The Elections in Egypt and the U.S.
"Democracy Initiative"
The month-long election to Egypt's legislature
has concluded with the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), led by President
Hosni Mubarak, retaining its firm control of the People's Assembly. The NDP and
allied independents secured 324 seats in the 454-member parliament, thereby
giving Mubarak and the NDP the two-thirds majority required to amend the
constitution and to pass emergency laws. The Muslim Brotherhood, which is not a
legal political party and has been banned in Egypt by law since 1954, ran 150
candidates as independents and gained 88 seats, thus reaffirming its role as
the de facto largest opposition group in the country.
Although the election results will not
directly weaken the power of Mubarak or the NDP, the composition of the
People's Assembly is changed considerably from the 2000 election. In the
outgoing People's Assembly the NDP held 404 seats while the Muslim Brotherhood
had only 15. If it had not been for government and police interference at the
polling stations that resulted in 11 deaths, as well as mass arrests of their
supporters, the Muslim Brotherhood might have elected even more candidates. In
fact, 12 seats are to be decided later because the courts cancelled election
results due to violence or controversy. Furthermore, the Muslim Brotherhood,
either by prior agreement with the government or to avoid a direct challenge to the
government's control of parliament , only fielded 150 candidates, just under
one-third of the total seats in the parliament. The 15 legal opposition parties
only gained 14 seats between them while another six seats went to other
independents.
The overall participation rate in the election
was 25 percent of the registered voters, but many eligible voters were not registered.
However, the election attracted attention from around the world. This is partly
due to the fact that Egypt is by far the most populous of all Arab countries
with 77 million people and the second most populous country on the African
continent. Any major political change in
Egypt will reverberate throughout the Middle East and North Africa and beyond
the region. Therefore, the United States, the
dominant foreign power in this region, as well as the peoples and
governments in Israel and in the surrounding Arab countries, have an interest
at all times in what happens in Egypt.
But the election had a significance beyond a
general interest in Egyptian political affairs. It was the first general
election since the U.S.-British invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as well as
the U.S.-led "war against terror" and since the United States
launched its programme to promote Middle East democracy. Also, the election was
held within the framework of some limited reforms to the electoral process by
the Egyptian government. Therefore, the election was a measure of the
credibility of the Mubarak regime and its reforms, of the U.S. role in the
region and the pro-U.S. opposition parties, and of the Muslim Brotherhood. In a
broader sense the election was looked upon as a measure of the desire of the
working class and people of Egypt to bring about fundamental changes in favour
of democratic rights, for economic well-being, and for an end to foreign
imperialist interference.
Hosni Mubarak has ruled Egypt without
interruption since the assassination of his predecessor, Anwar Sadat, in 1981.
The assassination was attributed to Islamic fundamentalists who were opposed to
the peace agreement engineered by the United States between Egypt and Israel
and signed by Sadat. The Egyptian government responded with a state of emergency
and for the past 24 years Mubarak has ruled the country through emergency laws.
Thus, even though Egypt has a constitution and a parliament, they are mostly
for window-dressing. The constitution gives the president control over the
parliament, political parties and electoral process, and it gives the ruling
party control over who can run as candidates for president and for parliament.
It has been a completely closed system that has guaranteed that the president
and ruling party would be re-elected in perpetuity and could enact changes to
the constitution and promulgate emergency laws. In addition, the government has
continuously strengthened the Islamic religious establishment as an instrument
for social and cultural control and to counteract its religious opponents who
have a political agenda against the regime and its policies. The United States
has fully supported the Mubarak regime for all of these years. In fact, the
United States considers Egypt a very important military and strategic partner
in the region. U.S. military aid to Egypt totals over US$1.3 billion annually,
and is only surpassed by U.S. military aid to Israel.
