Unchanging Egypt
EDITORIAL
Boston Globe
December 28, 2005
THE REGIME OF EGYPTIAN President Hosni Mubarak sent an unsubtle message to President Bush and Arab democratic reformers last week when it had the politician who ran second to Mubarak in September's presidential election, Ayman Nour, sentenced to five years of hard labor. Saturday's verdict, read out to a courtroom packed with police and plainclothes security forces, fairly shouted to would-be democratizers in Egypt or in foreign capitals: We are not going to allow any real change -- don't even think about it.
Embedded in this blunt assertion that Mubarak and the oligarchy around him have not lost their will to rule was another, more nuanced conclusion. Implicitly, the Egyptian ruling group was alerting Bush -- and anyone else inclined to the simplistic belief that a little gentle pressure from abroad will make the Arab autocracies go the way of the Soviet bloc -- that the mere staging of elections will not be sufficient to induce democracy.
Nour was punished not merely for having the temerity to run against Mubarak and take 7 percent of the votes cast, but for being an ungrateful renegade who served for 10 years as a leader of Egypt's obedient Parliament and then turned against his former benefactors in the ruling party.
Unaccountable regimes commonly fear figures like Nour who, having had dirty hands themselves, know all too well how wealth and power are monopolized by a favored few. Nour's trial and conviction are signs that Mubarak's inner circle will not easily give way to democratic revolutions like those that replaced corrupt and oppressive regimes in Soviet Russia and Ukraine. In those transitions to democracy, a former insider emerged as the leader of a popular movement to cast aside the old regime.
A tell-tale sign that Mubarak's elite is not about to comply with Bush's ballyhooed campaign to bestow democracy on the Arab world is the regime's transparently disdainful manipulation of Egypt's legal system to chastise Nour.
The prosecution claimed Nour had thousands of signatures on election petitions forged, including those of his wife and father, despite the fact that he needed only 50 people to sign the petition for his political party. And one of the witnesses who originally testified against him later recanted, saying that state security forces had threatened his nieces.
Elections alone can hardly untie the knot of Egyptian autocracy. Years of free speech and reasoned political discourse will be needed to prepare the way. If the voices of liberal democrats continue to be drowned out either by the regime in power or by fervent Islamists, Egypt's future can only promise a choice between two kinds of authoritarian order.
Boston Globe
December 28, 2005
THE REGIME OF EGYPTIAN President Hosni Mubarak sent an unsubtle message to President Bush and Arab democratic reformers last week when it had the politician who ran second to Mubarak in September's presidential election, Ayman Nour, sentenced to five years of hard labor. Saturday's verdict, read out to a courtroom packed with police and plainclothes security forces, fairly shouted to would-be democratizers in Egypt or in foreign capitals: We are not going to allow any real change -- don't even think about it.
Embedded in this blunt assertion that Mubarak and the oligarchy around him have not lost their will to rule was another, more nuanced conclusion. Implicitly, the Egyptian ruling group was alerting Bush -- and anyone else inclined to the simplistic belief that a little gentle pressure from abroad will make the Arab autocracies go the way of the Soviet bloc -- that the mere staging of elections will not be sufficient to induce democracy.
Nour was punished not merely for having the temerity to run against Mubarak and take 7 percent of the votes cast, but for being an ungrateful renegade who served for 10 years as a leader of Egypt's obedient Parliament and then turned against his former benefactors in the ruling party.
Unaccountable regimes commonly fear figures like Nour who, having had dirty hands themselves, know all too well how wealth and power are monopolized by a favored few. Nour's trial and conviction are signs that Mubarak's inner circle will not easily give way to democratic revolutions like those that replaced corrupt and oppressive regimes in Soviet Russia and Ukraine. In those transitions to democracy, a former insider emerged as the leader of a popular movement to cast aside the old regime.
A tell-tale sign that Mubarak's elite is not about to comply with Bush's ballyhooed campaign to bestow democracy on the Arab world is the regime's transparently disdainful manipulation of Egypt's legal system to chastise Nour.
The prosecution claimed Nour had thousands of signatures on election petitions forged, including those of his wife and father, despite the fact that he needed only 50 people to sign the petition for his political party. And one of the witnesses who originally testified against him later recanted, saying that state security forces had threatened his nieces.
Elections alone can hardly untie the knot of Egyptian autocracy. Years of free speech and reasoned political discourse will be needed to prepare the way. If the voices of liberal democrats continue to be drowned out either by the regime in power or by fervent Islamists, Egypt's future can only promise a choice between two kinds of authoritarian order.
posted by Hanan Elbadry at 12:24 PM
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