In focus: Point of order It is the non-partisan that exemplifies the responsibility of power, writes Galal Nassar The political scene in Egypt is confused, especially the relationship between the state and political parties. The simple fact is that in Egypt, we don't have party members with the requisite experience. We don't have people who possess the cultural understanding needed to command a political party in a democratic system -- not in the manner the textbooks suggest, nor in the way being applied in any number of countries that have adopted democracy as a way of life. Most political leaders in Egypt lack any true understanding of the ideas and practices of democracy, and real intellectuals are hard to come by. What we need, then, is a point of order, a pause in which we straighten our view of things and talk a little about the concepts and values necessary to get the democratic process back on track. Only then will cultural and political life in Egypt be able to outgrow the political adolescence and cultural degeneracy in which it has for long been mired. Now that we are witnessing the advent of new parties entering the foray, as others disappear and yet more are trapped in a dead end, we need a clear understanding of the climate that has brought some into the picture and excluded others. We need to understand the weight that some individuals bring to the scene, as well as the gap that their disappearance may leave behind. Let's begin with some of the concepts needed to order and calibrate the cultural evolution of societies as they set out to seek a better environment. Just as culture is independent from the state, so it is independent from the party. The state is a comprehensive authority, whereas the party is a partial one. The party is an authority within the authority, whereas the state represents the sum of all parties. The state is a legitimate authority, brought to power by public suffrage for the benefit of the nation. The party, meanwhile, is a legitimate authority formed through a private vote of party members. Both state and party come into being through free democratic elections. The state's legitimacy may emanate from that of the party because the party shapes its political system while the party's legitimacy may emanate from that of the state, because the party also operates within the law of the land. Should the state work for the benefit of the ruling party its legitimacy will be compromised. The state is an objective regime, whereas the party is a political option. Should the party work for its own interests rather than the interests of the state it would also lose its legitimacy as a representative of the public rather than of special interests. The conflict between the state and the party, between the whole and the part, can lead to a conflict between the two legitimacies, and perhaps to the dismantling of the state. Should the party represent one faction, sect, or region, it would become a small state while the state would become a big party. In the process, national unity erodes and loyalty to the motherland dwindles. This is why culture is important as a unifying factor between state and party, and as the common denominator between two legitimate powers -- that of the state and of the party. The political conflicts between the two must be resolved within a general national framework endorsed by the culture, which, as the common language between state and party serves as a bridge between the two. The worst scenario is when a party takes cultural, not just political, sides, and when culture follows the lead of politics. Then, the whole follows the part and the rivalry between parties, as well as the rivalry between parties and the state, turns from a political into a cultural battle, from a rivalry over details into a rivalry over fundaments. Political choices become cultural choices. That's when we start moving away from party programmes and closer to a situation in which we have a state within the state. Culture is a unifying factor, whereas parties signify diversity. Culture is the common denominator among all citizens, regardless of party affiliation. Parties are vehicles that allow the public to state a preference between manifestoes, though the manifestoes should all be programmes for the national interest. We can have programmes that give priority to freedom and democracy over equality and social justice. We can also have programmes that give priority to social justice, to the redistribution of income between poor and rich, or to state control of the means of production over economic freedom and political liberalism. These are real situations and we can have a legitimate discussion about priorities. A party is not an island. It cannot live in isolation. Otherwise its support would dry up and it will run out of steam. A party has a duty to open doors and build bridges with other parties, to expand its following and ultimately be part of a broad national alliance, a wide-ranging national front. Parties should come together in coalition in order to provide the public with other options than those offered by the ruling party. A party should be able to distinguish between the minor differences it may have with other parties and the major ones. For example, a liberal party can ally itself to a socialist party, as has happened with many liberal socialist parties or socialist democratic parties. A liberal party and a despotic party, which is usually the ruling party, could not engineer an alliance. Similarly, a socialist party and a feudal-capitalist party -- generally run