Egypt: from revolution to evolution

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By Khaled Diab

Egypt’s next president is likely to be against the revolution, so revolutionaries must forge a viable opposition and push for social and economic change.

Friday 15 June 2012

The culmination of the race for the Egyptian presidency should be a proud moment for Egypt, yet paradoxically the country’s nascent democratic process has delivered an apparently anti-democratic outcome.

Although Egyptians are finally getting the unprecedented opportunity to pick their next leader, voters now have the unenviable dilemma of choosing between an anti-revolutionary, neo-liberal military man (Ahmed Shafiq) and a counterrevolutionary, neo-liberal Islamist (Mohamed Mursi).

This has left revolutionaries and supporters of the revolution in a double bind: participate and effectively vote against the revolution or boycott the elections and potentially undermine the democratic process you have been advocating.

Like Odysseus, Egypt’s revolutionaries have to find a way to navigate, without shipwrecking the revolution, between the multi-headed Scylla that symbolises the remnants of the Mubarak regime and the mysterious and treacherous depths of the whirlpool-inducing Charybdis of the Muslim Brotherhood.

One way of circumnavigating these two perils is to boycott the runoff elections, as many activists and some of the defeated candidates have been urging, in order to show that neither Mursi nor Shafiq enjoy a real mandate. As one protester on Tahrir Square put it, “It does not make sense to choose between two wrongs.”

One effective and creative way of doing this would be to turn up at the voting stations anyway and cast a spoilt ballot – say by writing “Mickey Mouse for president” on their ballot paper. If the number of invalid, or Mickey Mouse, votes outnumber those for Shafiq and Mursi, this would be a powerful message to Egypt’s future president that a Disney character enjoys more support than him.

While people have the right not to vote, such a course of action does involve certain risks. First and foremost, it enables opponents of the revolution to continue the long smear campaign against Egypt’s revolutionaries by suggesting that the boycott is undemocratic and motivated not by principle but by spite.

Pointing to the abuses committed during the transitional period, the unclear powers of the next president and the murky backstage role the junta will play once it officially hands over power, many revolutionaries have become so disillusioned that they plan to shun the entire political process and continue their struggle on the streets.

But this would be a grave error. While there will be a need for the protest-oriented ‘democracy of Tahrir’ for many years to come, the revolution should continue by all means possible – and that includes becoming part of the political process, imperfect as it may be.

Although the generals loaded the dice against the revolutionaries from the start, that was not the only reason behind their poor showing in both the parliamentary and presidential races. The low turnout, of around 47%, for the unique spectacle of 13 men vying for Egypt’s hitherto unavailable top job was effectively a vote of little-to-no confidence in all the candidates.

This failure to inspire is partly a result of the absence of inspiring leaders in the new electoral political brought about by decades of repressive rule, but it is also due to the disarray and fragmentation of the revolutionary movement.

For example, on Tuesday, I read that the 6 April Youth Movement, one of the main driving forces behind the revolution, was backing Mursi’s candidacy after the Islamist candidate had signed on to a ‘National Consensus Document’ and promised to appoint a vice-president who was not connected to the Brotherhood.

The very next day, I read that 6 April was calling for a boycott of the presidential election. Had the young revolutionaries changed their mind so quickly or was this some mistake? Neither, as it turns out. The first announcement was made by the so-called ‘Ahmed Maher Front’, led by one of the group’s co-founders, while the second was released by a splinter group known as the ‘Democratic Front’.

Instead of this infighting and political intrigue, Egypt’s progressive, secular revolutionary forces need to find a way to consolidate themselves and forge a viable opposition to the well-organised and disciplined Islamists over the coming four years if they are to stand a chance at the next election.

In addition, the Egyptian revolution is not just a political one, but is also social, cultural and economic. This is recognised in the revolutionary slogan of ‘bread, freedom and social justice’, but has not been acted upon sufficiently, except rather sporadically at the local level, mainly by workers and trade unions.

If more ordinary Egyptians are to be won over to the cause of the revolution, they need to be persuaded that there is something in it for them, that it can deliver them social and economic justice. Beyond this, creating a secular, liberal, tolerant and egalitarian society requires the removal of ignorance through decent education, and the combating of corruption, nepotism, patronage and the authoritarianism that bedevils Egyptian society not just at the top of the pyramid, but at almost every stratum.

Part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s success can be traced back to more than 80 years of nationwide grassroots social and cultural activism and charitable work. Secularists can learn, and are learning, a lot from the Brotherhood about instigating change from the bottom, up. Egypt does not just need revolution, it also need gradual evolution.

Note: Since this article was written, the Supreme Constitutional Court has dissolved the Egyptian parliament, which has been described by some as a “military coup” and raises worrying questions about exactly how much power the generals truly intend to hand over and whether this ill-conceived decision could spiral out of control and lead to instability and bloodshed. This verdict appears to be politically motivated, which not only undermines the Egyptian judiciaries hard-earned credibility but is also bound to boost the Islamists’ flagging popularity by transforming them into martyrs of political injustice.

 

This is an extended version of an article which appeared in The National on 15 June 2012.

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Egyptian presidential election: Anti-revolution v counterrevolution

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 By Khaled Diab

Should Egyptians side with the anti-revolutionary military old guard or the counterrevolutionary Islamist vanguard when choosing their next president?

Monday 4 June 2012

The counterrevolution is gathering pace in Egypt.

After initial elation at the spectacle of millions of Egyptians queuing patiently, in a country where jumping the queue is a national pastime, to cast their ballot for one of more than a dozen candidates in unprecedented presidential elections in which the winner was not known in advance, a by-now familiar feeling of disillusionment set in when the results of the first round were announced.

In a turn of events that proved surprising to just about everyone, the last two candidates left standing were Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood’s conservative wing and “Mubarak’s man” Ahmed Shafiq, one-time air force commander, ex-aviation minister, and Mubarak’s unpopular first choice for prime minister when the revolution broke out early last year.

