Egyptian Democracy, the Military and the Islamists

Yassine Boukhedouni

More than a year after the end of Mubarak’s dictatorship, Egyptians are still waiting for the democratic regime millions of them waged a revolution for on January 25 of 2011. Indeed, in the eyes of many observers, the military, which used to stand by Mubarak’s side, is still pulling the strings of power in the country of the Nile. According to some, the army is a real threat to the advent of democracy just like the Islamist, against whom several Egyptian liberal intellectuals are fighting.

SCAF: Keeping the Mubarak Clan in Power, Whatever the Cost

According to Alaa Al Aswany, the activist author of The Yacoubian Building, the generals on the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces never sided with the people to begin with, nor did they protect it, contrary to what they tried make people believe. Creating the Council actually allowed the Mubarak clan to stay in power. “I think there have been misunderstandings from the very beginning of the revolution. The people that made the revolution thought the fall of Mubarak was the first step to eliminate the regime; however, the Military Council accepted Mubarak’s departure as a necessary step to preserve the regime”, he in an interview given to the French-language Algerian newspaper El Watan.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) was supposed to rule the country provisionally for the six months following the revolution, giving the country enough time for a peaceful political transition. 14 months on, the Council is still there, leading Egypt the Mubarak way. In addition to helping the latter and his clan withdraw with full guarantees and despite the Council’s commitment to “favour democracy” and to implement “the people’s legitimate demands”, nothing has really changed when it comes to governance. Indeed, public freedoms are not respected and those who dare criticize the army’s management of State affairs can be tried in military courts, which happened to the journalists who covered the covenant between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood. Official media are still controlled by old regime figures and peaceful protests are brutally repressed. During their 14 months in power, they have shot at crowds various times.

For the Egyptian intellectual elite, the army’s record is a very negative one. In an interview given to the French-language Egyptian newspaper El Ahram Hebdo (issue of December and January 2012), the Egyptian constitutionalist Ibrahim Darwish said he expected a coup and a second revolution against the Military Council. Although they still defend the idea of democracy whoever the ruler is, Egyptian democrats are waging war on two fronts, against the military regime and against the Islamists who view them as a “foreign body” in Egypt.

The Islamists: a Threat Complicit with the SCAF

It is widely acknowledged that the Islamists present in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, all countries that have undergone a revolution, are those who suffered the most under the old regimes: exclusion, repression and the interdiction of any political involvement. Indeed, the regimes of Ben Ali, Mubarak and Qadhafi convinced the West they were fighting against fundamentalism and religious terrorism. For many, the Islamists’ image of victims of the old regimes helped them obtain the Arab populations’ support during the post-revolution elections.

Yet, several fundamentalist religious leaders who’ve recently entered the fray of politics are themselves more authoritarian than the autocrats. Such is the case of the Salafis in Egypt who are seen as more radical than the Muslim Brotherhood. Their political party, Al-Nour, which was founded three months after Mubarak’s fall, obtained 127 seats on 498 in Parliament.

Abdel Moneim El Sgahat, one of the party’s founders, once said on a TV show that democracy was a form of apostasy. Moreover, a few months after the January 25 revolution in 2011, the same Salafis were rejecting democracy as Western, before switching gears another few months after; they now use words of human and universal values they did not use to believe in.

Several journalistic investigations have pointed to enormous financial aid from Saudi Arabia flowing to Salafis in Egypt, while other reporting has been about the covenant between the SCAF and the Islamists, whence the danger to the yet unborn Egyptian democracy. According to Alaa Al Aswany, “the Military Council is persecuting the revolutionaries by saying they receive money from the outside, when it is curiously averting its eyes from the foreign funding going to the Islamists”. Through that strategy, they aim to stay in power in an indirect way by letting the Islamists in and integrating them in their plan.

The Salafis’ focus on women, their freedom, their clothing, and on Egyptians’ mores and individual behaviour risks diverting public discourse from what truly matters: kick-starting the economy and establishing effective rule of Law and democracy with civilians at the top. That situation led the famous Egyptian director Khaled Youssef to say Egyptians would wage a second revolution if the Salafi presidential candidate Hazem Abu Ismail were to win the May 24 elections. Abu Ismail’s campaign has been centered on female work participation, banking, tourism, arts and the Coptic community. His candidacy was recently rejected by the electoral oversight committee on the grounds of his mother having gotten an American passport shortly before dying.

At the eve of the elections, democracy must be allowed to work unimpeded. Sure thing is, the populations in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab World will find out that political Islam has nothing to do with the religion they believe in and that the tenants of political Islam do not have the solutions to the problems they are facing.

A few afterthoughts on Ottawa

Jérémie Lebel

From March 15 to 18, I was in Ottawa with two other members of the Rights & Democracy Delegation at Université Laval to learn more about what Canada does to promote democracy abroad. Here's a quick summary of it.

