Mubarak calls for a less pharaonic future

Feb 28th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

Egypt’s all-powerful leader, Hosni Mubarak, has announced, to general surprise, that he wants the constitution changed to allow for contested presidential elections. Is Egypt finally ready to lead the Arab world to democracy, as George Bush wants? Or is the move more tactical concession than serious reform?

IT WAS Yemen’s president, Ali Abdallah Saleh, who said last year, regarding mounting pressure for democratic reform, that Arab leaders should trim their moustaches now before someone else shaves them clean off. This advice seems to have been taken, belatedly, by his Egyptian counterpart, Hosni Mubarak.

As recently as January, Mr Mubarak had dismissed talk of changing Egypt’s constitution, a legal arrangement that grants presidents pharaonic powers. Not only does Egypt’s ruler have the right to name and dismiss cabinets, regional governors and the heads of a multitude of state institutions. There has been no limit to the number of six-year terms a president can serve. Best yet, incumbents have faced no challenge to their re-election: Egypt’s parliament, safely packed with members of the ruling party, chooses a single candidate, and this choice is confirmed by referendums that tend to generate 90%-plus approval.

So Mr Mubarak’s announcement, coming just six months before his own pending re-election to an unprecedented fifth term, that he wants to change the constitution to allow for open, contested presidential polls, landed as something of a bombshell. For the first time in their 5,000 year history, ordinary Egyptians may actually have a chance to choose their leader.

More important, perhaps, is the fact that the very idea of reform has received endorsement at the highest level. Considering Egypt’s position as the most populous Arab country and the historical leader of Arab nationalism, mounting momentum for change there could have wide-ranging implications for the region. This is precisely the hope expressed by George Bush, America’s president, who has repeatedly called for Egypt to lead the region to democracy, just as it pioneered the path to peace with Israel.

Yet Mr Mubarak’s move may prove more of an astute tactical concession than a serious reform. What he has proposed is amending article 76 of the constitution—a document tailored in 1971 to strengthen the hand of Egypt’s then-president, Anwar Sadat, who had just taken a shaky hold of power following the death of his populist predecessor, Gamal Abdel Nasser. According to the draft Mr Mubarak has forwarded to parliament, candidates for the presidency would need to be proposed by a legal political party and approved by an as-yet undetermined number of MPs or members of local councils. Egypt has some 15 legal opposition parties, but most are weightless or thoroughly co-opted by Mr Mubarak’s crushingly dominant National Democratic Party (NDP). A committee, also controlled by the NDP, vets the formation of new parties. It has not approved, and is unlikely ever to approve, the legalisation of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s strongest opposition group, as a political party.

These are not the only obstacles to truly free elections. Past experience of fraud and manipulation has so marked the Egyptian electorate that relatively few bother to vote, or even to register as voters. State domination of the media is massive. Fifty years of virtual one-party rule, and state-sponsored adulation of leaders, have diminished Egypt’s political class. There are simply no politicians on the stage at present whose stature even distantly approaches Mr Mubarak’s, or who have the public profile lately achieved by his son Gamal.

The arrest in January of a prominent young opposition MP, Ayman Nour, underscored the sanitised nature of Egypt’s political scene. Mr Nour’s secular, liberal Al Ghad (Tomorrow) party had only recently been legalised. Unlike tamer opposition politicians who had agreed to put off calls for change until after Mr Mubarak’s re-election, Mr Nour had been demanding immediate constitutional reform. For his pains he was accused of forgery, had his parliamentary immunity lifted, and was clapped in jail. He remains locked up, but responded to Mr Mubarak’s initiative by calling off a hunger strike.

If Egyptians are sceptical of Mr Mubarak’s move—and most are—it may also be because of wider experience with “reform” in neighbouring countries. Tunisia and Algeria have already run contested presidential elections, and in each case the incumbent presidents have scored overwhelming victories. Palestinian elections returned the anointed successor of Yasser Arafat. Ruling families in the Gulf have allowed their people to vote, most recently for town councils in Saudi Arabia, but no ruler has conceded tangible powers to his people.

But perhaps the larger reason for the lukewarm reception in Cairo to the reform proposal is that Egyptians have developed an instinctive distrust of their own government. This does not necessarily mean that Mr Mubarak is personally unpopular. It is just that his people recognise that real change will require much more wide-ranging constitutional reforms: presidential term limits, a devolution of power from the executive to the judiciary and parliament, fair parliamentary elections, and the end of laws that shackle freedoms and sanction government thuggery. For Egyptians to shake their mood of tired apathy, Mr Mubarak needs to do more than this tentative first step.

This may not happen soon. The caution of Egypt’s president is legendary, and in the eyes of many, his latest move comes less in response to popular pressure than as an attempt to pre-empt mounting criticism from Washington. America’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, recently cancelled a planned visit to Cairo, and Mr Mubarak was likely to face a cold reception during the annual trip to Washington he is expected to make in April. Now he has something to show, and, considering Egypt’s support for other American policy objectives in the region, such as Palestinian-Israeli rapprochement, the Bush administration may be willing to cut him some slack.

Yet doubters may ultimately discover that they have underestimated Mr Mubarak. His 24 years in power have been marked by political stagnation, but also by peace and slow but steady economic development. Mr Mubarak himself sees his democratic initiative as “the product of stability”. At 76 years of age, Egypt’s president may be thinking of the legacy he will leave. Even if he wishes the 42-year-old Gamal to succeed him in office, as many Egyptians suspect, it would be a gift both to his successor and to his people for this power to be conferred by popular legitimacy rather than sleight-of-hand.

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