by the elite that controls power and wealth -- would be incompatible. The same holds true for national parties -- Egypt first, Jordan first, Kuwait first -- and a pan-Arab party that gives precedence to pan-Arab over national interests. There is a contradiction, too, between a party that calls for peace and normalisation with Israel while Arab land is still occupied, and a party that rejects peace, recognition, or normalisation with Israel before the latter withdraws from the occupied territories. The task of culture in such situations is to build bridges between political parties and uphold national fundaments. A patriotic culture is the common denominator among parties. And Palestine is the one thing that all Arabs care for, irrespective of the ideology of political parties, irrespective of whether they are liberal or socialist, Islamic or Marxist, national or pan-Arab. A patriotic culture is a culture for all citizens, for it expresses their history and communal existence rather than their party preferences. Culture is the lasting legacy of a nation, an expression of its identity. Parties, by contrast, are class-related and transient. And they can change as interests change, or hierarchies. Parties focus on the ballot box more than on cultural identity. A party dies when it shuts itself off from the world as much as when national culture is reduced to party culture. A party dries from within when it refuses to be infused with fresh blood, not even that of non-partisans who have considerable cultural and national weight. A party dies when it finds no common ground with other parties or independent figures, when it lacks the means to act as the nervous system of the body -- conveying the total motion of the body rather than the motion of one organ, even if that organ is the heart or the brain. National culture ossifies once it turns into a party culture, once it sacrifices the homeland for power, the past and the future for the present, reason for authority, the welfare of the people for their votes, and when it tries to manipulate the public to accede to authority, asking it to obey in the name of authority. Likewise, religion dies when it transforms into an ideology, thought when it turns into a doctrine, art when it becomes imitation. Once parties become self-centred, they fight instead of engaging in dialogue, and the exclusion of others becomes their aim. One party calls another treasonous, another party is deemed sinful, and the ruling party is delighted to see such battles break out among its rivals. The centre can then dominate and party officials end up resembling the priesthood, an enclosed clergy exercising ideological and political power over members, other parties, even over the state. The party then turns, just like the church, into a state within the state, an authority within the authority. Divisions breed between the old generation and the new, between traditionalists and reformists, conservatives and liberals, the close-minded and the open. Eventually a new party would have to be born, integrating national culture into its party programme, and holding a dialogue with other parties in order to form a broad- based national coalition, a coalition capable of confronting major threats facing the country. Thus it is that national liberation and independence movements were created -- based on a broad-based national alliance inspired by the historic legacy of the nation. Here comes the role of the independent figures who refuse to be trapped within the confines of party and who can act as a link between parties -- those figures whose heart may be with one party and their minds with another. Often, these independents serve to inject moderation into political life, especially at times when other parties engage in a tug of war, with each trying to pull the homeland in its direction, to make it tilt one side or the other. But the state should be like a mountain. It shouldn't tilt or move. Here also comes the role of writers, thinkers, and politicians who stand taller than the parties. Naguib Mahfouz, the Nobel laureate, wasn't a Wafdist, although his sympathies lay with the Wafd. The novelist Abdel-Rahman Al-Sharqawi wasn't a Marxist, although Marxism was his ideological preference. Mohamed Iqbal and Ali Ahmed Bakathir were not Islamists, although they had an ideological bond with Islam. The filmmaker Youssef Chahine isn't a leftist, nor was the filmmaker Hassan El-Imam rightwing --yet both have given expression to fundamental outlooks of a country, and the spirit of a nation. Their greatest films belong to them, not to their ideological leanings. The same goes for thinkers and writers. Mohamed Hussein Heikal, Taha Hussein and Abbas Mahmoud El-Aqqad were not liberal thinkers and writers. They were thinkers and writers who defied ideological classification. They expressed the culture of a nation and the renaissance of a country. And so did the great patriotic leaders in the Third World in the 1950s and 1960s; Abdel-Nasser, Sukarno, Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Chou En-lai, Mao Tse-tung, Ghandi, Nehru; they gave voice to their homeland through cultural identity, despite party affiliations that were based on the national front. Castro and Chavez still embody this time-honoured and heroic tradition. Homelands still give birth to such people, and will do so for as long as new forms of hegemony and imperialism emerge. The Arab world is still waiting for someone to fill the vacuum, for someone to step out of the corridors of power and into the vast horizons of national culture.