Neither Mursi nor Shafiq were the pundits’ favourites. In fact, both men were hovering low in most polls prior to the elections. The early favourites were the reform-minded, pluralist and relatively liberal former Muslim Brother Abdel-Moneim Aboul Fotouh and Amr Moussa, the popular one-time foreign minister who emerged from the revolution relatively unscathed, because of his personal incorruptibility and the distance he took from some of the Mubarak regimes most notorious and abusive years during his decade-long tenure as secretary-general of the Arab League.

Though I, in common with most young revolutionaries, opposed Moussa’s candidacy because of his close association with the former regime, some long-time dissidents have expressed their support for him. One example is Hisham Kassem, the veteran independent publisher and human rights activist. “I want a strong president,” he told me prior to the elections while seated at a dusty desk amid the bare concrete at the Cairo offices of his soon-to-be-launched newspaper which he has optimistically named al-Gumhoriya al-Gadida (The New Republic) to reflect Egypt’s changing reality. “I don’t want Egypt to enter a Latin American scenario of political collapse and a new president every six months.”

While Moussa had the support of “stability-seeking” reformers like Kassem, Aboul Fotouh had the vote of many in the antiestablishment but pragmatic middle ground, who sought a consensus candidate. “Aboul Fotouh genuinely believes in equality,” the prominent human rights activist Hossam Bahgat, who founded the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, reflected as a number of shishas or waterpipes bubbled thoughtfully around us.

However, these two men confounded expectations, with Aboul Fotouh ending up fourth and Moussa fifth, with third place going to the late-starting favourite for the secular, revolutionary vote, Hamdeen Sabahi, a reform-minded leftist and diehard Nasserist.

With the race for the presidency now reduced to a contest between a counterrevolutionary, neo-liberal Islamist and an anti-revolutionary, neo-liberal general, revolutionaries and pro-revolution Egyptians have been left with an extremely bitter pill to swallow and a stark choice to make at the ballot box: vote for “felloul” (remnants of the old regime) or conservative Islamism.

A heated debate is taking place between secular revolutionaries about which of the two candidates to vote for in order to best preserve the  aims of the revolution, or whether it would be more principled to boycott the second-round vote altogether to show that neither man enjoys a sufficient mandate.

But what brought about this “nightmare scenario”, as it has come to be described in revolutionary circles?

Well, both men appear to have been helped by the fragmentation and disarray of the revolutionaries and the low turnout of just over 40%, which is tiny considering that this election was Egypt’s first truly free presidential race and some had hoped it would mark the birth of the “second republic”. This low turnout was reflective of the paucity of good candidates, the disillusionment felt by pro-revolutionaries that their revolution had been “stolen” or “hijacked”, and disappointment at the revolution’s failure to deliver concrete socio-economic results following high initial expectations.

Ahmed Shafiq, who has the tacit backing of the army and the police, managed to steal votes from the Moussa “stability” camp but also capitalised on the “fear” vote, drawing support from those who harboured Mubarak sympathies and those who are terrified by the prospect of an Islamist takeover in Egypt, including the country’s vulnerable Christian minority. For his part, Mohamed Mursi seems to have walked away with the conservative Islamic vote, particularly in the more traditional rural areas in the south of the country.

Does the victory of these two contenders who have questionable democratic credentials mean that Egyptians do not prize freedom? There are certainly some Egyptians who seem enamoured of authoritarianism, as reflected by the surprising number of people I met in Cairo who voiced support for Omar Suleiman, Mubarak’s shadowy and dangerous intelligence chief, as Egypt’s next president, but he was later disqualified from the race.

That said, candidates who represent the vanguard of the Egyptian revolution walked away with around two-fifths of the vote. Furthermore, quite a lot of those who voted for the top two candidates did so not out of some anti-freedom platform but because they have other, more immediate fears and priorities for the transitional phase.

But if Egyptians vote for Mursi to oppose Shafiq as the symbol of the old regime that would mean that the Islamists will win the double whammy of the parliament and presidency. What would be the consequences of such an outcome on the future of Egypt?

As someone who believes wholeheartedly in a new Egypt of full freedom, equality and economic and social justice, I fear what impact this conservative current will have on society. But in order to understand its possible consequences, we need to delve into its causes.

Fundamentalist Islam, like fundamentalist Judaism and Christianity, is partly a response to the onslaught of modernity and the insecurity it has engendered. In Egypt, it is also a backlash against the corruption, nepotism, oppression and failure of the country’s secular regimes, as well as the unequal global order, to deliver prosperity, equality and dignity to ordinary people. Also, in situations of grinding poverty, poor education and stark inequality, people often fall back on the safety cushion of religion.

Moreover, part of the appeal Islamists enjoy is due to the fact that they have always been in opposition, and the few months they have been at the wheel of parliament has already corroded their popularity and turned many former supporters against them, who accuse them of being a religious version of Mubarak’s now-defunct National Democratic Party. If Islamists fail to deliver visible improvements on crucial bread-and-butter issues, such as employment, health and education, then the electorate is likely to conclude that Islam, or at least Islamism, is not the solution to their woes, and may turn to the secular revolutionaries as an alternative.

But what if these elections turn out to be “one person, one vote, one time”, as Western critics of Islamism claim? “Don’t panic”, is Hisham Kassem’s attitude. “I don’t think the Islamists are powerful enough to change the identity of the state,” he says.

Many Egyptians also believe that the Islamists-secularists fault line is exaggerated and even a distraction. While it certainly does exist, it is not a black-and-white division, with a significant proportion of secularists supporting traditional values and religious intolerance, while many Islamists, particularly younger ones, believing in democracy, religious freedom and individual rights. Also, the ranks of the rightwing and leftwing, the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary, the progressive and reactionary are to be found on both sides of the Islamist-secularist border.

