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Last fall, Egypt held its first competitive (in a manner of speaking) Presidential elections, and later, Parliamentary elections in which the Muslim Brotherhood won the largest representation for the opposition in years. During the elections there were opposition rallies in public places, opposition candidates appearing on state television, and other signs of what many saw as a new opening for Egyptian political life.
Half a year later, hundreds of senior Muslim Brotherhood members are in prison, the two major liberal parties, the Wafd and al-Ghad, have both been torn apart by internal squabbles while the al-Ghad leader, Ayman Nur, is in prison with his appeals denied. The government has been in open confrontation with the Judges’ Club, which protested irregularities in the elections, and security officials have cracked down hard on demonstrations. Although the President’s son, Gamal Mubarak, continues to lead a process of political reform within the ruling National Democratic Party, critics say that “reform” means the replacement of old-guard survivors of the Anwar Sadat and early Mubarak era with younger businessmen in Gamal’s image; real democratization is still hard to discern. Gamal’s approach — promoting economic liberalization and reforms while giving little more than lip service to real political liberalization — may be more attractive in some ways than the old-style authoritarianism it replaces, but it is doing little to bring either the traditional liberals or the Islamists into the political process. And, while the fact that Gamal Mubarak is clearly being groomed as his father’s successor is no longer in much serious doubt, it is far from clear that the succession is assured (the Army and the security services are, after all, the real determining factors since they are essential to the survival of the regime). With Husni Mubarak now in his late 70s and just beginning another six-year term, there are many things that could go wrong before Gamal can succeed smoothly and constitutionally. And then the Army and security services would have a say.
Much attention was paid to the Brotherhood’s successes in last year’s elections (See The Estimate, December 5, 2005), but the Brotherhood’s power in the Assembly is still too small to block legislation and Brotherhood figures outside the Parliament are still being routinely arrested.
The dissidents are not without some resources. Egypt is still not Syria, let alone Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Dissidents find themselves jailed, but usually not for long periods (Ayman Nur’s five-year sentence is an exception); in Iraq they would have found themselves dead. The democracy movement and the Islamists have their websites and blogs, their legal (and sometimes not-so-legal) publications, and other ways of making their voices heard. The secular reformers lack the Muslim Brotherhood’s advantage of having literal pulpits to spread their message, but they have modern electronic means at their service. When one of Egypt’s best known democracy bloggers, ‘Ala’ Sayf al-Din (whose blog, with his wife Manal, is at www.manalaa.net) was arrested, a worldwide effort was made by bloggers to protest to Egyptian embassies in foreign capitals. He was released, but only after the 45 days for which he had originally been imprisoned. The dissidents are still vocal and visible, at least to the reformist community, though perhaps not to the average Egyptian in the street.
Protests have continued from time to time, but the government has been far more vigorous in its response than it was during the electoral campaigns of last year. Security forces routinely cordon off areas of Cairo to isolate the demonstrators, and then move in to make arrests or (often) beat demonstrators and drive them from the streets. Supporting the security forces and doing some of the dirty work are non-uniformed strongarm men, generally considered to be either operatives or hired muscle of the ruling party.
The combination of security forces and street thugs cracking down on democracy demonstrations is unfortunately a familiar one in the Arab world, but as already noted, there are some differences between Egypt and the harsher regimes such as Syria or Saddam’s Iraq. Most of the demonstrators spend only a few days or weeks in detention (though there are exceptions); there is an opposition press which, while it is often subjected to prosecution or seizure, still survives and is at times quite vocal. And Egypt has an extensive network of online sites and bloggers active in the democracy movement, the Islamist movements, and other dissident affairs.
As noted, some Egyptian bloggers were recently arrested, though they were arrested in a demonstration, not specifically for their online activities (though the government clearly knew of their electronic role). This drew considerable attention internationally because of an online campaign, especially for ‘Ala’ Sayf al-Din as noted in the introduction. But his eventual release might well have occurred anyway and, in fact, the government often uses such arrests not merely to punish but to send a message: those who are too vocal or too visible will be arrested. After the arrest and a reasonable period of discomfort in Tura Prison, the message has been sent and, before international human rights protests grow too loud, the detainees may be released.
There have been periods when the Egyptian regime used harsher methods, especially under Gamal ‘Abdel Nasser or in the last months of Anwar Sadat’s life, when many prominent figures were jailed, but most of the time, Egyptian Presidents have been content with increasing pressure when dissidents are most vocal, but then relaxing it when international protest grows; using a calculated and calibrated effort to apply pressure without applying so much as to create a pre-revolutionary situation, and giving enough voice to the opposition to provide a safety valve which prevents an explosion. During last year’s elections, the safety valve was opened a bit to let off steam. At the moment, it is being tightened.
