Category Archives: Politics

Britain, Politics

Labour’s struggle with Unite…

EXPOSING MILIBAND’S WEAKNESS

For Ed Miliband, the Labour Party’s leader in the UK, the last ten days or so have been wretched. Mr Miliband who has been so desperately unimpressive in the past few months, particularly in response to the spending review delivered by George Osborne, now finds himself at the centre of a scandal that exposes his weakness even further.

Mr Miliband would never have guessed that a Westminster barroom brawl involving Falkirk MP Eric Joyce would have had such seismic repercussions.

Mr Joyce decided to stand down and subsequently this has triggered a poisonous battle in who should become the next Labour candidate in this safe Labour seat. The issue is now threatening to engulf the Labour leader, who has never looked so weak, rattled and indecisive.

The first allegations to emerge were that the union Unite – whose block vote was crucial in winning Mr Miliband his job following the departure of Gordon Brown – had swamped the local party constituency with new and unfettered members, so they could vote for the union’s preferred Left-wing candidate.

Worse still, it was then discovered that Unite, led by Len McCluskey, was itself paying the new members’ subscription fees, and in some cases had even signed up people as members without their knowledge. This could lead to a potential criminal act of identity theft.

A strong leader of the Labour Party would have recognised the huge political danger in allowing a militant trade union (which wants Labour to wreck the economy all over again with more spending and more debt) to tighten its already vice-like grip on the party.

It is alleged that, for weeks, Mr Miliband knew about the Falkirk allegations and did nothing. It has taken the deeply suspicious resignation of his election chief Tom Watson, and the revelation that Unite had tried to influence the outcome in a further 40 selection contests elsewhere in the country, to wake him up from this pathetic dithering.

And yet Ed Miliband’s response has been feeble and inadequate.

On Friday, Mr Miliband made much of the fact that he has referred Labour’s internal report into Falkirk to the police. But, in reality, was this not an act of weakness given that 24 hours earlier the Conservative MP Henry Smith had written a public letter to the Chief Constable of Police Scotland calling for a full fraud inquiry?

Mr Miliband who champions the cause of openness and transparency is steadfast in his refusal to make the report public. A string of senior figures, however, has demanded that he do so.

Mr Miliband, who wants to shackle Britain’s free Press with statutory regulation, is a position that is at odds with the openness he calls for. For how would the murky dealings and vote-rigging within his party have surfaced if such a framework had existed? It is likely the shenanigans and underhand dealings of Unite would never have been exposed.

Calling on Mr McCluskey to turn his back on ‘machine politics’, the Labour Party has to answer as to why it has quietly changed the rules by making it a condition that any candidate in a council or Parliamentary election must be a union member (as opposed to should be, which was formerly the case). This was done shortly after Mr Miliband become leader.

Many people will question whether Mr Miliband is in any position to confront Unite and its leadership over its bid to drag Labour back to the bad old days of 1980s militancy. It is certain that if Unite withdrew its financial support of the Labour Party, the party would quickly become inoperable, if not by going bust. Over the past three years alone Unite has given Labour a staggering £8 million.

No wonder then that Labour are unable to commit properly to spending cuts, in fear that Mr McCluskey and his union cronies might not like it.

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Egypt, Foreign Affairs, Government, Middle East, Politics, United States

Egypt’s revolution and the ballot box…

EGYPT MUST COMPLETE ITS REVOLUTION

The events in Egypt led the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, to say that ‘Democratic change is a process, not an event.’ Mr Hague, addressing a Conservative Middle East Council, last week, following the removal of Mohammed Morsi as Egypt’s prime minister, is supported by history with his argument. The revolution that deposed the dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011 has taken many surprising turns.

Egypt’s election of a president was designed to bring democracy to a country that has been missing for more than 80 years. The democratic legitimacy granted to Mr Morsi, a popular vote of more than 50 per cent at the ballot box just 12 months ago, was a mandate in reshaping the country as an Islamic Republic.

The revolution in Egypt continues following the removal of Mohammed Morsi by the military. But with tensions rising and the Muslim Brotherhood discontent with the democratic process, the revolution that stemmed from the Arab Spring of 2011 is putting democracy in danger.

The revolution in Egypt continues following the removal of Mohammed Morsi by the military. But with tensions rising and the Muslim Brotherhood discontent with the democratic process, the revolution that stemmed from the Arab Spring of 2011 is putting democracy in danger.

