The seventh annual meeting of the Arab Reform Forum was held this month in Alexandria. But will this round's recommendations once again be ignored, asks Galal Nassar I was sitting next to former prime minister Abdel-Aziz Hegazi when he stood up to speak during the seventh annual meeting of the Arab Reform Forum (ARF). The annual event, organised by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, was held from 1 to 3 March, with more than 800 researchers and academics from 18 Arab countries taking part. The former prime minister spoke in anger. "This is the seventh year we have met here," he said, "and we are still bemoaning our conditions and the decay into which we, the Arabs, have descended, the decay one sees everywhere, in the economy, in freedom, and in human rights. We need to find a place from which reform can start. We cannot go on talking and making recommendations. We cannot keep blaming each other. The world only respects the strong. And we are weak. We are lagging behind everyone in everything." Hegazi reminded his listeners of the US reaction when Egypt crossed the Suez Canal in the 1973 October War. Secretary of state Henry Kissinger then told Egyptian officials that had it not been for the action by the Egyptian army, Washington would not have called for a ceasefire or engaged in the search for peace. Arab rights will not be restored unless the Arabs improve their record on humanitarian development and human rights and introduce political and financial reform, Hegazi said. Hegazi's remarks were symptomatic of the mood at the ARF meeting. Everyone was looking for a starting point, a place from which reform could begin. When it came to my turn to speak, I voiced my dismay that Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa and the Arab League Council members were not present at the meeting to hear the opinions of those present, to listen to their recommendations, and to feel their frustrations. It would be useful if the recommendations of the ARF meeting were discussed at the Arab summit scheduled for the end of this month in Libya, I said. Yet, the Arab elites and the Arab regimes do not seem to be talking to each other, which is why there is no agreement on where we should go from here and why decisions do not seem able to be made to set things to rights. The slogan of this year's ARF meeting was "a new world is being shaped: what is the role of the Arabs?" Among the topics discussed were "making an Arab future in a changing world," "an overview of the Arab regional situation," "the digital revolution," "climate change," "the impact of regional relations on domestic dialogue," and "the role of the Arab media in inter-Arab disputes." However, some important topics related to reform in the Arab world were left out, with debate on the future of the Arab-Israeli conflict being avoided, regardless of its unquestionable impact on the Arab future. Also absent from the discussions were Israel's efforts to judaise Palestinian sites and its intention to build new settlements around Jerusalem, as well as its destruction of Palestinian homes in the holy city itself. The future of the Arab regimes was not on the meeting's agenda, but it did come up in discussion. Hossam El-Badrawi, a key figure on the Policies Committee of Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), called for the rotation of power in Egypt, for example, and lawyer and former minister Yehia El-Gamal also voiced his opposition to any bequest of power. "Anyone with a son in the Arab world wants his son to succeed him. And if someone has no sons, he will name his son-in-law as his successor," El-Gamal said. Also featuring in the discussion was the campaign by Mohamed El-Baradei, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), for constitutional change in Egypt. El-Baradei has also said that he will run in the 2011 presidential elections if his conditions are met. Answering a question about El-Baradei's campaign, the director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Ismail Serageldin, said that "we are not here to discuss the internal political situation in Egypt in particular. Rather, we are here to talk about the Arab region as a whole." Sitting on the podium throughout the meeting, together with Democratic Front Party leader Osama El-Ghazali Harb and key NDP figure Badrawi, Serageldin said that "the margin of freedom is increasing in Egypt, and there is more freedom to participate in public life. We see this in several things, including the increased scope of freedom in various newspapers, which are now posing questions about the possibility of Gamal Mubarak's nomination and whether he is a presidential candidate or not. And the papers are also discussing whether Gamal's candidacy could be interpreted as a bequest of power." All this, Serageldin said, was a sign of increased political participation in the country. "El-Baradei speaks about the reforms that he regards as necessary in this country, but the introduction of change has to take place through a democratic process at the end of the day." Serageldin warned that change as a result of military action or violence would involve unacceptable risks. Change had to take place "within the boundaries of the law," he said, adding that his comments showed that there were no restrictions on the expression of opinion within the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. For his part, Badrawi said that the rotation of power should be the way in which Arab society changes. "The prolongation of power without accountability creates various kinds of corruption, as history has shown," he said, adding that "no one can rule thinking that his rule will last forever." People's opinions will not change unless "they have hopes of power being rotated in a legal manner," he said. Arguing that the government should be the servant of the nation and not its master, Badrawi said that the Arab world had sometimes taken the worst elements of both democracy and dictatorship. "The same ideas have been voiced every year in the Arab region for more than 30 years, and unless they are implemented we are all wasting our breath," he said. In reply, Harb expressed his surprise that such remarks came from "a key figure in the NDP", to which Badrawi responded by saying that he was a "straightforward man" who said inside the NDP what he said outside it. The ARF's opening session also featured a debate between Badrawi, Harb and Serageldin on the correlation between democracy and development. While Harb said that development was impossible without democracy, Serageldin disagreed, pointing to China and Korea. Badrawi also supported Serageldin, saying that, "there are many countries that do not have democracy and yet have high rates of growth." In another context, Serageldin deplored the status of women in Egypt and the Arab world, referring to the refusal of the General Assembly of the Egyptian State Council to appoint women judges. "We still see people in judicial institutions who have doubts about women judges," he complained. Underlining the need for security, Serageldin cited Napoleon Bonaparte's saying that, "there are but two powers in the world: the sword and the mind. In the long run, the sword is always beaten by the mind." Serageldin said that he wished that "those who carry the sword today would recognise