The U.S.-British aggression against Iraq in
2003 and the events leading up to that aggression, combined with Mubarak's
pronouncements blaming the Iraqi government for bringing this aggression upon
itself, provoked the largest public demonstrations in Egypt since the 1970s. The Egyptian
government responded by violently suppressing the demonstrations which had the
effect of deepening the resentment of
the Egyptian people towards the repressive regime and the United States. This
led to a resurgence of demands by the
Egyptian people for political reform and the end to U.S. interference in their
internal affairs. Similar events unfolded in other Arab countries. This
struggle of the people for democratic rights, for economic well-being, and for
the end of foreign imperialist interference in their countries has created a
crisis for the reactionary rulers and the United States. This political crisis
in Egypt has also been exacerbated by an economic crisis.
While there is no immediate danger that the
Egyptian government will be overthrown by the organized opposition forces, the
regime has a narrow base of support among the population. The Egyptian government
recognizes that there is a long term danger
that Egypt, as well as other Arab countries, will become so polarized
that people will organize themselves for the revolutionary overthrow of the
reactionary rulers and their U.S. backers as occurred in Iran under the fascist
regime of Shah Pahlavi. Thus, Mubarak is under pressure to expand the base of
support of his regime by enacting some economic and political reforms.
In this context, since 2003 the Egyptian
government has taken several initiatives to diffuse and split the opposition.
One of these is the establishment of a National Council on Human Rights (NCHR).
The NCHR is the brainchild of the NDP's "Policies Secretariat" headed by the president's son Gamal. It is
state-funded and its 27 members are appointed by parliament. It has no power to
draw up any legislation and no legal redress to back up requests for
co-operation from government agencies or for the prosecution of cases of human
rights violations. The members of the council are a "who's who" of
Egyptian politics. The chairman of the council is former UN Secretary-General
Boutros Boutros-Ghali. In response to criticism that the council is a method
for the government to co-opt the opposition, Boutros-Ghali responded that
"There is not a single representative of the government on the
council." Yet, in its first 15 months, even as the authorities conducted
indiscriminate roundups of Islamists in the northern Sinai and even as press
reports fingered Egypt as a prisoner depository for the CIA's policy of
"rendition", the NCHR remained silent.
In terms of economic and political reforms, at
the national conference of the NDP held in September 2004, the Mubarak
government revived its "economics first" mantra of the 1990s and
announced that it would proceed with a privatization program, slash tariffs and
taxes, and reform the banking system. This neo-liberal agenda of expanding the
private sector, shrinking the role of the state, and attracting foreign
investment is aimed at winning over a section of the economic elite in Egypt.
The conference also announced that the government would enact amendments to the
political party law, the election law and the professional syndicates law in
order to broaden political participation and civic freedoms, and to strengthen
political parties and non-government organizations in a process that is
"evolutionary, not revolutionary".
In February 2005, Mubark amended the
constitution to allow, for the first time in Egypt's history, competitive,
multi-candidate presidential elections. The amendment was drafted by parliament
and approved by public referendum in late May 2005. The results were
predictable. The political parties that were allowed to field presidential
candidates were carefully selected by Mubarak and the NDP while organizations
with mass support, like the Muslim Brotherhood, were denied the right to field candidates.
(The Egyptian constitution formally prohibits political parties based on
religious identity.) As a result, in
September 2005, Mubarak was re-elected with 88 percent of the vote, according
to the official results.
The political reforms enacted by the Egyptian
government fall far short of the demands of the opposition. One of the two main
opposition coalitions is the Alliance of National Forces for Reform, comprised
of the four main legal opposition parties - the Wafd Party, the National
Progressive Unionist Party, the Arab
Nasserist Party, and the Islamist Labour Party. It is calling for an end to the
emergency law, a constitutional
amendment to allow direct election of the president from among competing
candidates, a limit of two five-year presidential terms, the guarantee of free
elections under judicial supervision, greater freedom to establish political
parties, loosening of government controls over unions, professional syndicates
and civil society groups, and an end to the ruling party's dominance of state
media. A second opposition coalition
calling itself the March 20th Movement for Change (in reference to the date of
large protests held in Cairo against the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq) is
made up of civil society groups such as the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, banned
organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Communist Party, and
independent intellectuals.
