Dialogues of Naguib Mahfouz: Flawed laws By Mohamed Salmawy Mahfouz: I am concerned over recent reports that the government is getting ready to prolong the state of emergency, which it had promised to annul. I had thought that we were edging closer to democracy and to a point where emergency laws would be repealed. Salmawy: Do you believe that the security conditions favour the abrogation of those laws? Mahfouz: If we used security conditions as the only criterion for keeping or abolishing states of emergency, we'd have emergency laws in every country in the world. No country is totally safe, and yet ordinary law is sufficient to address most situations. Salmawy: Sometimes, however, there are extraordinary circumstances that call for extraordinary legal measures. Terrorism, for example, is no ordinary crime. Mahfouz: Let's then pass a special law for terrorism and call it the terrorism law. Such a law should not be applied to politicians and others, but only in cases of terror. The law would be scrapped when there is no longer a need for it. But to have emergency law in place that is applicable across the board, this is something that sullies Egypt's public image, for it suggests that conditions in the country are unstable. Having such law is an impediment to democratisation. No democratic country can have a state of emergency that lasts for over a quarter of a century. Salmawy: The US itself, if you may recall, has issued extraordinary laws following 11 September. Mahfouz: The US issued the Patriot Act, but hasn't declared a state of emergency. Moreover, the Patriot Act is widely detested in America and unlikely to last for long. It allows authorities to subvert common law and arrest suspects without evidence. It allows authorities to bug people's homes without a court order. Such things are unacceptable in a democratic society. The Patriot Act is a black mark on the record of the Bush administration. And even if it remains in force until the end of Bush's term, it certainly will disappear following the next elections. Besides, who says that the Bush administration is a model for countries wishing to democratise? What the US administration has done, its assault on democracy and human rights, makes the US the last country one wishes to emulate. Still, we're worse than America in this regard. Our emergency laws date back 25 years. Salmawy: What about recent sectarian incidents? The government has just announced the arrest of a new terror network that was going to blow up crucial targets in the country. Mahfouz: The Alexandria events were quite depressing. Never before has anyone attacked worshippers in a place of worship. But don't forget that this happened while emergency laws were in place. In other words, the law does not prevent the occurrence of such incidents. Therefore, the matter of national unity remains the responsibility of society as a whole. What happened in Alexandria is not cause for extending the state of emergency, but for its abrogation. What happened proves that emergency laws are just as useless as they are flawed.