“It’s much more comfortable for the two sides to engage in a culture war,” observes Hossam Bahgat. “But the real issue is building a democratic system, and striving for social justice and economic justice. The battle over identity is just polemics.”

 

This article first appeared in The Jerusalem Post on 30 May 2012.

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From the Chronikles: My plan for a democratic Egypt

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By Khaled Diab

With the right president, Egypt could rid itself of nepotism and inequality to become a prosperous and egalitarian society.

Wednesday 23 May 2012 (first published Sunday 17 January 2010)

This article was written a year before the revolution erupted in Egypt and envisioned the then fantastical notion that Mubarak would be convinced to step aside in 2011 and allow free and fair elections to choose his successor. With that in mind, I dreamed of what I would do as president to fix Egypt, and much of my imaginary programme is still relevant: limiting the powers of the presidency, rooting out nepotism and corruption, addressing the issue of sectarian strife, promoting greater economic justice, slashing military spending, abolishing conscription and spending more on education and research. So, I am republishing this now as my modest advice to Egypt’s next president.

While in most countries, even the most democratic, becoming president or prime minister is a far-fetched dream for almost everyone, in Egypt, the prospect exists mostly in the realm of fantasy. In the six or so decades since the 1952 revolution, Egypt has had just four leaders, none of whom were elected – at least not in free and fair elections.

The current president, Hosni Mubarak, has held the top seat for the past three decades or so. This means that the majority of Egyptians, given the country’s “youth bulge”, have known no other leader.

Next year, Mubarak’s current term will end and, given his age and health, most Egyptians don’t expect him to seek a sixth term. Egyptians dream of massive positive change in 2011, fear terrible instability and disruption, and some might even settle for “business as usual” in the form of Mubarak’s son, Gamal – at least for a few years.

Reform-minded Egyptians hope that Mubarak will step aside honourably and take the unprecedented step of calling free and fair elections to find a replacement. The most popular potential candidate at the moment is former IAEA chief and Nobel peace laureate Mohamed el-Baradei, despite the fact that he has lived and worked outside Egypt for decades.

el-Baradei’s popularity is not only a sign of his international standing but also indicates the Egyptian regime’s unofficial policy of engineering the political landscape so that Mubarak appears to be the only show in town. Personally, I fear that, rather than undergo a democratic rebirth, Egypt will either get a second Mubarak or a period of instability until another dictator takes the helm, though I doubt that Islamists are ready in the wings to take over. Nevertheless, I cannot help but hold out hope that 2011 will mark the birth of true Egyptian democracy.

Upon taking office, and to avoid the temptations of power that have led so many initially well-meaning Egyptian leaders astray, I would probably begin with strengthening and shoring up Egypt’s institutions, from the parliament to the judiciary, to ensure an effective separation and balance of powers. But top-down reforms can, at best, only play the role of a catalyst, and not bring about lasting change in themselves. In order to harness Egypt’s massive grassroots potential, I would end the culture of fear and intimidation – at least, the state-sponsored side of this – that keeps Egyptians down.

I would strive to remove all the unconstitutional and undemocratic laws, such as those hindering freedom of expression and conscience, and dismantle Egypt’s enormous police and state security apparatus.

In order to counteract and reverse growing religious fundamentalism and communal strife I would dig up the roots, rather than chop violently away at the outgrowth. A fish rots from the head down, so it is important to launch a serious campaign to root out corruption, first from the highest echelons of society.

More generally, it is essential to challenge the widespread practice of wasta – which permeates all levels of society and causes widespread cynicism and disenchantment – by strictly enforcing the rule of law, without making exceptions for the well-connected. This will be no mean feat, given how deeply ingrained the notion is, but if Egypt is to become a true meritocracy it is a crucial battle that must be won.

Then there’s the economy, which is often erroneously viewed as somehow separate from society. Seeking political and social justice is meaningless if their economic counterpart continues to be denied – in fact, rather than more growth, Egypt needs more economic justice. Egypt’s economy needs not only to continue to develop, but to do so sustainably and equitably.

In a country where economic inequality has grown to chronic proportions, the chasm between the have-alls and the have-nots needs desperately to be bridged. This should be done through a fair, effective and enforced progressive taxation system, as well as the reinstatement and further development of the country’s dismantled social safety net and concerted government investment directed at stimulating Egypt’s impoverished rural hinterland and neglected south.

This requires not just internal reform but also a revamping of the global economic system to make it fairer for developing countries. In addition, the strong arm with which the US-led west imposes its hegemony could foil such efforts if my “pinko” reforms are deemed somehow to be antagonist to US interests in the region.

In parallel with promoting economic justice, competitiveness also needs to be stimulated in order to generate the necessary wealth to boost everyone’s well-being. This requires robust and enforceable regulations that level out the economic playing field and weed out the de facto monopolies and cartels that plague the Egyptian economy, as well as reforming the country’s bloated and inefficient bureaucracy.

One reason why superstition reigns and people hark back to a mythical and glorious past is because they feel they lack a future. To give the coming generations a sense of purpose and to allow current generations to build a better future, I would slash military spending and abolish conscription, then use the released resources to invest heavily in education and scientific research.

Of course, I realise that my vision is but a dream untainted by political realities. Even a well-meaning, democratically elected president would have his or her work cut out simply steering Egypt away from the rocks towards which it is currently heading. The kind of transformation I dream of cannot be implemented by any one leader but will take generations of patient and careful change. But with the right political and civil leadership, Egypt can reinvent itself as a prosperous, modern and egalitarian society.

 

This article first appeared in The Guardian‘s Comment is Free section on 17 January 2010.

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The fall of Egypt’s symbol of progressive Islam

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By Osama Diab

 Joining itself with an authoritarian regime caused harm to the millennium-long history of al-Azhar University.

