The wave of uprisings that swept many Arab countries two years ago was a response to the failure of the Arab national project that emerged in the aftermath of World War II and its inability to meet its pledges to the people. The protest movements, particularly at their outset in Tunisia and Egypt, were thoroughly peaceful. The images of the revolutionaries, their persistence, their inclusive spirit, and their discipline in maintaining the peacefulness of their marches and rallies won worldwide admiration and praise. The revolutionary movements inspired the widespread hope that they would usher in a new phase that would lead us from an era of closed horizons to an epoch brimming with possibilities because it would be grounded in the recognition of people's fundamental right to forge their future together. Sadly, the season of joy did not last long. It was deliberately smothered while still in its cradle, with the result that what we see today in all the countries of the Arab Spring is various degrees of security breakdown, anarchy and lack of government control, while conditions across the Arab world remain turbulent and portend yet further collapse. It is hardly necessary to recap events. The reports of the Arab and international news agencies and satellite television networks on recent political assassinations — the latest being the assassination of opposition politician Shokri Belaid in Tunisia — offer a clear enough picture of the general trend. After tragic incidents of this sort it is only natural that a country should be precipitated towards further instability, chaos and the erosion of the prestige of the state. In Egypt, the situation is no better. In the wake of the ruling two weeks ago that upheld the death sentences handed down in the Port Said football stadium case, Egypt's major cities including its capital erupted in protests and rioting of a magnitude unprecedented in this country's modern history. Today, this violence continues. The 6 April movement has proclaimed a campaign of civil disobedience, while similar campaigns are already in progress in Port Said, Daqahliya and Gharbiya and tit-for-tat trashing and burning of Muslim Brotherhood and opposition offices has become virtually commonplace. Meanwhile, the toll of the dead and wounded mounts by the day as a result of the conflict between the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies and National Salvation Front (NSF) supporters and other opposition groups. It must have come as something of a shock to the presidency when bloody clashes broke out in Sohag when university students and opposition forces protested against President Mohamed Morsi's appearance in the Upper Egyptian city on Saturday. Sohag after all gave Morsi 80 per cent of its votes in the presidential election run-offs, the highest pro-Morsi vote among all Egypt's governorates. That same Saturday afternoon saw another ugly outburst of violence when thugs in the employ of the Brotherhood's Guidance Bureau attacked journalists and activists outside the group's headquarters in the Muqattam area of Cairo. Many journalists were savagely beaten and a woman was brutally slapped in the face by a Brotherhood member. The televised images of this brutish assailant striking a defenceless woman have continued to stir national outrage. Later that evening, as more people gathered in front of the Brotherhood's headquarters, the group's militias — with the support of the police — lashed out with even greater violence against the demonstrators, prompting opposition forces to call for a mass demonstration in front of the Brotherhood's headquarters to condemn the group's practices and protest against the existence of the organisation at all on the grounds that it still has no official licence. All this brings us back to square one. Although President Morsi has invited all the country's political forces to take part in a national dialogue, the opposition forces have refused, insisting that the current constitution must be abolished first. This constitution, hastily pushed through an Islamist-dominated Constituent Assembly and then rushed to a plebiscite, was tailored to serve Brotherhood interests, and it cannot be said to reflect a national consensus. The opposition forces have called for a national salvation government to lead the country through the transitional period. During this period, an independent commission, one truly representative of a broad national consensus, would supervise the formulation of a new constitution, after which new parliamentary elections would be held. In addition, the opposition forces have proclaimed their intention of boycotting the People's Assembly elections that were announced earlier this month unless a number of important conditions are met. These include the need to address a number of controversial points in the parliamentary elections law, effective guarantees for the integrity and transparency of the polls, and the need to neutralise Brotherhood influence over institutions that effect campaign publicity, canvassing, funding and voting processes, such as the ministries of the interior, youth, waqf (religious endowments) and supply, as well as other supervisory bodies. Against this backdrop, it has been announced that US Secretary of State John Kerry failed during his recent visit to Cairo to persuade the opposition parties to set aside their conditions and participate in the next round of parliamentary elections, a position that some have charged reveals Washington's pro-Muslim Brotherhood bias and is a bid to open the window to the Islamist group's political salvation. Both Popular Current leader Hamdeen Sabahi and Mohamed Al-Baradei refused to meet with Kerry because they believed that his visit to Egypt was an attempt to curtail the ongoing revolution before it had attained its goals of full democratic transformation and the prevalence of democratic consensual politics over the Muslim Brotherhood's winner-take-all approach to democracy and its drive to “Brotherhoodise” the Egyptian state and society. The Muslim Brothers argue that they reached power through the ballot box and that this gives them incontestable legitimacy. Recourse to the polls is the democratic way, they say. While this is undeniably true, the ballot box is only one component of the democratisation process, and it is not sufficient in and of itself for the development of a fully-fledged democratic order and civic polity. The significance and, indeed, urgency of this observation becomes all the more apparent in the case of a country such as Egypt that at the beginning of the transformation process needs to forge a new social contract. A constitution in which such a contract is embodied is not a document that can be left to the whim of a majority at any given moment in time. It is a ground plan for the future of a society and as such its formulation must include all components of that society in a consensual process. This applies in particular to religious and ethnic minorities whose rights to full and equal citizenship will not be guaranteed unless they are given effective voice in a consensual process that produces a constitution that can embrace and voice the aspirations of all members of society. The question of the constitution leads us to one of the chief reasons for the conflicts that are now raging in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and the other countries of the Arab Spring. Their transitional periods following the downfall of their dictatorial regimes were too short. Perhaps the only exception to this rule is Yemen, which thanks to the Saudi Arabian sponsored Gulf Cooperation Council initiative has succeeded — at least thus far — in emerging from the tunnel of anarchy. The reason this initiative succeeded is precisely because it set in motion a process of national dialogue that brought on board all political parties and factions and in which the logic of consensus, or everyone being equally considered to be a winner, prevailed over the logic of majority rule, or winner-take-all politics. After decades of political decay under the ruling elites that preceded the Arab Spring, only the movements of Political Islam, which had taken advantage of numerous opportunities to reorganise their ranks, had the capacity to fill the void. After having been momentarily taken off guard by the protest movements spearheaded by a younger generation equipped with technological and social media know-how, but with little experience in political practice and organisation, the tightly organised Muslim Brotherhood and its allies quickly rallied and manoeuvred to hijack the revolutionary movement and steer it towards meeting their thirst for domination and power. Apart from some token nods and gestures towards “dialogue”, generally being too little and too late, consensual politics and inclusion were not in such groups' game plan. The result has been to drive the country to an unprecedented degree of polarisation and tension. The only way out of the current impasse is to rehabilitate the political transition and democratic transformation and to meet the need for a transitional phase that is long enough and open enough to enable civil society to reconstitute itself and give all democratically-spirited political forces and trends, long repressed under the dictatorial regimes, the chance to reestablish themselves so as to be able to compete effectively in free-and-fair elections. Until that point comes, the various political forces in the countries of the Arab Spring must agree to create national unity governments charged with completing the transitional processes through the formulation of laws and regulations that foster the creation of strong political parties, a fair and even terrain for political competition, broad public participation and robust civil society institutions. These national unity governments should also be charged with formulating their countries' new constitutions, which should embody a true consensus between the diverse components of society and thereby bring about a political climate conducive to parliamentary and presidential elections and a healthy new start for these countries. Unless the spirit and practice of consensus and inclusion prevail over the spirit and practice of majoritarianism and exclusion, our countries will only slide further into chaos and possible collapse, extinguishing the last vestiges of the hopes that were kindled by the Arab Spring.
