Cole on Egypt
I like Juan Cole’s blog, and I like some of the principled stands he’s taken against CampusWatch’s attack dogs, and his valuable coverage of Iraq over the past few years. And I like to watch the fights he gets into with people like Christopher Hitchens.
This makes it all the more painful to see him do a sloppy job in this Salon story on the Egyptian presidential elections.
It’s not only that the article is very superficial in its description of Egyptian politics, which might be excused by the fact that this was a short article for a non-expert audience. Still, simplistic and sometimes simply erroneous statements like these are grating:
On Saad Eddin Ibrahim: Mubarak, thin-skinned about his family and his son’s ambitions, tossed Ibrahim into prison in 2000, sentencing him to seven years, but released him early in the face of international pressure.
That is a oversimplification of the Ibrahim case, which has a lot of twists and turns. Also, it is plausible that Ibrahim was eventually released by honest judges rather than political interference.
On Ayman Nour: Mubarak tossed Ayman Nour, the popular leader of a major new recognized political party, al-Ghad (”Tomorrow”) into prison for 45 days on trumped-up charges.
Again, it simplifies the Nour case. Some of the charges against him are serious, as we will see when next week’s trial resumes.
On the boycott:The bottom line: The outcome of the Sept. 7 elections was never in doubt, a fact recognized by Kifayah, which called for a boycott. The boycott received far more support than did Nour.
Just because 77% of eligible voters did not vote does not meant that they supported a boycott or Kifaya. Apathy may have been the real winner here.
On the middle class and Kifaya: The Egyptian middle classes, many of them highly educated and with entrepreneurial ambitions, chafe at the government’s heavy-handed interference in the economy (mostly for protectionist purposes), which they believe limits their opportunities. They and other groups have formed the Kifayah (”Enough!”) movement, which has held protests against the regime.
It’s dubious that the middle class, if you can talk about it as such, is mostly liberal either politically or economically. This particularly applies to the vast chunk of the middle class that is employed in the public sector. I would argue that conservatism defines the middle class today, culturally and politically. The appeal of the liberal Nazif government is not so much what it is doing, but that unlike previous governments that it is doing anything at all.
On the middle class, Al Wafd and Al Ghad: The new middle class is represented by the New Wafd Party and by its new competitor, the Tomorrow (al-Ghad) Party. The government recognized al-Ghad in October 2004; many observers believed it did so to weaken the Wafd and to split the urban middle-class vote.
Saying that Al Wafd represents the middle class is ridiculous, in fact that it represents anyone under the current leadership is dubious. The NDP has as much claim to represent middle class interests as any other “liberal” party. Furthermore, if what I and others saw on election day is representative, the “urban middle-class” does not vote Al Ghad or Al Wafd — it doesn’t vote at all.
Finally, he also calls Gamal Mubarak “Galal”, although that might just be a copy editing error. Altogether rather sloppy, particularly for an academic. Cole writes quite well, but one wonders whether he might not have too much on his plate at the moment and should be writing about everything and everyone. Or whether he (and Salon) should be publishing articles about the Middle East whose main purpose seems to be not describing the situation in the region but bashing Bush. As a bona fide “Bush hater”, I wish more time was spent digging up real dirt on the bastard (Valerie Plame, cronyism, FEMA, etc.) than this rather trite question of US policy towards the Middle East, which wasn’t exactly great before Bush anyway.
Categories: Egypt, US policy.
Ah, you’re still alive. In general, I’d say that there’s been little in-depth work done on the Egyptian scene over the past year or so aside from what’s been in Cairo Magazine. I must have read the same superficial article about Kifaya about a dozen times in the big papers, however, and boilerplate op-ed pieces by the truckload.
PS: Wasn’t the campaign technically 19 days long?
You want your freedom and democracy but how will you stop the religious fundamentalists from gaining control in the same manner? They capitalize on ignorance more than you can capitalize on intelligence. You must proceed slowly, verly slowly.
Also, it is plausible that Ibrahim was eventually released by honest judges rather than political interference.
From what I know of (a) the case, and (b) the Court of Cassation in general, I’d substitute “virtually certain” for “plausible.”
Praktike, missed that one! And I agree that a lot of the stuff being written on Egypt is rather tepid.
Jack, I have no idea what you’re talking about or how it’s relevant to Cole’s piece. And in any case I think things have moved slowly as it is for the past 50 years, I’d rather have fundamentalist ministers and movement. Kifaya with slowness.
Jonathan, I’ve had frequent arguments with friends who passionately believe in Egyptian judges as being much more honest than any other group. I am not so certain (think of the many judges which took the government’s side in the recent debate on supervising the elections and did not decide to boycott when hundreds of their colleagues were barred for taking part in the supervision process.) But in the Ibrahim case, it’s highly probable that the Cassation Court judges were indeed that rare breed of Egyptian public official that takes pride in their job and in their dignity.
On Going Slow -
One way to build democracy is to start at the local level. Allow real elections at the municipal level, and give the winners real autonomy in running their districts. That’s how things started here in New England. Other countries, like Taiwan, also followed this path.
If you let extremist parties run a few towns like Aswan and Ismailia, they will find that it is harder to run things than to criticize. A lot of their mystique will dissipate when they have a real record of success and failure. They would become less of a threat in general elections.
Has Egypt tried this at all?
Are you trying to build the pyramid from the top down by starting with the presidential election?
I think the current regime is trying to sell the idea that it needs to build the Pyramid the top down, but I think that’s wrong. As you say, starting at the local level is the solution, although a difficult one to implement in a police state at a time of great transition, demographic stress and regional political upheaval.
Nonetheless, even if things are to move slowly, there is a strong case to be made with at least one dramatic, fast-paced change: the removal of President Mubarak. The rest might not necessarily follow, but the the inertia will be weakened.
As to whether Egyptians in general want that fast paced change and the uncertainty that comes with it — particularly when looking at what’s happening in Iraq– that’s another question.
The trouble w/ Egypt is that you have a huge number of people invested in the current system and thus resistant to change. It’s not just Jimmy and the gang who doesn’t want to share power; there are dozens of little NDP fiefdoms all over the place, and they’re going to use every little dirty trick in order to keep them.
I’ve had frequent arguments with friends who passionately believe in Egyptian judges as being much more honest than any other group. I am not so certain
Egypt certainly has its share of co-opted judges - that’s what happens when the Justice Ministry controls promotions and half of them have other government jobs. But the Court of Cassation has certain institutional advantages that the other courts don’t - including,critically, insulation from Justice Ministry influence - that enable it to maintain greater independence. Also, the Court of Cassation judges are often people of stature (I’m an admirer of Tahani el-Gebali, even if she is a bit of a Nasserist). For this reason I tend to think the court’s judgment in the Ibrahim case was straight up, although I could be wrong.
Juan Cole wants the world to believe he’s a middle east expert just because he speaks a few words of Arabic. His previous mistakes and contradictions force me to take what he says with a grain of salt.
“Also, the Court of Cassation judges are often people of stature (I’m an admirer of Tahani el-Gebali, even if she is a bit of a Nasserist).”
Tahani el-Gebali is on the Supreme Constitutional Court, if I’m not mistaken, a body that has not shown the independence of the Cassation Court by any means. The head of the court is Mamdouh Marei, who was also the head of the above-the-law Presidential Election Committee and the court easily approved the dubious constitutionality of the new law governing the presidential election. Not all judges are particularly independent, in fact outside the Cassation Court and a few other senior positions, I would say they are few and far between.