This is a pattern which is not new in Egypt. It has been visible at least since the Sadat era in the 1970s. But there are some differences today which deserve to be noted. First of all, there is a sense of the twilight of the present regime: Mubarak is past the midpoint of his 70s, and has shown signs of fragile health; he has no anointed successor though Gamal is clearly being groomed for that role; there are real uncertainties about what would happen if Mubarak were to pass from the scene before the next Presidential election.
The regime, of course, knows that things are a bit different now. When elections in Iraq, the death of Yasir ‘Arafat and the “Cedar Revolution” in Lebanon all seemed to mark the dawn of a wave of democratization in the Arab world, Egypt allowed a competitive Presidential election and a Parliamentary vote in which the opposition increased their seats.
But, perhaps because the Presidential election did not go precisely according to the government’s script — Mubarak of course won overwhelmingly, but the gadfly Ayman Nur ran second instead of the candidate the government wanted to run second, Nu‘man Gum‘a of the Wafd Party — the Parliamentary vote saw the liberals almost wiped out while the Muslim Brothers suddenly had their largest-ever representation in Parliament.
There are some particularly Egyptian elements to those results, however. Because the Muslim Brotherhood is not a legal party, its ascendancy in Parliament does not give it some rights (such as the right to run a Presidential candidate) that a legal party in that role would enjoy. And it also serves as a bête noire with which to alarm the West: the government has always said that democratization could produce a radical Islamist government, and is that what the West is asking of it? The rise of the Brotherhood, though easily predictable, came so close in time to the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections, that at least some of the US neoconservative advocates of pressured democratization have had second thoughts about the potential results.
In the half year since the elections, the government has gone into one of its periods of repression, apparently sensing that the US is no longer as enthusiastic about pressuring Egypt for reform, having been alarmed by the rise of the Brotherhood in Egypt and of Hamas in Palestine. (The difference of course is profound: Hamas won a majority, the Brotherhood merely became the formal opposition.)
A few aspects of the recent struggles deserve more attention. These include the struggle between the government and the Judges’ Club, and the collapse of the two main liberal parties, the Wafd and al-Ghad.
The Judicial Struggle
In late June, the Egypian People’s Assembly approved a “judicial reform” bill, the latest step in the continuing struggle between the Judges’ Club (a judicial professional syndicate) and the Justice Ministry over the independence of the judiciary.
Egyptians have always taken pride in their independent judiciary, which has, throughout the Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak Presidencies, periodically challenged the decisions of the executive, occasionally reversing government decisions. But the independence of the judiciary has eroded over the years, particularly with the use of military courts (under the Emergency Laws imposed at Sadat’s assassination), and because of the growing authority of the Justice Ministry over judicial affairs.
The issue came to a head in last year’s elections when the Judges’ Club issued statements charging that election irregularities were being ignored by some pro-government judges, and charging widespread electoral fraud despite provisions for judges to be present in every voting precinct. Two judges who were accused of leaking the names of pro-government judges accused of electoral irregularities to the press were prosecuted. Their trials ended with one of them, Mahmud Makki, being acquitted, and the other, Hisham Bastawisi, being reprimanded.
On the surface, that may look like a victory for the judges, in that the two accused judges (accused of releasing the names of allegedly corrupt judges, not of corruption themselves) survived, one acquitted and one only reprimanded. But three journalists with the newspapers which published the allegations — Sawt al-Umma and Afaq ‘Arabiyya — are being tried for publishing the initials of the corrupt judges, while a lawyer who supposedly gave them the list also faces criminal charges.
Meanwhile the pro-government faction of the Judges’ Club has tried to outmaneuver the reformist faction, while the government has cracked down on pro-judges demonstrations. The Judges’ Club endorsed a proposed judicial reform which would have guaranteed the independence of the judiciary; by contrast the new “Judicial Authority Law” approved by Parliament (with the opposition voting against it) is considerably less extensive.
During the campaign last year, the government had promised new judiciary and press laws, and these are being pushed through Parliament, but without input from the professional syndicates, the reformists charge. The new Judicial Authority Law does seek to separate the Prosecutor General’s authority from the Justice Ministry, one demand of the reformers, but critics say it does not go far enough and leaves judges far too subjected to government pressure and even punishment.
While the open conflict between the Judges’ Club and the government has been more pronounced than earlier squabbles with less official insititutions such as the Journalists’ Syndicate and theLawyers’ Syndicate, it is part of a long history of struggle between the quasi-independent professional syndicates and the government, itself a reminder that Egypt is not a totalitarian state with every institution under the government’s thumb, but rather an authoritarian one with quasi-independent insitutions of civil society which do allow for a certain independence of position. The fact that the judges can quarrel openly with the government is a sign that while the system is not pluralist, it is not quite monolithic either.