Thursday 12 May 2011

al-Azhar in Cairo. ©Khaled Diab

“[Egypt] didn’t change the basic tenets of Islam, but its cultural weight gave Islam a new voice, one it didn’t have back in Arabia. Egypt embraced an Islam that was moderate, tolerant and non-extremist.” With these words, Naguib Mahfouz, winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature, gave his last statement about Islam, after decades of being on the death lists of extremist Islamist groups and an assassination attempt in 1994.

The moderate Islam that Mahfouz was referring to had a protector and a promoter: al-Azhar University. Throughout its long and proud history, al-Azhar had remained unrivalled as the prime centre of Islamic teaching, attracting millions of Muslim students from all over the world to its campus in Cairo. Many of the most notable liberal reformists in Egypt’s history, especially in the 19th century, were Azhar graduates. Tolerance and not getting too involved with state affairs have been central to its teaching for centuries.

The father of Islamic modernism, Rifa’a al-Tahtawi, a 19th-century scholar and an Azhar graduate, saw no contradiction between Islamic thought and ideologies drawn from the European Age of Enlightenment. He studied in France and, on his return to Egypt, he worked at modernising the country, calling for liberal reform in the Muslim world.

Mohamed Abduh followed in al-Tahtawi’s footsteps, urging open dialogue with European civilisation and the reformation of Islamic thought, arguing that Muslims can’t rely on medieval interpretations of religious texts. He also argued for the secularisation of Muslim countries. Both scholars spoke European languages fluently and wrote positively about their experiences in Europe.

My fatwa against yours

However, it seems that slowly this progressive form of Islam is being replaced with a more radical Salafist ideology, one that blatantly calls for a return to the practices of the first three generations of Muslims, who lived more than 1,400 years ago. Salafi Islam is considered Muslim orthodoxy at its strictest, and is influenced by the teachings of Muhammad ibn Abdel Wahab, an 18th-century Muslim theologian whose radical ideas still shape how the Saud family runs its kingdom today. Evidently, al-Azhar in Egypt is falling prey to ideologies funded and encouraged from across the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia.

Speaking to al-Youm al-Sabei newspaper, Mahmoud Ashour, the former deputy of al-Azhar, said that the Salafist ideology has infiltrated the university. He blamed the phenomenon on young Egyptians’ feeling that society is unjust and their refusal to believe what they are told without experiencing reform on the ground, the paper reported.

A few months ago, in reaction to news of the rising influence of Salafi ideology within the walls of the university, the president of Tajikistan recalled 134 students he had sent to study at al-Azhar.

The clash between the two credos, Salafism and moderate Islam, reached its peak in 2009 when Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, a former sheikh of Azhar, called for a ban on the niqab – the full face veil – inside schools. The growing popularity of the niqab is a manifestation of the growing ascendancy of Salafi ideas among young Egyptians. Protests and sit-ins held by face-veiled students broke out, not just at al-Azhar, but at many other universities across the nation, all protesting against the cleric’s declaration.

Another collision took place when the Azhar Scholar Front (ASF), which was dissolved in 1999 after rejecting some of the fatwas issued by Tantawi, restarted its activities unofficially from Kuwait in 2007. The ASF is now considered attractive for those who split from al-Azhar due to opposing views, and usually adopts more radical positions, such as the ASF’s call a few months ago for an economic boycott of all Egyptian Christians as a riposte to an alleged kidnap by churchmen of a Coptic woman who had converted to Islam. Declarations of conflicting fatwas and heated exchanges have been common since the ASF was informally re-established.

But another reason why many have turned their back on al-Azhar’s ideology and fallen prey to more radical views is al-Azhar’s close association with the former president Hosni Mubarak and his increasingly disfavoured authoritarian regime, which many think has impoverished Egyptians.

The appointment of the sheikh of al-Azhar, the highest Sunni Muslim authority in the world, was the gift of Egyptian leaders by presidential decree. The sheikhs were usually loyal to the presidential palace and hardly ever issued fatwas that would go against the regime’s will or policy.

Chief whip of journalists

Tantawi was also notorious for his tailored fatwas to “Islamically” back up some of the regime’s actions, such as supporting the building of an underground wall on the border with Gaza and prohibiting anti-government street protests.

He also famously called for the “whipping” of journalists who publish false reports, after the appearance of a 2007 article by Ibrahim Eissa, a former editor of al-Dostour newspaper, questioning Mubarak’s health and the future of the presidency in Egypt.

What’s more, the recently appointed new sheikh of al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayeb, was a member of the policy committee in what used to be the ruling National Democratic Party. The policy committee division of the NDP was led by Gamal Mubarak, the president’s son.

This kind of co-operation with Mubarak’s regime is what made al-Azhar lose credibility. Paradoxically, it also made it easy for other, more radical Islamic groups, which were usually in conflict with the unpopular regime, to “infiltrate” the influential university.

At this critical phase, Egypt needs al-Azhar as a defence wall against extremist ideologies, to promote a culture of peace, progression, citizenship and dialogue with the West, and to thwart a rising Salafi influence that incites nothing but regression, hate and violence, clashing with and discriminating against the other. Egypt and the entire Muslim world, now more than ever, are in desperate need of enlightened scholars such as al-Tahtawi and Abduh to move it forward to modernity, instead of attempting to take us back to a 7th-century culture.

This article first appeared in the New Statesmanon 7 April 2011. Published here with the author’s consent. ©Osama Diab. All rights reserved.


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An Arab model for democracy

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By Khaled Diab

The time is ripe to crystallise a creative vision for Egyptian democracy, one that can perhaps be used as a model by other Arab countries.

Wednesday 23 February 2011

On Friday 18 February, as many as 2 million Egyptians gathered on the now-aptly named Tahrir (Liberation) Square for what was dubbed the Friday of Victory and Continuity. And the assembled throngs – resembling, at once, a World Cup victory celebration, Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner and a performing arts festival – had plenty of reason to celebrate, given that the revolution had succeeded, just one week earlier, in toppling, one could even say dethroning, Hosni Mubarak, the country’s pseudo-king for the past three decades.

