs.”

The president believes that all that is hit by high prices are luxuries that can be disposed of. The mantra is repeated by the media. But the truth is high prices are affecting everything. Even koshari.

What has always been described as workman’s food or poor man’s food recently saw a price increase of a few pounds. And so, the “ghouls” are no longer able to buy it. An Emirati newspaper wrote: “Ukraine war shakes the koshari throne.”

The Egyptians cannot afford to abandon the commodities affected by high prices. Meanwhile the regime and its media insist on ignoring the vast majority and are content discussing the problems of the upper middle class. As if their problems are the problems of all Egyptians and most people are but troublemakers who do not want to bear responsibility.

It has been a deliberate move in the political and media discourse for years to convince Egyptians they are the problem. There are no solutions to the economic crisis, and the lower classes will just have to adapt.

“Foul” Play

The real suffering of the people does not appear in movies or on TV. Nobody complains there. People appear as if they live a simple and quiet life, not deprived of anything, and they can create happiness with nothing, as in the recent series Public Transport, which was produced by one of the Egyptian state companies. The media like to reduce the problems of the Egyptians to a lack of recreational goods.

An “iftar” of “organic eggs with pastrami,” while millions of Egyptians do not eat pastrami at all, because it is very expensive. The real issue is they are even unable to buy ready-made “foul” (a traditional bean dish and popular breakfast for Egyptians), and now resort to preparing it themselves at home.

The tragedy is that media professionals, who are supposed to discuss people’s problems, and be more aware of them than others, are apparently superior to normal people, and do not care about their suffering. Because of their proximity to power, they became detached from reality, ridiculed by Egyptians on social media. These media professionals cannot imagine the existence of people who cannot purchase their basic needs. They are immersed in the state’s official statements, which they must analyze, promote and broadcast.

These media professionals earn millions of pounds a month, and do not have contact with, or are able to feel, the real people and their issues.. While they call for austerity and rational spending, they do not apply this to themselves, as they spend their holidays in Europe, the US, Dubai or Riyadh, and send their children to study abroad. Some have accumulated wealth and business interests for over 30 years.

Amr Adib was criticized for persuading citizens to observe austerity, while wearing a Swiss-made Audemars Piguet watch, worth some $50,000.

He studied at Victoria College, known as “School of Kings and Celebrities,” from which, among many others, the late King of Jordan Al-Hussein bin Talal graduated, the late King of Bulgaria Simon II, and artists like Youssef Chahine and Omar Sharif.

Adib worked on Cairo Today on the Al-Youm channel for nearly 20 years, before working for several Egyptian channels and arriving at MBC Saudi Arabia. According to Saudi media official Turki Al-Sheikh, with a salary of $3.5 million annually he is the most expensive broadcaster in the Middle East.

Such wage figures have put the Egyptian public against Adib, as he eats the Sultan’s bread and strikes with his sword. He lives lavishly and meanwhile demands austerity.

Although to a lesser degree, many Egyptian media professionals working in the corridors of Egyptian state-owned or private channels, receive exorbitant wages. They have become permanent guests of luxurious conferences in expensive hotels.

Most of them moved to live in compounds, at a great distance from Egypt’s poor. Their money only increased, as they detached themselves from reality and forgot about the real conditions Egyptians live in.

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Hani Mohamad
Egyptian Journalist
Published on 21.03.2022
Reading time: 6 minutes

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