The Muslim Brotherhood launched its own reform
initiative in March 2004. It is calling for freedom of individuals to engage in
political affairs, free and fair elections, freedom of religion, freedom to
form political parties, convene mass meetings, and assemble in peaceful
demonstrations, an independent judiciary with the right to modify laws in order
to conform to Islamic jurisprudence, an end to army intervention in political
life, limits on the scope of the president's authority by prohibiting the
president from heading any political party or assuming any executive
responsibility, an end to the so-called "ill-reputed laws" which
include emergency laws, press laws and other regulations that restrict freedom,
the revisiting of previous verdicts issued by military and judicial courts, and
modification of all existing laws and
regulations in a manner that conforms to Islamic Sharia Law.
The pressure for reform is also coming from
outside of Egypt, led by the United States. The only way for the U.S. to
maintain its economic, political and military domination of the Middle East is
by having pro-U.S. regimes in power. Therefore, the United States is taking
measures to cover all eventualities. It is pressuring these regimes to enact
reforms that broaden their base of support, and it is grooming its own pro-U.S.
opposition forces in these countries, through the organization and funding of
"non-government organizations" (NGOs)
and "civil society organizations" (CSOs). These act both as a pressure on these regimes
to enact reforms and as a potential replacement for these regimes. At all costs
the United States does not want any genuinely democratic and anti-imperialist
forces to take power in these countries.
The promotion of so-called democracy and
reform by the United States is a tool for furthering U.S. interests in this
region, as it is everywhere else. The United States Institute of Peace,
established by the U.S. Congress in 1984 with a board of directors appointed by the President of the United
States, published a special report in May 2005 entitled "Promoting Middle
East Democracy". It stated:
"The 9/11 attacks and subsequent terrorist operations...shattered the
conventional wisdom that the region's stability -- anchored by its
authoritarian governments -- could
endure indefinitely and would come at little cost to U.S. interests. Precisely
the opposite conclusion has become apparent: Middle East reform is critical for
long-term stability and regional security. Absent change, the status quo will
only breed greater popular disaffection and provide fertile ground for the
continued growth of extremism."
U.S. Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice expressed the same view in a
speech at the American University in Cairo on June 20, 2005. She stated:
"For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the
expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East - and we achieved
neither. Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the
democratic aspirations of all people."
Two of the main initiatives taken by the
United States along these lines are its "Middle East Partnership
Initiative" unveiled in December 2002, and the U.S. inspired G-8 plan
"Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative" unveiled in June
2004. These initiatives have an economic, political, educational, and social
component that specifically targets the business community, professionals,
youth and students, women and human rights activists. In addition, the U.S. House
of Representatives has recently passed a
bill called "The Advance of Democracy Act of 2005" which is pending
approval in the U.S. Senate. The bill will result in some structural and
programmatic changes within the State Department to facilitate "democracy
promotion" in the Middle East and other countries.
These U.S. "democracy initiatives"
have been met with skepticism in Egypt and elsewhere. The United States has no
credibility as a defender of democracy in the Arab world. Besides supporting
the reactionary regimes in the region, it continues to support Israeli
genocidal policies towards the Palestinian people. Since 2001 it has invaded
and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. It continues to threaten countries like Iran
and Syria that refuse to go along with U.S. policies in the Middle East.
Moreover, it violates the most elementary human rights as seen by its treatment
of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere. Even though the current
U.S. administration has declared a change of heart, it continues to support the
Egyptian government's ban on the Muslim Brotherhood and has exerted little
public pressure on Cairo over the arrest of Islamists during the recent
elections.
The situation for the United States in the
Arab world is very different than it was for the United States in the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe in the 1980s. In the Arab world there is popular
support for changing the government, but there is no support for replacing one
pro-U.S. regime with another one. Thus, any opposition groups that openly
embrace the United States run the risk of losing credibility in the eyes of the
working class and enlightened people in Egypt and other Arab countries.
