The pathway to the future was marked out five years ago, writes Abdel-Moneim Said It may have started out as an ordinary day of the week but 26 February 2005 would prove to be historic. I knew that it would not be an ordinary day when I received a phone call from NDP headquarters at six in the morning informing me that President Hosni Mubarak would deliver a key speech at Al-Masaai Al-Mashkura School in Menoufiya. I was asked to be there, along with the members of the party's Policies Committee. Soon afterwards I received another call, from a senior NDP official, telling me that I would be very pleased with the president's speech which conformed with opinions I had long expressed in my writings and in discussions at various NDP meetings. Several more phone calls confirmed this, although no one I spoke to would reveal any details about what the president was going to say. It was, therefore, with anticipation that I set off to Menoufiya that morning, to the school where Mubarak had completed his secondary education. On arrival I met many friends and colleagues, all of them excited about the rumours of "significant constitutional amendments" and even louder whispers concerning "the end of the state of emergency". My mind immediately flashed back to a meeting that President Mubarak had held a month earlier with a group of Egyptian intellectuals and journalists. Amending the constitution was one of the subjects raised and in response to suggestions by Salah Eissa the president said, "That sounds reasonable. It could be given further thought." I was struck by the response at the time, and my mind briefly strayed to the world of political science which draws a clear distinction between the thinker and the politician. The first -- granting his good integrity -- is unhampered by obstacles or boundaries. He tends towards the idealistic, is something of an optimist, and is generally impatient for change. The politician -- also granting his good integrity -- needs to tread more cautiously. He has to consider his priorities and, more importantly, those of his people, and there are numerous limitations to be faced. He must think not only of the first step towards change but also of the next steps and what costs they will entail. The thinker has the freedom to soar towards distant horizons and is frustrated by delays; the politician knows that you have to carefully lay the groundwork for every step, wait for circumstances to ripen and be able to anticipate a favourable public response. This takes the wisdom of experience and the fortitude that comes with high office. I have no way of knowing what Mubarak's thoughts were at the time. Most likely his discussion with intellectuals and journalists, including both the sensible and not so sensible opinions that were aired, formed part of what was already germinating in the president's mind and in the upper echelons of the NDP concerning constitutional changes and, specifically, the need to amend one of the most crucial articles, that regulating the election of the president. The substance of the president's speech in Menoufiya is now familiar to all. It paved the way for the biggest qualitative step in Egyptian history since King Mina united Upper and Lower Egypt -- the amendment of Article 76 to provide for direct multi- candidate presidential elections. Henceforward, standing presidents would have to compete on an equal footing with other candidates to win the votes of the people. In addition, President Mubarak announced that the time had come to draft an anti- terrorism law which would make the state of emergency redundant. Subsequent developments, not least the controversy over the amendments that followed the legislative and presidential elections in 2005, are well- known. I expressed my views on the matter in the People's Assembly hearings, in NDP meetings and many articles written on the subject for Al-Ahram and other newspapers. One can pick at a point here or disagree there, but there is no denying that the political situation in Egypt has changed. Political reform moved forward amid great din, and in tandem with sweeping social and economic transformations, sparking the occasional outburst of clamour as is only to be expected given the huge media and communications explosion. Much of the current political discussion in Egypt takes as its starting point the president's Menoufiya speech when the process was set in motion that has led, most recently, to an alliance between the Wafd, Progressive Rally, Nasserist and the Democratic Front parties which together convened a conference demanding constitutional change. In the near background is an array of intellectuals and journalists who have been pressing for political reform, at times homing in on the demand to amend constitutional articles 76, 77 and 88. These forces found, in former IAEA director Mohamed El-Baradei, a leader and symbol. They set in motion a petition in support of their cause. Although to date they have collected no more than 10,000 signatures -- a paltry figure in a population of 84 million -- the issue remains pressing for such a large contingent of intellectuals and politicians that it cannot be ignored. With all due regard for the authors of the petition, constitutional reform will never progress until it is embraced by the NDP. This is not just because the NDP is the ruling party but also because it contains some of the best minds in Egypt. Among them are those who have noted that the question is not high on the list of priorities of the great majority of the Egyptian people and lacks strong support within the party itself. Others point out that a single electoral term has yet to pass since the constitutional amendments were introduced and that we should wait before making further amendments since otherwise the constitution will lose its authority. As valid as these arguments are, they fail to take into account that constitutional reform is only one alternative. What the NDP should be doing is to consider constitutional reform as part of a more comprehensive process of reassessing our political system as a whole. This process must proceed independent of forthcoming elections, though obviously we must do everything in our power to ensure they are conducted lawfully and fairly, in accordance with the established rules and procedures. Then, over