Offbeat | Raging tuk-tuk driver bashes Egypt economy, video goes viral

A video of an enraged tuk-tuk driver unloading on the state of Egypt’s flagging economy went viral yesterday, underlining growing popular discontent in the country over shortages of food staples and broader business malaise.
Filmed in the crowded lanes of a working class Cairo neighborhood, the video shows the driver, surrounded by crowds, slamming the government for spending money on pomp at recent state ceremonies while the poor suffer.
“You watch Egypt on television and it’s like Vienna, you go out on the street and it’s like Somalia’s cousin,” he says in the clip, originally aired on Wednesday night on the pro-government Al Hayat television channel.
By yesterday afternoon it had gained 1.6 million views and 48,000 likes on one Facebook page, with thousands more likes and supportive comments being added each hour to the criticism-heavy footage, rare on television.
In a sign of the sensitivity of the matter, the network quickly pulled the video from its own media sites. Egypt has a long history of suppressing news that can be seen as damaging to its image, a trend that intensified enormously under President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s rule.
El-Sissi, the former army chief who overthrew his elected but divisive Islamist predecessor in 2013, stamping out opposition and dissent from all corners and promising stability and a better economy for all.