Something stirs in Cairo

May 11th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

Egypt’s rubber-stamp parliament has voted to introduce contested presidential elections—though with restrictions that are likely to bar serious opposition candidates from running. And groups opposed to President Hosni Mubarak and his government are showing renewed signs of life. Is this the start of an upheaval in the country’s somnolent politics?

IN THE 1920s, as Egypt was shaking off British colonial rule, it had a try at introducing democratic institutions along European lines, holding the country’s first parliamentary elections. Sadly, what is now remembered as the “liberal experiment” did not last long, and Egypt slid back into the autocratic rule to which it had been more accustomed since the days of the pharaohs. Could it be about to have another go at introducing people-power? On Tuesday May 10th, the lower house of Egypt’s rubber-stamp parliament voted to change the constitution, as President Hosni Mubarak had requested, to introduce contested presidential elections—though with restrictions that may prevent serious opposition candidates from running.

Up to now, voters have only been able to vote yes or no to a single candidate chosen by the parliament, almost all of whose seats are held by Mr Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP). The president, in power for the past 23 years, has been “elected” by this method four times. Despite his age (77) and recent health scares, he is expected to run for a fifth term this September. If so, he seems bound to win, contested or not.

Mr Mubarak’s decision to accept limited electoral competition follows pressure from President George Bush, whose campaign for Middle East democracy would be boosted greatly were Egypt—the most populous Arab country, with around 78m people—to introduce multi-party elections. Last weekend Mr Bush urged Mr Mubarak to allow “a real campaign” for the presidency. But the amendment passed on Tuesday will allow no such thing. Banned political groups, such as the popular Muslim Brotherhood, cannot nominate candidates, while independents seeking to run must overcome near-impossible obstacles, including getting the backing of at least 65 members of the parliament’s lower house, where the largest opposition party has only 15 seats.

Mr Mubarak’s talk of limited liberalisation has met with protests by a loose reformist coalition demanding more substantial change, and operating under the slogan of Kifaya! (Enough!). As parliament met on Tuesday, the movement protested on Cairo’s streets, calling on Egyptians to boycott a referendum that will be held to confirm the constitutional amendment.

Return of the brotherhood

The talk of change also seems to have galvanised the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been largely quiet since it was banned in the 1950s but retains a strong popular following. In recent days the Brotherhood has held big protests in Egyptian cities, demanding reforms. Hundreds of its members have been arrested, including one of the group’s leaders, Essam el-Erian, who reportedly told security officers after his detention on Friday that he would seek to run for president.

The Brotherhood also has a strong presence in Jordan and has recently been making a comeback in Syria, despite being almost crushed by the authorities there in the 1980s. It is a mainstream Islamist group, ie, it seeks a state based on Islamic law, though not an Iranian-style theocracy. Perhaps having learned from the Arab public’s frustration at the failure of their governments to deliver better living standards, the Brotherhood has in recent years adopted such “western” values as parliamentary rule, the separation of powers and the protection of minorities.

Ayman Nour, leader of the pro-democracy Ghad (Tomorrow) party, also plans to run for president. Though his party is legal, he is suffering a campaign of official harassment, including being put on trial for supposedly forging signatures when he set up his party. If found guilty or if the trial drags on, he may be barred from running.

As a United Nations report on Arab human development noted last month, many of the region’s regimes practise the “legitimacy of blackmail”, sustaining themselves in power by posing as the only bulwark against chaos or a takeover by Islamist extremists. Egypt is no exception to this. America, Britain and France have long preferred to sustain friendly autocrats like Mr Mubarak than risk letting Islamists and other potentially unfriendly groups come to power through the ballot box. Now, the Bush administration seems to be having second thoughts—in recent days, it has said it is not too worried about Islamist governments being elected in the Middle East as long as they are democrats.

Last year, Yemen’s president, Ali Abdallah Saleh, said regarding the mounting pressure for democratic reform that Arab leaders should trim their moustaches now before someone else shaves them clean off. Mr Mubarak is following this advice, putting on a show of democracy while rigging things behind the scenes so he or his chosen successor wins. But does he risk losing control of the situation? Besides the stirrings from opposition groups, there have recently been signs that the judiciary and other institutions are being emboldened to demand freedoms: judges, for example, are demanding a new law guaranteeing their independence from government, as well as the right to oversee elections. In the past month there have also been a number of suicide-bombings and other attacks in Cairo, marking a possible rebirth of the militant Islamist groups that the authorities crushed in the 1990s.

It is not unthinkable that rising popular frustration at Egypt’s slow pace of political and economic reform could translate into an Islamist uprising—by violent radicals, by the more moderate Brotherhood or by both. Mr Mubarak may be trying to avert just such a threat by grooming his modern-minded son, Gamal, as his successor. The president has put his son in charge of a policy bureau in the governing party, from where he has been placing a new cadre of liberal reformers in the regime’s upper ranks. The liberals’ influence has been seen in recent decisions to abolish Egypt’s harsh state-security courts and to create a human-rights body—though these moves have yet to put an end to torture and extra-judicial punishments.

So far, the younger Mr Mubarak's reformist image has not been enough to overcome Egyptians' resentment of his father's attempt at pharaonic succession. Furthermore, many Egyptians regard Mr Mubarak senior as too close to America and Israel, and would most likely tar his son with the same brush. So, for now at least, the plan for Gamal to take over has been put on ice. If at some point the president does try to foist his son on the people, he may only increase the pressure for a genuinely open contest—in which the Islamists would seem the strongest contenders.

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