Egypt Revisited

“Revolution is not a dinner party, not an essay, nor a painting, nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot be advanced softly, gradually, carefully, considerately, respectfully, politely, plainly and modestly.”
- Mao Tse-Tung.
None, at this point, would comprehend this better than the people of Egypt!!

From where I left brooding over Egypt's future after the political turmoil in Feb 2011, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces under General Tantawi, not surprisingly,  has entrenched its responsibility as a make-shift solution. Newsweek's November 2011 issue describes Egypt as "A country at war with itself" - an unfortunate reminder to the people of Egypt of the long road to peace first, and democracy next.

What began as sectarian violence between the Coptic Christians and the Egyptian Police has escalated into wide spread violence against the Military establishment. While the country, for the first time in decades, was buoyant about an electoral process, the ensuing violence has made Cairo's Tahrir Square a boiling pot with continued clashes. The rowdy behavior of the Egyptian military against the very same people it helped liberate from the Mubarak regime is a reflection of  the Infection of Power.

While the population erupts to surge towards a democratic government, an ugly face of democracy and elections that Egyptians are hitherto not exposed to is manifesting with the growth of political parties such as the Al-Nour party. The Al-Nour party is one of the resultant fragments of the political revolution of 2011 and is a strong proponent of the Salafi Islamist ideology. Should the party come to power either independently or through a coalition, the implementation of the Sharia law, or an equally non-secular Islamist law, is a reality that threatens to destroy Egypt's secular fabric.

It is amazingly unfortunate that an amateur, in-active blogger can continue to harp on this story 10 months after first writing about it. The pessimism expressed amidst the euphoria of Mubarak's ouster has sadly come true with the road to a peaceful, democratic, and then a secular Egypt, seeming almost an unrealistic fantasy.

Should Egypt really want a Democracy?

The recent uprising in Tunisia and Egypt seems to have sparked off a strong nationalist sentiment across the Arab world. Algeria, Libya, Jordan, Yemen and Sudan are seeing traces of protests. Lebanon's parliament underwent an upheaval resulting in a Hezbollah backed government. Desperation has drawn the people of these countries to revolt against ruling regimes that do not exactly qualify the world's definition of a democracy. Corruption, lack of freedom of speech, economic distress, state sponsored oppression has brought people onto the streets hoping for new democratic setups to be their saviour. For someone observing these events sitting in India, the goals and the reasons for the revolt and the hope from democracy are all so ironical when the world's largest democracy reels under the very problems that the protesters across the Arab world fight for. Have we as citizens of the world started to accept democracy as the only solution simply due to a lack of ideological options?

While some might call me cynical after having enjoyed the liberties of a democracy, I cannot help but ponder over the shortcomings of this ideology over an extended period of time and the room it provides for selfish implementation. Democracy in India was a natural transition from the British Empire and proved to work pretty well under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri. Corruption, as a problem started to plague the country under Indira Gandhi and since then has very efficiently trickled top down from the highest echelons of power. Transparency International's corruption perception index puts India at 3.3 on a scale of 10 with 10 being the least corrupt. Egypt is at 3.1.

Freedom of speech in a democracy is one of those virtues that democratic governments across the world very tacitly maintain a balance in. An example is the RTI act of 2005 in India which was meant to provide citizens with access to records of the government. It was hailed as one of the most revolutionary free ideas that the Indian Parliament had formulated. It still works as designed except that when somebody decides to take it seriously enough to become an RTI activist, they get killed. 2010 alone saw the killing of eight RTI activists. 'Ask and you shall be killed' reads a post on the RTI website. True freedom of speech is a luxury that only non-corrupt governments can protect and practice. I can safely say with no exaggeration that there are no such governments left in the world today.

State sponsored oppression in non-democratic setups is another favorite argument of the democratic masters of the world when propagating the reasons for seeking out democracy to citizens of totalitarian states. India, today faces one of its most challenging problems in the violent backlash from communities that were ignored and oppressed for decades, both through violent and economic means. State sponsored riots against religious minorities have been supported, instigated by some of the most prominent political leaders of the country. India is not an exception amongst democracies. Its neighbour Sri Lanka has been witness to one of the most genocidal policies against its minority. France's Hijab controversy is another example of a democratic state's discriminatory policies against its minority. Europe on the whole suffers from gross mis-representation of its Muslim population across all of its parliaments. Seldom is the question of State oppression put to the minorities in a democracy.

While these are my thoughts having lived in an established democracy, having been part of the majority population, having faced almost no oppression, I can only pretend to empathize with the people of these Arab countries. The dictators definitely had to go. At no point do we doubt that. But is democracy of the 21st century, no longer as defined by Abraham Lincoln as - "A Government of the people, by the people, for the people" - the best way forward?

This brings us to the way forward for the Egyptian people. In an interview with a BBC correspondent, a protester on the street graciously thanked the military for their pro-people stance during the protests while mentioning that extended occupation of the military is undesirable. Unfortunately, the track record of militaries across the world that have come to power in such extreme circumstances has been somewhat unsatisfactory. They come in with a popular uprising and just forget to leave.

The February 2011 issue of Frontline already calls the military takeover "a Washington orchestrated pseudo democratic facade". While this might seem an outrageous, pre-mature accusation at this point, Washington's foreign policy when confronted with similar situations in the past does not lend much support for a counter-argument. The United States has a lot at stake in Egypt. For the United States and Israel, this political upheaval was unexpected and unwanted. This was summarized very candidly by the former Israeli Ambassador to Egypt, Eli Shaked: "Democracy is something beautiful. Nevertheless, it is very much in the interests of Israel, US and Europe that Mubarak remains in power". Israel and the United States risk losing their biggest ally from the Arab world in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Also, the United States wouldn't like to see the billions of dollars of military aid provided to Egypt as a failed investment. This is where the Egyptian military's commitment to its people will be tested. Conducting free and fair elections in Egypt has all the possibilities of bringing in a government whose foreign policy might irk the United States and Israel. The United States, as in the past with Iran, Iraq and more recently with Pakistan, might rethink its policies towards Egypt at which point the Egyptian military would lose aid financially, technically and strategically.

The Egyptian revolution of 2011 is only half complete. The next big challenge for the Egyptian people is to ensure that the Army does not enjoy an extended vacation at the helm. The transition to a democratically elected government through free and fair elections is expected to bring in freedom, economic alleviation, employment and reduced corruption amongst other liberties that a free country is expected to enjoy. The expectations of the Egyptian people from the ideal called democracy might just be a little far-fetched. The problems that they hope to eradicate might stay on or might even get magnified with power hungry packs trying to fill the vacuum left behind by Mubarak. While these are domestic challenges that a Democratic Egypt would face, there are the international directives from democratic masters that newly established democracies are expected to comply with. All new democracies have had an unfortunate history of having their resources and economies plundered by the Powers of the world. Abraham Lincoln's conception of a democratic state both domestically and internationally when he said - "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy" - died with the man.