The Liberal Parties Self-Destruct
The Islamist Opposition may have done well in last year’s elections, but the liberal opposition did not: in part, certainly, because of government pressures and electoral fraud, but in part also because of the fissures within the liberal parties themselves combined with government meddling in their internal affairs. Both the historic liberal opposition party, the Wafd, and the emergent surprise contender in the Presidential race, Ayman Nur of the al-Ghad Party, have faded fast from the scene. Nur’s party is split, and he is in prison for five years. The Wafd has also split, undergone a spectacular leadership struggle that involved occupation of the party headquarters and major fracturing, and has only just emerged with a new leadership. Meanwhile, Gamal Mubarak is trying to repackage the National Democratic Party as an economically liberal, if politically still rather undemocratic, party.
To some extent both the liberal parties self-destructed. Long before he was thrown in jail, Ayman Nur had proved to be a divisive figure in his own party. The al-Ghad had emerged from the Wafd as a younger party with new ideas, and Nur as its charismatic leader. But in the midst of the Presidential elections his party spokesperson, Mona Makram-‘Ebeid, quit publicly, charging him with cultivating a cult of personality. (Makram-‘Ebeid comes from a prominent Wafdist background as well.)
Then, during the campaign, the party split, and the government, using a tactic it has sometimes employed in the past to weaken opposition parties, recognized a faction of al-Ghad as legal, so that in places there were two different al-Ghad lists on the ballot. (Since a government committee has the power to approve or disapprove new parties, the government can encourage factionalism by recognizing breakaway parties, or simply delay forever approval of controversial parties.) Al-Ghad was in disarray even before Ayman Nur’s conviction.
But Nur has now exhausted his appeals, and barring some unforeseen development such as a Presidential pardon (unlikely at the moment), Nur will spend the next few years in jail. He was convicted of forgery for alleged false signatures on the petitions used to legalize the party, a charge most observers consider obviously trumped-up, but the Court of Cassation has rejected his appeals, so hope of a judicial reprieve is now past. His wife, journalist Gamila Isma‘il, is now effectively the spokesperson of what is left of his party, but given the fact that he was indeed guilty of a cult of personality means that al-Ghad, which means “Tomorrow,” is probably a party of the past.
(An aside worth considering: some years ago Gamal Mubarak, presumably with his father’s blessing, intended to start a new party instead of rising in the National Democratic Party. He was going to call his new party al-Mustaqbal, “The Future.” Instead, his reform wing of the NDP has sometimes used the term. Did al-Ghad’s choice of a similar name add to the government’s hostility to Nur?)
The Wafd, the old liberal party of the 1920s to the 1950s, has also undergone traumatic change since the elections. Reborn in the 1970s and 1980s as the “New Wafd,” the Wafd has always had a bit of trouble looking new. Its longtime leader, Fua’d Serageddin, King Faruq’s last Interior Minister before the 1952 Revolution, led the party until his death at the turn of the millennium, when he was in his 90s.
His successor, Nu‘man Gum‘a, another member of the old guard, then led the party. Gum‘a alienated many younger Wafdists (he kicked Ayman Nur out of the Party, thus helping create al-Ghad). Last year, after initially declining, he announced he would run in the Presidential elections. Cynics noted that Gum‘a, now 70, is a slightly-younger contemporary of Husni Mubarak’s and, like Mubarak, is from Menufiyya province (as, also, was Anwar Sadat), and even is said to have attended the same secondary school as Mubarak in Shibin al-Kom. Gum‘a was seen as the government’s choice to run second, to keep Nur from that position. (Nur easily ran second, Gum‘a a distant third.)
That further alienated Gum‘a from younger Wafdists. In January, the Party’s General Assembly ousted him for “unilateral decisions and tyrannical behavior.” His deputy, Mahmud Abaza, was named to suceed him. Gum‘a refused to accept his dismissal; the government’s Attorney General agreed and tried to reinstate him, but a court struck that down. On April 1, Gum‘a and his supporters attacked the Party headquarters building (also the home of al-Wafd, the biggest opposition party daily) in the Giza neighborhood of Doq. As government police did nothing to intervene, the attackers opened fire and some 23 Wafdists were wounded; some said Gum‘a himself was firing a weapon. After a 10-hour struggle Abaza’s side regained control, and the police arrested Gum‘a. The rare instance of an armed opposition clash shocked a great many. Abaza’s side said government police did nothing until the fight was virtually over, and reportedly after a fire started by a Molotov cocktail forced firemen to move in.
In June Abaza, scion of another old Wafdist family, was formally named leader. But the government, needless to say, has seen to it that the internecine conflict and the battle of April 1 received plenty of media coverage, further undermining the credibility of the now much-divided Wafd, leaving both main liberal parties in disarray.
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