But crying victory was somewhat premature, for the revolution will not be truly victorious until the old regime is replaced completely by a free and fair system that responds to the will of the people – not to mention triggers a profound process of social evolution.

The protesters and organisers are well aware of the dangers ahead and the Friday of Victory was a subtle warning  to put the army on notice that reneging on the revolution’s demands was not an option the people were willing to contemplate.

Ever since Mubarak’s ouster on Friday 11 February, the army’s supreme council has been in charge of the country. In the 18 days it took to topple Mubarak, the army won many fans among the Egyptian population for its intelligent and relatively enlightened handling of the demonstrations and its support for what it called the “legitimate demands” of the people, which prompted demonstrators to coin the slogan that the “army and the people are a single hand”.

Although expressing this level of trust was partly tactical in order to keep the army on the people’s side against Mubarak’s state security apparatus, police and other assorted thugs, it still caused me a certain amount of concern. The army may have extended a hand of peace to the population but what about its other hand: is it holding an olive branch or getting ready to slap the people in the face or, worst, crush them with a fist of steel when the opportunity arises?

After all, it is the army or its men who have run the country for the past 60-odd years, during which time the country has not had a single civilian president. That said, Mubarak, though he was a military man, had sidelined the army with his ‘businessmen’s cabinet’ and his strengthening of state security.

Naturally, there is the chance that the army is dealing with the people in good faith, and reluctantly executed what amounted to a sort of coup d’etat when Mubarak refused to go and to hand over his powers to an interim ‘council of the wise’. Then again, the military might see this as the perfect opportunity to re-launch its waning star, especially as it has suspended the constitution and dissolved parliament, ostensibly to meet the demands of the revolution, but effectively creating a situation of martial law which can potentially be abused.

So vigilance must be the order of the day. And the Coalition of the Revolution Youth, one of the main forces behind the demonstrations, has vowed to continue mass protest action until the revolution’s demands are met, including the ending of the decades-old ‘state of emergency‘, the creation of a temporary transitional presidential council and technocratic government drawn from across the political spectrum, and a clear timetable for the holding of free and fair parliamentary and presidential elections.

But in addition to this constant grassroots pressure perhaps it is also high time for the revolutionaries to force the army’s hand by creating certain facts on the ground. For example, the military has created its own diverse constitutional review committee, headed by the prominent judge Tarek el-Bishry to oversee the crafting of a new constitution. Although el-Bishry is highly respected among most of the opposition, the demonstrators need to ensure that the new document meets the people’s demands and expectations.

One way to do this is for the revolutionaries to set up their own parallel committee drawn from across the political and social spectrum whose members will not only deliberate among themselves but will launch a broad public debate on the content of the new constitution. In order to gather input from every strata of society, the power of traditional, online and social media can be harnessed, as well as good old-fashioned surveys.

Moreover, to guarantee maximum legitimacy and to avert any chance that the army or any other vested political interest can manipulate the process, the popular committee should pledge that any document it produces will be put to a referendum.

In addition to efforts to optimise the nascent Egyptian democracies founding document, the time is ripe, given that any action or inaction now will have ramifications far into the future, to crystallise a clear vision for Egyptian democracy, one that can perhaps be used as a model by other Arab countries.

At present, little or no effort is being made to visualise a democracy that meets local circumstances and needs. This is understandable, given that the revolution has a multitude of immediate concerns with which to deal. Nevertheless, if Egyptians are to create a system that suits them, then they must dare to unleash the creativity so abundantly demonstrated in this revolution further.

One concern that has regularly been voiced is that, after sixty years of either one-party rule or a toothless multiparty system, Egypt has been left with few viable political parties on which to rest its democracy. Moreover, the youth who unleashed and steered this secular revolution do not fit easily or comfortably into any of the existing political parties.

In Egypt, there has been talk of relaxing the country’s draconian party formation rules to allow all political currents to create their own parties in time for the elections. There is also the option of allowing protest movements, such as the 6 April Youth Movement and Kefaya (Enough), to register as parties.

However, even if a new slew of parties can be set up in time for elections, they will be, with the exception of the Muslim Brotherhood and the reinvented secular ‘official’ opposition parties, they will be largely unknown to the public.

In my view, this contemporary reality provides us with an unprecedented opportunity to rethink the mechanics of democracy, and especially the party political system. Given that they provide certain advantages, such as unity of purpose and discipline, political parties are the cornerstones upon which most governments around the world, whether democratic or not, are built.

That said, they suffer from certain severe drawbacks, such as the pressure they exert on members to tow a party line, even if they do not believe in it. In democracies, perhaps the most acute example of the ‘tyranny’ of parties is the first-past-the-post system. In the United States, for instance, the system has evolved to the point where voters have only two realistic options to choose from and many feel that the two main parties are so alike in their politics that they resemble more branded merchandise than true alternatives.

In fact, the dangers of partisan politics were foreseen by some of America’s ‘founding fathers’. “[Parties] serve to organise faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community,” George Washington cautioned in his farewell address.

I believe that Egypt would be better served with a flexible non-partisan representative democracy in which individual candidates run, whether for parliament or the presidency, on their own merit and personal manifesto. This will provide individual politicians with the flexibility to vote according to their conscience and the will of their constituents, while organising informally around certain issues of the day. For example, on certain key issues – such as youth unemployment, gender rights, social policy, trade, foreign policy questions, etc. – groups of politicians of similar conviction can form temporary, unofficial alliances, rather like the Egyptian opposition has already been doing for several years.

