Tag Archives: Egypt

Egypt, Foreign Affairs, Government, Middle East, Politics, Society

Egypt’s future hangs by a thread…

HOPE

The present situation in Egypt looks grim, both in the wider picture and in the detail.

Tensions in Cairo remain high following the deaths outside the Presidential Guard barracks on Monday, fatalities which included women and children among the dead. The prospect of any government being formed soon looks extremely remote.

Hazem el-Beblawi, the 76-year-old former finance minister, named last week as the interim Prime Minister, has struggled in his task to form a cabinet. That task has been made more difficult due to the issue of arrest warrants by the state prosecutor for senior figures in the Muslim Brotherhood.

Following the removal of Mohammad Morsi, Egypt’s deposed leader, it was suggested that the priority for the interim administration was to form a broad-based coalition government, and one that was reflective of Egypt’s political diversity. President Morsi had not sought allies beyond his immediate supporters, a crucial reason as to why he was removed following millions who had taken to the streets in protest. It can hardly have been helpful, then, that a slew of new arrest warrants was the best way to go about fostering peace and reconciliation. The Brotherhood’s political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party, had already refused to join a unity government – on the not so unreasonable grounds that it had led a democratically elected government that was unlawfully removed.

On Tuesday, the British Foreign Secretary’s statement in the House of Commons highlighted some of the difficulties. Mr Hague has urged Egyptians to move swiftly to hold free and fair elections, as well as working towards openness, democracy and economic reform. Whilst the sound-bites are sensible, they must ring pretty hollow to those Egyptians who thought they already had a freely elected government following the election of Mr Morsi 12-months ago.

Mr Hague also skirted around the uncomfortable fact that the army had seized power and the refusal by some, notably the United States, in referring to the takeover as a coup. The feeling that the Western world promotes and lauds democracy elsewhere, until it produces something they don’t want, will only have been reinforced with what is happening in Egypt.

In the short-to-medium term at least the situation in Egypt seems likely to remain highly problematic. In the unlikely event that all parties and vested interest groups can be persuaded to take part in amending the constitution, approving it in a government-run referendum will undoubtedly leave some to question the authority of any newly formed government – built as it will on the back of an army takeover.

Over the past week, Egypt’s democracy has not been strengthened. Following the carnage on Monday, descent into a Syria-style bloody civil war seemed inevitable. But whilst the confrontation at the Presidential Guard barracks, in which more than 50 people died and dozens of others were injured, it also seemed to shock all sides into stepping back from the brink. It is too soon to be abandoning hope.

Rather than issuing new arrest warrants, the authorities should be exploiting this pause to offer some kind of peace reconciliation – for example, by starting to release detainees.

Egypt’s compelling sense of national identity is a permanent and immovable asset. Unlike many states in the region, it has a common history going back millennia; it has borders that are well defined, and there are no serious challenges from ethnic minority groups. Egypt’s differences are invariably religious and political which, though it doesn’t make them any less sharp, does still leave Egypt’s national identity intact. The interim administration as well as any new government needs to capitalise on this and should provide a roadmap in helping Egypt to complete its revolution.

However untidy Egyptian society has become of late, the taste that many in Egypt have developed over the past two-and-a-half years for freedom and democracy can be a force for good as well as ill. As we have seen it veered all too easily when Mr Morsi was deposed a week ago, into a rule by a discontented mob. Such proof of political engagement, however, could also deter the military from the excesses to which it is prone.

There are slivers of hope for Egypt’s future, but hope is all that is currently on offer.

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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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