Moreover, the United States does not trust the "Islamic" opposition
forces. It has been trying to foster "secular" opposition forces to
contain the "Islamic" opposition. But this policy suffered a setback
in the Egyptian election. Ayman Nour, the leader of the "Tomorrow
Party", who was President Mubark's main opponent in the presidential election
and was most favoured among the opposition leaders by the Bush administration,
lost his parliamentary seat in this election. This may force the U.S. to
revisit its attitude towards the Islamic opposition forces and seek some kind
of accommodation with them.
In addition, it is not smooth sailing for the
U.S. with respect to the reactionary rulers in the Arab countries, who are also
suspicious of U.S. intentions. They are justifiably concerned that the
"pro-democracy" groups created and funded by the United States will
be used to overthrow their regimes, as they have been used by the Americans to
organize the "colour revolutions" in Georgia, Ukraine and elsewhere.
On this score, the Arab governments and the opposition parties share the same
concern about foreign funding and support for NGOs and CSOs.
Aside from the poor showing of the
"secular" opposition parties in the Egyptian elections, the U.S.
"democracy initiative" in the Middle East also suffered a setback
when the Egyptian government rebuffed U.S. plans at the "Forum for the
Future" meeting held in Manama, Bahrain on November 11-12, 2005. The forum
was attended by 22 states of the Broader Middle East and North Africa (BMENA)
region, the Group of Eight (G-8)
countries, and other "partners" like the Asian Development Bank,
International Finance Corporation, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank.
The declared objective of the forum was to "promote and develop political,
economic, and social reform in the region" and to "serve as a venue
for regional businesses and civil society groups to express their goals and
ideas for reforms to their governments". Parallel "civil
society" and "business dialogue" groups were also invited to
make presentations.
At the forum, U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleeza Rice announced the establishment of the "Foundation for the
Future" and the "Fund for the Future". The declared purpose of the
"foundation" is to "allow indigenous reformers to draw upon
their ideas and their ideals to nurture grass roots organizations that support
the development of democracy through grants to help build civil society,
strengthen the rule of law and ensure greater opportunity for health and
education." The foundation has commitments of over US$50 million of which
the United States has pledged US$35 million. The declared purpose of the "fund", a joint venture between
governments and the private sector, is to help businesses in the region,
especially small and medium-sized enterprises, to gain access to the capital
they need. This fund has commitments of over US$100 million of which the United
States has pledged US$50 million.
The conference's final declaration would have
bound countries in the Middle East and North Africa to "expand democratic
practices, to enlarge participation in political and public life, to foster the
roles of civil society, including NGOs, and to widen women's participation in
the political, economic, social, cultural and education fields and to reinforce
their rights and status in society while understanding that each country is
unique". Egyptian officials wanted to add language stipulating that only
NGOs legally registered with their governments were covered by the declaration.
Although Saudi Arabia and Oman initially supported Egypt, in the end all
governments except Egypt agreed to take out language that would have given them
control over foreign resources going to groups in their countries. The United
States told the Egyptian delegation that the addition was inappropriate and
would circumscribe NGO activity. But the U.S. was unable to get Egypt to budge
from its position, and Egypt's Foreign Minister left before the conference
broke up, forcing the forum to conclude without a final declaration.
The Egyptian election and the U.S. "democracy initiative" once again highlight the struggle that is taking place all over the world on the question of democracy. On the one hand, the democratization that the Bush administration and Mubarak want for the countries of the Middle East and North Africa is the same arrangement that exists today but with some cosmetic changes. It is a false democracy that will perpetuate the situation where the vast majority of the people are marginalized, disenfranchised, and powerless to change their conditions. On the other hand, the working class and people need real democracy in their countries in which they have the political power in their hands to tackle the problems of the economy, democratic rights, the environment, peace and security, and national sovereignty.