Over and above this, in order to avoid the emergence of factionalism and unrepresentative ‘representative democracy’, politicians’ power can be kept in check through a hybrid direct democracy in which the people are consulted directly on vital issues and in which concerned citizens who are unhappy with certain decisions taken by their representatives or wish to launch their own initiatives can take immediate action, if they gather enough signatures, rather than have to wait for the next elections to voice their views.

Egyptians have a golden opportunity not only to reinvent their country’s politics but to reinvent democracy itself.

 

This article was first published by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting on 22 February 2011.

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The Arabic for freedom

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By Khaled Diab

By toppling their dictator, Egyptians have made history, but now they need to ensure that this revolution does not become a footnote in their history.

Saturday 12 February 2011

One day, I couldn’t believe he was staying. The next day, I could hardly comprehend that he was actually going. Hosni Mubarak’s vacating of the presidency reminds me of that old song by The Clash: 

Despot, come on and let us know

Why do you stay; when will you go

It’s always seize, seize, seize

You’re happy when we’re on our knees

 After his obstinate performance on Thursday night when he refused to step down with whatever shreds remained of his dignity, I was so downhearted, and I’m hundreds of miles away from the action, that I can only imagine the overwhelming wave of frustration, anger and despondency that must’ve torn through the hearts of all the protesters on Tahrir square and massed elsewhere across the country. 

By the next morning, I’d penned an open letter to our dictator who obviously thought it was beneath him to be dictated to by his “sons and daughters”, thereby ensuring, with his undignified refusal to exit left (or any other direction), that Egyptians would only ever remember the worst about him. 

I told him – not, of course, that he was likely to be reading this open letter or any of the others I’d written to him over the years – how much Egyptians loathed him and how he had “the extraordinary knack for snatching mediocrity from the jaws of greatness”. I warned him that “Egyptians have discovered their own latent power” and that they would “write their own future”. 

And the very next day, on Friday 11 February, the millions of Egyptians who have taken to the streets did just that, when Mubarak’s resignation was announced unceremoniously by his recently appointed vice president and intelligence chief and palace executioner, Omar Suleiman.

Just as our wise former leader warned, he’s departure has left chaos in its wake: a beautiful, sweet, intoxicating chaos in which millions are partying to the beat of their own freedom. It was the chaos of a football crowd after the biggest win in its history; the euphoria as high as if a third-division club had somehow won the World Cup. To borrow again from The Clash, the news rocked the midan and thousands of midans, streets and alleys across the country, not to mention the region and the world. 

Even here, so far away from the action, and even though I contributed little to the revolution beyond my sympathy and words, I was gripped by joy, elation, a slight sense of disbelief and relief that he was finally over. I was overwhelmed that Egyptians managed to dethrone their dictator after three decades and convince the army that it was time to deliver on its six-decade-old promise of a transition to democracy in under three weeks. My brother jokingly says he wants to write a book entitled The guide to overthrowing a dictator in just 18 days. 

It just goes to show that the mighty are not as mighty as they seem, and that the regime’s power had been hollow for years and it survived simply because not enough people realised this or believed it. So, thank you Tunisia, and Egypt’s savvy youth, for convincing ordinary Egyptians that the opposition was not fighting a losing battle and that true freedom was not a lost cause. 

But the party will soon be over, and the revellers will wake up with a hangover when they realise what a monumental wreck the regime has left behind. Revolutions succeed when they overthrow the old order, but they cannot cry victory until they have replaced it with something better. So many past revolutions ended in disappointment, disillusionment, frustration, or even the creation of a worst monster than what went before it. To avoid this fate, after the Egyptian revolution, there must come evolution, not devolution, on every front: the political, the economic, the social and the cultural.

The challenges ahead are truly mind-boggling in their complexity. How do you manage the transition to democracy? How do you convince the army, after almost 60 years in power, to return to their barracks and leave the country to the civilians to run? How do you neutralise the once-might state security apparatus and ensure it is not resuscitated or does not go renegade? 

How do you ensure that the civilians who take over don’t replace one dictatorship with another? How do you shore up the institutions of the state so that none have excessive power? How do you guarantee that the will of the people is done, while ensuring a fair society and justice for all, including religious minorities and non-believers, women, not to mention those with other sexual orientations? Exciting as the revolution was, it was costly in human and economic terms. How do you prevent the need for future ones by not only responding to the will of the people but creating a clear and transparent mechanism for the regular transfer of power? 

Then, there are the massive economic challenges. The desire for decent jobs and economic dignity were among the primary reasons that brought people out on to the streets, particularly the young, the unemployed and underemployed, the poor and the lower middle classes. How do you create enough opportunities for such a large population in a relatively resource-constrained country? How do you build greater economic equality, or at least bridge the yawning chasm, between the haves and the have-nothings? How do you deal with the dictatorship of the global marketplace and the economic imperialism of the great powers and large corporations in a way that does not harm the people? 

On the social and cultural fronts, the challenges are no less perplexing. How do you weed out the corruption that has seeped into every layer of society? How do you get people to live within the system rather than parallel to it or through its backdoors? After this dramatic period is over, will Egyptians remain politically active and pay taxes responsibly (particularly the wealthier)? 

Will we replace the current wasta-ocracy with a meritocracy? How about Egypt’s attitude to authoritarianism? Will we rise up against and neutralise all the mini-Mubaraks stifling the country’s creative and innovative energies? Will we invest more and better in education? Will Egypt finally make full use of its abundant youth? Will Egyptians free their minds or allow them to be held back by the suffocating brand of religion that has swept through the country in recent years? 

Young as it is, the revolution has already answered many questions regarding the ability of Egyptians to rise up and be counted, stand up for their rights, and instigate a process of peaceful change. But, as you can see from the above, many more questions loom on the horizon.

Whatever the future holds, one thing is for certain, Tunisians and Egyptians are in the galvanising process of defining the modern Arabic for freedom, and armed with that houriya, the future is theirs for the taking.