Accompanied by Nancy Dupont, finances delegate, and Sabrina Zouaghi, secretary and responsible for our Arab Spring project, I attended a full week-end of activities and conferences on that theme. The convention, held by Rights & Democracy, was entitled "Canada's contribution to a more democratic world" and focused on Canadian initiatives in promoting democracy internationally.

We first began with a visit to Parliament, where we met with Hélène Laverdière, Official Opposition Critic for Foreign Affairs, who confirmed us that life as an MP is not synonymous with sound sleep and nutrition, but is nonetheless deeply gratifying. We then attended a raucous circus show, which by convention is usually refered to as Questions Period (it is as bad as they say).

Most importantly, we were introduced to the world of professional democracy promotion work. There exists a slew of public, parapublic and independent organizations that work in strengthening democratic institutions where they exist and in fostering their emergence where they're absent. In Canada, the institution directly responsible for that kind of work is Rights & Democracy, an arm's-length agency based in Montreal which enjoys a relative independence vis-à-vis government: its decisions are taken autonomously, but its Board and President are appointed by the Prime Minister's Office and its funding comes from DFAIT and CIDA. Elections Canada also shares its expertise with foreign governments on demand. The Parliamentary Centre works to build the capacity of parliamentary regimes to function properly all across the world, which involves training MPs on how to work in committees or how to implement a rigorous budget-making and oversight process. The Canadian Association of Former Parliamentarians also runs some democracy promotion programs. Abroad, the National Democratic Institute, created by the US government and related in networks and affinities to the Democratic Party, is one of the biggest players in the field. A lot of Canadians work for the NDI, which creates sympathy networks that make it easier for Canadian expats to find opportunities.

We also met with representatives from Canadem, a company that acts like a placement agency, but in the precise sector or internships in electoral observation. In return for a hefty fee, the organization finds prospective applicants an internsip and prepares him or her for it. Observing elections is a fairly specialized field, in which people are essentially powerless. Still, it's useful work, and it may interest some. 

The milieu of democratic development isn't free of political controversies, as exemplified by the crisis that rocked Rights & Democracy in 2008-2009. The independence of institutions depends on their constitutive act and above all on where they get their funding. For instance, a large part of the NDI's funding comes from the US Agency for International Development. Here, Rights & Democracy gets a "block" of non-project related funding from DFAIT and CIDA. Yet, it's important to remember those limits exist everywhere in the field of international development. 

The professional skills sought by democratic development organizations are broadly similar to those emphasized by other development organizations. Practical work experience is highly valued, sometimes leading to the infamous catch-22 of "it takes experience to get experience". The background of most professionals in the field is in the humanities, with clear affinities with the world of either development or politics, and a strong interest in international affairs. 

The rise of religious fundamentalism in post-revolution Tunisia: should we fear for democracy and the supremacy of law?

Yassine Boukhedouni

Back from a trip to Tunisia in January 2012, Robert Fisk, a famous journalist for The Independent, had a stark view of what Tunisians are going through one year after their revolution for dignity and the fall of Ben Ali’s dictatorship. In addition to a high youth unemployment rate (800 000 unemployed on an active population of 3,5 million), inexistent growth, something normal in a country in transition where 80 percent of international firms have left for fairer skies, Fisk discovered a new and worrying face of the country.

Indeed, the election of an Islamist majority in Parliament, with 40 percent of the seats won by the Ennahda movement, and above all the rise of a fundamentalist religious current called Salafism, have allowed for the emergence of social intolerance, leading in various cases to violence and terror, both unknown realities for Tunisian men and women, even during the Ben Ali dictatorship.

Islamists and Salafists undeniably bore the brunt of the repression during the Ben Ali years. Now, after decades of imprisonment, torture and prohibition of political and associative work, both currents find in the new Tunisia a favorable breeding ground for their behaviors, which are out of step with the country’s pluri-secular values and history.

For instance, in early 2012, the northern city of Sejnane was transformed into a Salafi Emirate where its adherents spread terror and imposed their law, according to El Maghreb, a newspaper. For the Salafis, who disagree vehemently with the Ennahda movement, since Tunisia is now free and has gone back to Islamism, it falls unto them to apply religion, even if it implies spreading fear and anarchy and intimidating people because of a sin or another.

That’s how it’s turned out in that northern Tunisian town, where the absence of the State and of the security forces has allowed a few Salafis to apply religious laws to sinners. Some of them, you see, had drunk alcohol.

Far from Sejnane, 160 km west of Tunis, in Jandouba, the Salafis went too far in defiance of the Tunisian authorities. Indeed, for them, the modern nation-state doesn’t exist. They’d rather have an Islamic Caliphate with a strictly interpreted shari’a as the law of the land. On Thursday February 23rd of 2012, they set a police station on fire after the arrest of one of their members.

Here’s what the general information daily 20 minutes reported: “Security forces are chasing after some 200 Salafis armed with swords and sticks after an exchange of Molotov cocktails and tear gas grenades”, said Omar Inoubli, an inhabitant of Jandouba. “Those groups set fire to a police station. Mosque speakers are blaring forth calls to Jihad (holy war)”, he adds.