this fact." Serageldin also criticised the Arab League, saying that its member states were always in disagreement. "We haven't succeeded in creating an Arab common market, and yet the EU, an organisation created 13 years after the Arab League, has succeeded in issuing a joint currency, had eliminated borders among its member states, and is now thinking of unifying its laws." On the matter of Arab unity, the secretary- general of the Arab Economic Union Council, Ahmed El-Guweili, had a few remarks to add. He said that the Arabs needed a joint financial policy, a joint central bank, and a joint currency before 2020, and he called on the Arab countries to work hard to achieve economic union. However, he dismissed comparisons between the EU and the Arab countries, saying that the Arab countries had gained their independence not so long ago and that they remained developing nations. The European countries had found it easy to create the EU because of their strong economies, he said. Unemployment was a major challenge for Arab decision-makers since 20 per cent of the 130 million-strong work force in the Arab world was jobless, El-Guweili said. Urging diversification of exports, El-Guweili said that he hoped that preliminary measures for creating an Arab common market would be completed within five years. An Arab common market was not an empty slogan, he said. Rather, it was a necessity for Arab national security, and he pointed out that the free-trade zone agreement, signed by the Arab economic summit in Kuwait last January, was the first step towards Arab economic union. Pointing to the gap between Arab food production and consumption, El-Guweili said that the Arab world imported nearly 72 million tonnes of food annually, putting pressure on governments to provide food for their citizens. Inter- Arab, Arab-European and Arab-American cooperation agreements should be implemented in full, he added. The session entitled "an overview of the Arab regional situation" proved quite heated, with professors Alieddin Hilal from Egypt and Said Abdallah Mohareb from the United Arab Emirates discussing the regional situation and arguing that Arab regimes needed to have an effective strategy for addressing the growing influence of Iran, Turkey and Israel. Mohareb said that the Arab countries were wasting time and energy on disputes raging within their borders. The disputes among the Arab countries, the quarrel between Fatah and Hamas in Palestine, and the sectarian and ethnic strife in Lebanon, Iraq and Sudan were all sapping energies and giving outsiders the chance to meddle in Arab affairs. Another heated session was that entitled "The Role of the Arab Media in Inter-Arab Disputes," in which Karam Gabr, chairman of Egypt's Rose El-Youssef Foundation, Zoheir Qoseibati, editor- in-chief of the London-based Al-Hayat, and I took part. In my presentation, I said that the media was one reason behind worsening Arab disputes. The Arabs have many things in common -- religion, language, geography and common interests -- but these things could also often divide them. Religion, the question of borders, and various special interests have all been used to fuel sectarianism in the Arab world, and too often the print or televisual media do not express the will of the Arab people, but are instead financed by the ruling regimes or by businessmen close to those regimes and willing to fight their battles for them. There are no independently-financed satellite stations in the Arab world, for example, I said. Furthermore, Iran, Turkey and Israel have all used the Arab media for their own purposes, and the Arab media is trying to keep up with satellite stations controlled by outsiders, such as the BBC Arabic service, the US-funded Al-Horra, France 24, and Russia Today, all of which try to manipulate the Arab public. Various ethnic and sectarian conflicts have been fuelled by the media, with the Fatah-Hamas split being one. Rival satellite stations have spread chaos in Iraq, and some media channels have fomented trouble between Muslims and Copts in Egypt, as well as between the north and south in Sudan and between Sunnis and Shias in other Arab countries. Nevertheless, new forms of media, such as the Internet, Facebook, Twitter and text messaging have aimed to break the blockade that Arab regimes have imposed on the media, with the new media mobilising protest movements and encouraging change. Speaking at the same session, Qoseibati said that accusations of treason and sectarianism have become all too common in the rhetoric used by the Arab media, and he called for an Arab Media Charter that would penalise such practices, which have caused problems in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan and Egypt. Egyptian law professor Nur Farahat called for relaxing the constraints in Arab laws on the freedom of opinion and expression, adding that freedom was the only way to enhance the professional level of Arab journalists and encourage healthy competition. For his part, Amr El-Shobaki from the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies said that much of the Arab media currently lacked professionalism, which was the main reason for the lack of objectivity in reporting. Professionalism and the independence of the media from government control were necessary for media reform to take place, he said. What will now happen to the ARF's recommendations? The ARF is associated with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, which was created in the hope of matching the famous Alexandria Library, the ancient beacon of civilisation that once stood in its place. During the annual ARF conference, seminars are held bringing together some of the best minds in the Arab world, with groups of experts discussing cultural and political issues related to developments in the region and the world. The ARF concludes its work by relaying its recommendations to the Arab League, which holds its annual summit at the end of March. However, all too often the ARF's recommendations have been ignored by those who should be working for reform and democratisation. The recommendations made at the first session of the ARF in March 2004, for example, have not been followed up on. The final statement of the 2004 conference, dubbed "The Alexandria Declaration" called for "the abrogation of extraordinary courts and emergency laws, the recognition of the freedom to form political parties, guarantees for the freedom of the press and the media, and recognition of the right to form civil-society groups." Looking at the current political scene in Egypt and the Arab world, it is clear that none of these demands has been met. The emergency laws are still in force in Egypt, the country hosting the ARF meetings. Although restrictions on the press have been eased in many Arab countries, including Egypt, such restrictions are far from having been annulled. Restrictions also exist on the formation of civil-society groups and on their functioning. It seems that come March 2011, we will meet again and make further recommendations that will once again be flatly ignored by governments. It seems that the Arab regimes could not care less about the 800 people who take the time to attend the annual ARF meetings and urge reform. Until the will for reform is linked to proper political mechanisms, nothing will change.