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Open letter: Mubarak, we loathe you

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By Khaled Diab

Mr Mubarak, you have the extraordinary knack for snatching mediocrity from the jaws of greatness. But the Egyptian people will write their own future.

Friday 11 February 2011

To our beloathed leader,

Never have so many people awaited one of your speeches with such breathless anticipation. Sadly, for you, it was neither out of love for their leader nor out of admiration for your oratorial skills.

The whole of Egypt, most of the Arab world and millions across the globe were glued to their television sets believing that they would finally hear you utter those magic, wonderful, sweet, magic words. Everyone was excited. The army had said earlier that all the people’s demands would be met when you addressed the nation. Even the Americans seemed convinced that your resignation was in the bag, and Barack Obama waxed lyrical about how the Egyptian people were writing history.

But they are writing it no thanks to you, as you seem hell-bent on rewriting it. The only help you have given is in the most negative sense. You have succeeded in unifying a nation against a common enemy, yourself.

You have the extraordinary knack for snatching mediocrity from the jaws of greatness. You had one final chance to redeem yourself, to salvage some modicum of a legacy by announcing, using the presidential decrees you’ve abused for so long, sweeping reforms to meet all the protesters demands – including a transitional government made up of a ‘Council of the Wise’, free and fair democratic elections, and the limiting of the powers of the presidency – and then resigned.

Instead, as is your wont, you failed to rise to the occasion. When you finally appeared on air, a couple of hours late, you delivered a recorded message that was a study in mundanness and cliché. With the pallor of a made-up corpse in an ill-lit funeral parlour, you spoke like someone who lost all feeling.

Even when you finally expressed sympathy for the fallen, you did it like a sociopath, without emotion, without any acknowledgement that it was your security apparatus and goons who caused these deaths. And when you sought to express empathy with the protesters, you employed a tone of contempt and condescension by attributing it all to youthful zeal. “I was young, too,” you claimed. Yes, you were, in the Jurassic age.

You droned on and on and on again about the six decades of service and sacrifice you’d given to the nation, as if anyone had forced you to do that in a country that would’ve been happy if you’d retired a decade ago, while most wouldn’t have been too disappointed – or even cognisant – if you’d never become president.

You arrogantly called us your children, but we’re not, we’re your hostages, although I managed to escape your cloying clutches years ago. You said it was out of concern for the well-being of Egyptians and Egypt that you would not cede your throne until September to ensure an orderly transition of power.

But what does orderly mean to you, Mr Mubarak? Does it mean finally letting the Egyptian people enjoy their full freedom and exercise their will? Or, more ominously, does it mean restoring your idea of  “order”, waiting for the protesters to disperse, and then crushing dissent?

Well, those days are long, Mr ex-president, the game has changed and so have the rules of engagement. Although I remember how much people feared you, and how much more they feared your predecessors, you cannot intimidate or frighten the Egyptian people anymore, as they have bravely demonstrated day in and day out, and as their determination now to march on your palace eloquently shows.

You claim that you are not clinging on to power like some addict who can’t live without a hit refusing to let go of his needle, but because you want to avoid the chaos. But can’t you see that it is only your departure that will avert anarchy? Or do you mean that you are Egypt and Egypt is you?

Over the years, you had so many chances to leave with dignity and pride, and be hailed as the father of Egyptian democracy. After the assassination of your predecessor and the tumultuous last years of his reign, you could have grasped that the Egyptians were already desperate for dignity and freedom and you could have acted as a temporary transitional leader to take the country to that safe port.

Every time, you came to rewrite the constitution to allow you to run for another term in office, you faced increasingly mounting opposition, yet you refused to read the writing on the wall. In 2005, you could’ve made Egypt’s first multi-candidate election a truly democratic race, and perhaps have even been re-elected, but this time with a true mandate, but you let that opportunity slip away from you, as well. And now you and Egypt must reap the storm.

However, despite all the chaos and anarchy you have spread, I am glad of one thing: that when Egyptians gain their freedom it will be because of their own actions and determination, and despite you, not thanks to you. Egyptians will be able to look back on this time with the pride that when the moment of reckoning came they managed to seize their rights with their own hands, and not bestowed upon them by some magnanimous greater power.

Egyptians have discovered their own latent power and, for that, I applaud them.

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‘Collaborator!’ – a charge that has plagued Egypt

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By Osama Diab

Egyptians are routinely accused of being in league with foreign forces, from the US to Iran, but this propaganda is wearing thin.

15 September 2010

In the centuries after Egypt’s last native ruler, Nectanebus II, was driven out by the Persians, Egypt was conquered and occupied by almost every major colonial power. It was only in 1952 that General Mohamed Naguib’s successful military coup managed to overthrow the monarch, ending British influence and restoring sovereignty to the land of Egypt.

Almost 60 years later, this colonial legacy still haunts the country. Opponents of political and social change bank on a deep-seated fear of foreign influence to tighten their grip on power by accusing everyone who promotes an alternative to them of collaboration.

The “treason” card can be used against anyone and everyone. According to Egyptian conspiracy theorists, liberal politicians are probably American agents with a western agenda. Similarly, Islamists are accused of getting orders from Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, or all of the above.

Mohamed ElBaradei, former director of International Agency for Atomic Energy and potential presidential candidate, is supposedly both an Iranian and American agent. Ayman Nour, a liberal Egyptian politician who was jailed for what many believe was the “crime” of challenging Mubarak in the 2005 presidential elections, is America’s boy in Egypt.

A ruling National Democratic party MP, Hassan Nashat al-Kassas, who was condemned by human rights organisations for calling on the police to shoot pro-reform demonstrators, said during a parliamentary discussion last year on medical aid to Gaza (in Arabic): “I used to believe that we have a patriotic opposition. However, it turned out that they only work for the interest of Egypt’s enemies.”