But rather than heal the economy or build up secular, civil institutions – a necessary prerequisite given the mix of Secularists, Christians and Muslims in the country – Morsi used his fragile mandate to push through a fundamentalist constitution, while overseeing the country’s descent into anarchy, chaos and economic crisis. The result was that the military stepped in on the pretext of reclaiming the revolution from the country’s democratically elected leader. Whilst its intervention was celebrated by millions who took to the streets, and tens of thousands of people gathered in Tahrir Square, the army’s subsequent actions have been a mix of progressive action and of being troubling. The choice of a civilian judge as interim president suggests that the military’s intentions are good, but it has also started to arrest members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a reflection of the dictatorial authoritarianism of the old Mubarak regime.

President Barack Obama said the new government should ‘avoid any arbitrary arrests of President Morsi and his supporters’. That is surely right, for there should always be a space for Islamists in a country on the road to reform and democracy. Exclusion would only lead to sectarian violence.

Yet, some analysts have commented that part of the febrile situation in Egypt rests with President Obama, who has sent convoluted and mixed signals: first supporting the 2011 revolution and then remaining neutral. Mirthfully, or as ironic as the situation has become, the lack of US involvement convinced some in the Egyptian opposition that Mr Obama supported President Morsi. In May, the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, expressed dissatisfaction with Egypt’s commitment to democracy, but, just a month later, the United States agreed to give the Egyptian army $1.3 billion in aid.

American law is clear on restricting assistance to any country whose elected head of government has been deposed by a military coup or decree – a legal provision in U.S. statute which has given Mr Obama an opportunity to show some leadership.

Washington has stated that it will withhold the $1.3 billion if the generals are judged to have staged a coup, and it is difficult to draw any other conclusion. But this threat should be used by Mr Obama as leverage to compel the military to commit to elections as soon as possible, preferably with a clear itinerary and timetable attached. That would be the best outcome and a necessary condition if Egypt is to complete its revolution.

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Egypt, Foreign Affairs, Politics, Society

Opinion: Inclusive democratic governance in Egypt must be a priority…

The prospect of a military intervention in Egypt looks inevitable given the country’s chaotic transition.

If the generals do seize the mantle of leadership that others have failed to effectively grasp, their move would suggest something much deeper than crass opportunism. Paradoxically, any military coup would underline one of the most striking features of Egyptian politics since the January 25, 2011, uprising: the absence of a political vision that should have been central in unifying the country.

The popular revolt that has seen millions of people take to the streets maybe a catharsis of empowerment that the Tamarud (or Rebellion) Movement has generated, but by itself this will not produce new leaders capable of deflecting the military’s renewed efforts in shaping the course of political change. In any event, the generals will be sailing against the headwinds of widespread public dissent.

To appreciate the challenges facing Egypt we should be clear who bears the most responsibility for this crisis. That responsibility sits firmly with the Muslim Brotherhood and its Justice Freedom Party. The Brotherhood has failed to grasp the important task of how elected leaders in any society should define a new basis for democratic national unity. Central to that is the need to create a symbolic language that promises both inclusion and reconciliation. Language is not merely about a perfunctory readiness to share power with rivals, but, along with reconciliation, must be pivoted around public acts and rhetoric that reassures those who have the most to fear from the type of democracy unfolding in Egypt.

It has been on this level that President Morsi of Egypt has failed, and why so much of the post-mortem analysis of the transition misses the point. The defenders of the Muslim Brotherhood have portrayed a story of efforts to include non-Islamists in the Cabinet of Mr Morsi and of the assembly that was drawn up to write a new constitution. They have, though, been carefully selecting their details.

Mohammad Morsi promised on his inauguration day to represent ‘all Egyptians’. Yet, in the year that followed, Brotherhood leaders communicated intolerance and arrogance to both their secular rivals and their Salafi competitors. Such language has only reinforced the commitment of the Brotherhood’s rank and file to marginalise and humiliate their rivals.

This humiliation came to a head in December 2012 when secular activists were taken hostage by Brotherhood radicals and tortured. The Internet videos of Brotherhood extremists delighting in the pain and degradation of their prisoners destroyed any basis of trust there might have been.

But if the Brotherhood bears most of the responsibility for the current crisis, the leaders of the Tamarud Movement must also face some tough questions. Having brought millions of people into the streets, what is its game plan? How, too, will the Tamarud avoid signalling to all Egyptians that the price its followers must now pay for two years of bad leadership is yet another form of political exclusion or a political process that might ultimately end up being controlled by the military?

Under Hosni Mubarak the Muslim Brotherhood had been prisoners of a system that denied them any hope of exercising any real political power. Freed from such shackles by the January 25 uprising, they sought immediate political vengeance.

But if the Brotherhood is at fault by taking revenge, the leaders of the Tamarud must now face the challenge of putting aside their own desires (or that of their followers) for score settling and focus instead on building a grass-roots political party that can help Egypt back to inclusive democratic governance.

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