the next five years, proper attention can be devoted to constitutional reform. Egypt has changed considerably over the past five years. Political, economic, social -- even geographic and demographical developments -- have been of such magnitude that our current system of government cannot possibly keep pace and cope with their consequences. On these pages, and elsewhere, I have discussed the types of changes Egypt has undergone, from the population boom, the rise in the prevalence of educated youth and improved healthcare to the effects of globalisation and closer contact with the world, urban expansion outside the Nile Valley, to the Sinai and along the Mediterranean Coast, changes in the size and makeup of the middle class, and the impact of the IT revolution. To these we can add the huge impact of the development programmes introduced by President Mubarak which have forged ahead, in spite of the economic crisis, and are nearing completion. I refer to the construction of 1,000 factories and thousands of schools and hospitals, the massive expansion of the country's infrastructure, the radical overhaul of the financial system and of legal structures affecting income and real estate taxes, pensions, and an increasingly robust private sector, all of which have been crowned by a rise in domestic and foreign investment which will exceed LE1 trillion by the end of the current presidential term. These changes have combined to reshape Egypt economically and socially, making it impossible to ignore the need to reshape it politically, but on condition this is done in a carefully thought-out and well-prepared way and that a national consensus exists over the types of changes that are needed. More importantly, we must address fundamental questions that have long formed the substance of political tugs-of-war, including the relationship between religion and the state, the extent of state intervention in the economy and society, and Egypt's ties to the wider world. They are questions that have long been ignored by many of those now clamouring for constitutional reform. Just as the NDP led the way to the last constitutional amendments, it must now lead the way towards new ones and set an agenda for the process during the forthcoming electoral campaigns. The NDP should also turn its attention to the other main issue in Mubarak's speech in Menoufiya, an anti-terrorism law that will lead to the end of the state of emergency. There has been a broad consensus on the issue in the discussions inside the ruling party. The differences between officials responsible for security and those responsible for legal affairs have been reduced to two. The first is the length of precautionary detention available to security officials for the purpose of investigating anyone suspected of involvement in terrorist activities. The second is what to do with the large number of peoples who will be released from prison without having renounced violence and terrorism. I have no intention here of meddling in favour of this or that opinion on these issues. An amateur viewpoint would count for little compared to those of the masters of law, whose first concern in such cases is to defend civil liberties, or to the security experts, whose task is to safeguard national security. Some considerations, nevertheless, cannot be ignored. The first is the promise that the president issued to charge the agencies involved in drafting anti-terrorist legislation with seeking an appropriate balance between civil and personal liberties and security needs. The second is that the People's Assembly and Shura Council elections, and the presidential elections, cannot help but stir controversy, both at home and abroad, if they are held under the emergency laws. It is also time for a significant boost in allocations to the security agencies, so that they can deal efficiently with the growing challenges posed by terrorism at home and abroad. Public employees in education, health, Al-Azhar and the public sector manage to supplement their incomes at the public's expense. The phenomenon is not found among those who put their lives on the line to protect Egypt's security. This is not so much about showing more care to an important segment of the Egyptian people as it is about better equipping them to deal with new security situations after the state of the emergency is lifted. Another consideration is that a gradual approach is sometimes the best way to deal with complicated issues. If releasing a large number of detainees at once places too great a strain on the security agencies, then the executive regulations of the anti- terrorism law should phase the process. Shoving the whole business of fighting terrorism and violence onto the security agencies alone is, frankly, an evasion of political and intellectual responsibility on the part of political parties, the media and other sectors of civil society. Terrorism is a phenomenon that begins in the mind. The mind, therefore, should be one of the foremost theatres in the battle to combat it. President Mubarak's Menoufiya speech concluded with an outline of a package of policies that promised a qualitative improvement in the political and economic life of the country. Perhaps the most important feature of this package was that it made development (a broad concept that embraces the advancement of society as a whole) a core principle of Egyptian policy. This commitment has been translated into action over the past few years with a reasonable degree of success. Now the NDP must seriously begin to think about how to build on this experience. Parliament was not like it used to be. The markets are not like they used to be. With sky- rocketing food prices, soaring energy prices followed by a global financial and economic crisis, it was no small achievement that the political and economic reform process continued to move forward, keeping the country stable, and that the economy continued to register positive growth, even if at reduced levels. The challenge now is how to prepare the country politically to deal with a world newly emerged from the economic crisis and in which some countries, such as China and India, capable of offering goods and services as cheap as dirt, as we say, will place heavier pressures on Third World economies than industrialised nations.