Likewise, Muslim preacher, Khaled Abdallah, attacked ElBaradei by also accusing him of collaboration. He implied that he is applying a pro-American and anti-Islamist agenda. He also warned people against supporting ElBaradei because by doing so they would be fighting God and His messenger. He asked his audience to refuse to recognise anyone who “arrives on the back of American tanks”.

Ironically, ElBaradei has long been attacked by many in the US and Israel for being too lenient with Iran. The US was also the only country to oppose a third term for ElBaradei as the head of the IAEA due to his position on the war in Iraq.

After portraying ElBaradei as a hero for years after winning the Nobel peace prize, Egyptian state-run media launched a smear campaign questioning his loyalty to the motherland once he appeared to challenge the 29-year-rule of Mubarak. A state-run newspaper falsely accused him of holding Swedish nationality a few days after he announced he might run for presidency under certain conditions. State-run media were also trying to wrongfully promote the idea that he gave the green light to America to invade Iraq. Pro-government newspapers printed the same photo of him with the US ambassador over and over again to enforce that impression.

What is more, Egypt’s government always tries to give the impression that an alliance made up of Qatar (represented by the al-Jazeera TV network), Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas are trying to destabilise the country.

Destabilising a country would certainly need local agents. It is clear al-Kassas’s remark about the opposition implies that members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition bloc in Egypt’s parliament, are being recruited by the Iranian alliance.

Needless to say, trying to associate alternative thought with danger is a strategy long used by religious conservatives to prevent social change and by authoritarian regimes who want to preserve the political status quo. More alarmingly, this fear has also infected many progressive liberals in Egypt and in the west who are also afraid that change now might be more of a regressive step.

But it is hard to believe that finger-pointing can be sustained as a long-term strategy. It may have worked in the past because it was easier to deceive people who were less exposed to the outside world or those who didn’t have easy access to information. But now, with a globally integrated economy, more disposable income and technological advancement, more people in Egypt are joining the global world and its information revolution.

Therefore, this classic propaganda technique is failing, and hundreds of thousands of Egyptians are already advocating change. One tenth of Egypt’s Facebook population are members on ElBaradei’s Facebook group supporting him as an alternative to President Mubarak. Almost a million Egyptians have signed a petition supporting ElBaradei’s seven requirements for political reform in a clear sign that more Egyptians are willing to take risks for the sake of change.

This column appeared in The Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free section on 8 September 2010. Read the related discussion. Reprinted here with the author’s permission. © Osama Diab. All rights reserved.

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The Arab Republic of Investment

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By Osama Diab

Egyptians should not be too harsh on poor Gamal Mubarak. He’s bound to become the president of the ‘many’ entrepreneurs and professionals and not of the ‘few’ who live on less than $2 per day.

17 August 2009

Egyptian investors are worried, uncertain about the future of the country, and since most people are not the biggest fans of the third longest ruler in Egypt’s history (modern and ancient) after Ramsis II and Muhammad Ali, many entrepreneurs been losing sleep since Mubarak officially made it into the ninth decade of his life, and the end of his enduring term, by biological norms, should be nigh.

Amid that vast amount of anxiety among the business elite, Gamal Mubarak comes in smelling like a fresh mushroom and seems to be the way out of this terrible dilemma. If Mubarak Jr takes over, the impressive flow of investment into the country, as a result of the new ‘businessmen’ cabinet’s policies, will probably see no drop. If he  takes over, gated communities in new Cairo and the North Coast will definitely not open for the public to have access to the beaches, running water, reliable electricity, clean paved streets and tree-lined boulevards. Gamal will ensure that such communities will remain as spotless and exclusive as they are now.

Therefore, Gamal seems like the ideal option, or better said, the only option for the ‘many’. Maybe not for those ‘few’ tens of millions who live in informal settlements among garbage and stinking sewage, or the ‘minority’ 40% who live on under $2 dollars a day.

But who really cares, as long as the flow of foreign investment is steady and the World Bank is content? The workers and farmers may not be entirely happy with their wages, but who cares as long as the monthly minimum wage remains 35 Egyptian pounds (less than six dollars) to provide cheap labour to the foreign investor.

Pro-Mubarak (senior and junior) argue that we do not have any other serious candidates or alternatives for what’s soon going to be a vacancy, and that if Mubarak junior wins in fair elections, which of course seems to be always the case in Egypt, he should be allowed to run for president the way any other Egyptian national is allowed to.

This is a very valid argument, but requires a certain amount of nationwide amnesia. We should be able to forget that Gamal being the only one on the scene is actually the result of years and years of crushing the opposition by an autocratic regime, and demeaning any figure that gains popularity. We should also all banish from our minds that Ayman Nour was thrown in jail for the serious crime of challenging Mubarak. I guess we would also be required to fail to remember the fact that Gamal went from being a banker to running the country just because his old man appointed him. We should overlook all this as long as the elections are “fair” and the investors are happy. We should forget about how he made it up the political ladder, and pretend that it was all democratic.

The ‘minority’ of people who are not investors, entrepreneurs, businesspeople, or stock brokers forget that Gamal’s presidency can bring many good things to the average Egyptian as well. With Gamal Mubarak in power, Egypt won’t lose its advantages as a magnet for foreign investments, because labour will remain cheap, laws will remain unenforced, and Egypt, under his auspices, will always remain a friend to the West (who doesn’t need that?). It’s also good to be a citizen of a country that attracts a lot of investors, even if none of the newly created actually reaches them.

There’s no doubt that the presidential elections in Egypt will be fair. There’s also no doubt that Gamal Mubarak will win the vast majority of the votes, again, fairly. After Gamal is elected president, the opposition will claim that the elections were forged and that they witnessed many violations, but it won’t matter and no one will listen to their rantings, as long as Egypt provides investors with cheap labour, no legal hassle, low taxes, and no environmental standards.
Republished with the kind permission of the author. © Copyright Osama Diab.

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