In Jandouba, Sejnane and elsewhere, Salafis have no purpose but to create new social and political tensions Tunisia hardly needs, above all in the crucial historical step the country’s going through. Imposing a stern lifestyle, with male and female clothing imported straight from the Arabian Peninsula or the Persian Gulf, won’t help Tunisia at all go beyond the crisis it’s living, nor will it help further the cause of Islam and its message Salafis pretend to serve.

Along with the economic crisis, the rise of religious fundamentalism in Tunisia must be understood as the worst threat to the supremacy of law for which Tunisians fought their revolution, and to their newly acquired liberties.

Tunisia: the second start

Geneviève Beaulieu Veilleux

With the flames of the revolution barely extinguished, Tunisia has been in a state of transition for a year now. Deep change has been happening since the ouster of President Ben Ali in January of 2011, but true freedom of the press still has to be implemented. Yet, journalists and citizens alike are hopeful, if we are to believe the speakers invited to the Rights & Democracy Delegation at Université Laval’s conference cycle on the Arab Spring.

“One must keep in mind that freedom of the press doesn’t exist in print per se; we rather talk of freedom of expression”, indicates Louis-Philippe Lampron, a professor of Law at Université Laval. Thus, depending on the wording, speaking, thinking, writing and printing freely are concepts defended by the law under certain limits.

M. Lampron insists that freedom of expression is a sine que non condition for the existence of a democratic regime. “That freedom exists through, among other things, greater protection for journalists and a guarantee of the independence of the media”, he says. The professor refers to the intimidation that weighed on journalists in Tunisia during the dictatorial era.

Taïeb Moalla, a Tunisian-born journalist who had been invited to comment on the situation of freedom of the press in Tunisia before and after the revolution, didn’t mince his words. “We’ve gone from 50 years of constipation to a total verbal diarrhea. It’s not pretty, but, as a relief, it sure works!”, he quipped. According to him, denouncing censorship is a duty, a matter of principle. “You must protect the freedom of information and the press from censorship or intimidation, that you be a reader or a journalist”.

M. Moalla, who works for the Journal de Québec, insists that the job of a journalist has been largely the same for 25 years. “What’s changed is the conditions. We’re much safer now. The number of times a journalist had to risk his life to break out the news under Ben Ali, you wouldn’t imagine!” He speaks by experience, but one can also recall the case of Soufiène Ben Hamida, of the Nessma news channel, who suffered intimidation when rebels tagged his car with the word “infidel”. Many other journalists have been molested or sexually attacked in the exercise of their functions, like CBS journalist Lara Logan was in Egypt in February of 2011.

After the fall of Ben Ali, or the “predator of freedom of the press”, as some like to call him, hope is now back for the free flow of information. Yet, bad habits die hard, and it’s with reservations that Mrs Lampron and Moalla look at the transition in Tunisia. “We’ve found freedom again, now there’s no letting anyone take it back from us in any way. We have to fight every day, as propaganda isn’t as in your face as before, but it’s still there in a subtler way”, said M. Moalla.

If the multiplication of news sources is in itself a good thing for M. Moalla, quality leaves a lot to be desired. He has good hopes that credibility will come back. “You must keep in mind that even if something is published 100 times or even 100 000 times, it doesn’t become truer for it. Rigor matters”.

How to regain credibility after decades of media disinformation and too-close-for-comfort links between the media and the Ben Ali family? The journalist things the media should do more ground reporting, as credibility comes along with backing information with evidence. He concedes that Tunisian journalists have a lot to ask forgiveness for. Yet, there’s a will.

And Tunisia in 20 years? “I dream of democracy, of the respect of freedoms, and I feel like it’s possible. We had our dictators flee without foreign assistance and we’ve held free elections less than a year after our revolution, it’s an enormous step!”, underscores a hopeful M. Moalla.

As Jean-François Julliard, secretary general of Reporters Without Borders, said last month in an open letter to the Tunisian leaders, the new country is making its first steps discovering freedom and some advice is welcome. “It is time, more than ever, that the new authorities take their responsibilities toward these problems. They must send a strong signal to all those who trample on freedom of expression and the freedom of journalists to spread information with full independence. Beyond polemics, political matters and personal religious convictions, freedom of expression, as the first gain of the revolution, must be backed by a consensus and be protected by all. It is everyone’s business. The door to freedom. The way back toward dictatorship”.

Interview with Tamylia Elkadi (in French)

http://vimeo.com/35481996

Just as the Egyptian elections are still going on until March of 2012, Tamylia Elkadi, a student at Université de Montréal, explains us what she lived when she witnessed the first moments of the revolution in Cairo in January of 2011. The interview was shot last autumn by Laurence Houde-Roy, of the Rights & Democracy Delegation at Université Laval, who is now in France on a student exchange.