Scenarios for Egypt's Future
How Democratic Will it Be?
By Juan Cole *
Hosni Mubarak is gone to the wild elation of Egyptian
crowds. The country is now being run by a council of
military officers. They say that they want a transition
to a civilian elected government this fall.
What do the people who made the revolution want? I
argued in Detroit News that this movement is at its
core a labor movement. The constant drumbeat on Faux
News that the crowds want a Muslim fundamentalist
dictatorship is ridiculous. Egyptians are religious,
but the keywords of the protests have been secular
ones- elections, parliament, the people, the army, the
nation (watan, the secular word for nation, not ummah,
the religious community).
A communique issued by the "January 25" leadership is
consistent with that finding:
-
Repeal of the state of emergency, which suspends
constitutional protections for human rights,
immediately.
- The immediate release of all political prisoners
- The setting aside of the present constitution and its
amendments
- Dissolution of the federal parliament, as well as of
provincial councils
- Creation of a transitional, collective governing
council
- The formation of an interim government comprising
independent nationalist trends, which would oversee
free and fair elections
- The formation of a working group to draft a new and
democratic constitution that resembles the older of the
democratic constitutions, on which the Egyptian people
would vote in a referendum
- Removal of any restriction on the free formation of
political parties, on civil, democratic and peaceful
bases.
- Freedom of the press
- Freedom to form unions and non-governmental
organizations without government permission
- abolition of all military courts and abrogation of
their rulings with regard to civilian accused
These demands are generally in accordance with the
current state of human rights law in Europe.
With regard to abrogation of the emergency laws, the
military appears already to have agreed in principle,
and this move is backed by the Obama administration.
Some of the other demands seem utopian, including
writing a new constitution before new elections and the
proroguing of the present parliament. Likewise, if the
rulings of the military courts were abrogated, then at
least some terrorists from the Egyptian Islamic Jihad
would be freed. Though, since thousands of prisoners
have fled their cells in the chaos of the past 2 1/2
weeks (and some may have been deliberately freed by
Mubarak's secret police in order to sow chaos), the
issue may be moot.
I was asked at an event at Columbia University on
Thursday night what likely lies ahead for Egypt now. My
reply was recorded and played on Amy Goodman's
Democracy Now!
What I said was that it seemed to me that three major
outcomes are possible:
-
The old elite of officers and businessmen around
Mubarak survives him to remain more or less in power,
and further protests over time are repressed.
-
There are new presidential and parliamentary
elections, but the Mubarak cronies take advantage of
their experience in organizing and the wealth they have
gained from their crony status to dominate these
institutions, while the officer corps remains a power
behind the scenes.
-
There is a genuine social and political revolution,
wherein substantial amounts of wealth and power are
redistributed to new actors.
Samer Shehata at Georgetown was asked to reply to my
scenarios. His responses are well informed and cogent,
but he misunderstood my first point, which no doubt I
expressed too telegraphically. When I said that there
was a (relatively small) chance that the military
regime in Egypt would `pull a Khamenei' and manage over
time to repress the reform movement, I didn't mean that
I thought the Muslim Brotherhood would take over or do
the repressing. I was just talking about a model where
massive street protests don't necessarily actually
produce a big change in the top political actors, i.e.,
in this case, where generals like Gen. Muhammad Hussein
Tantawi (Minister of Defense) and Gen. Omar Suleiman
(Vice President) remain high in the government, and
where many familiar faces in parliament are again
returned to office. Given the events on Friday I think
the likelihood of this development is now even smaller.
I suppose I also don't agree with Samer that the
National Democratic Party is not better positioned to
contest early elections than its rivals, especially the
inchoate networks that represent the protesters. While
the NDP may not be the best-organized party in the
world, it still has advantages, having dominated
parliament and provincial offices for decades, that its
rivals lack.
But, in neighboring Tunisia the old ruling party of
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the Rally for Constitutional
Democracy (a descendant of Habib Bourguiba's anti-
colonial Neo-Destour or New Constitutional Party), has
been dissolved. The same fate could befall the NDP,
which would make it harder for its functionaries to
dominate any new parliament. While parliamentary
elections have been set in Tunisia, it is not clear
when they will be held in Egypt. Presidential elections
will be conducted this fall, but parliament was just
elected in a clearly fraudulent process. The protesters
are demanding that that parliament be dissolved and new
polls for the national legislature be held. This step
could be taken by the military council, but as far as I
know that decision has not been announced.
While a thoroughgoing social revolution may or may not
take place in Egypt with regard to property and capital
(such events are rare in modern history), I do not mean
to in any way diminish the importance of achievements
such as the rule of law and constitutional liberties.
If the demands released Friday by the protesters are
even partially met, especially with regard to freedom
of expression and of unionizing and party formation,
Egypt will certainly be a very different and far more
democratic place. Since it is an opinion leader for the
Arab world, moreover, its example may well prove
crucial in spreading these freedoms elsewhere in the
region, even to Iran.
Source: Juan Cole's ZSpace Page, February 12, 2011; www.zcommunications.org
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