Liberalisation on hold

How should the Egyptian opposition react to a situation where their demands for political liberalisation have yielded only minor results? Omayma Abdel-Latif reports on an assessment of 25 years of party politics
If there is a lesson to be learned from the discussions assessing Egypt's multi-party system held this week under the auspices of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic studies (ACPS), it is that a basic lack of faith in democracy is the reason the process of political liberalisation has been put on hold for so long. The discussions, which involved participants from the extreme right to the extreme left of Egypt's political spectrum, revealed the polarisation of Egyptian intellectuals which has made reaching a consensus on a political formula for the future so difficult.
Speakers expressed concern over the appalling performance of Egypt's legal 16 parties, the newest of which was licensed this week and is called Egypt 2000. The record of these parties led some to even question the need for them. "Do we really need political parties in Egypt?" asked Abdel-Moneim Said, director of the ACPS. He went on to say that Egypt has never had political parties in the true sense of the word. "They were more akin to mass movements than to political parties in terms of structure," Said told the audience.
The roots of the current party system go back to 1976 when the transition to a more pluralistic political system was launched by the late President Anwar El-Sadat. This was effected through transforming the three platforms of the Arab Socialist Union -- the right, left and centre -- into full-fledged political parties. Thus the Liberal Party came to represent the right, the Tagammu Party the left and the Misr Party the centre.
At the outset of the ACPS discussions, the dominant topic was the pace and scope of the transition to a more democratic system. The pace was described by Said and others as "less than it should be and less than what Egypt with its historic legacy of statehood deserves."
This raises one of the most contentious aspects of this issue; namely, where the responsibility lies for the slow, if not stagnating, pace of political liberalisation.
Political parties, in the view of Hala Mustafa, head of the research unit at the ACPS and editor of Democracy quarterly, are responsible for the lack of dynamism characterising Egyptian politics. Democracy, says Mustafa, requires strong, popular political parties comprised of able and popular politicians, features which, in her view, most of the country's parties lack. Asserting a dearth of qualitative changes to Egyptian party politics, she suggested that the opposition's discourse has hardly developed to deal with economic and social changes. "There is a lack of faith in democracy within party ranks. Fair elections are not conducted to choose the leadership or to raise new cadres," Mustafa added.
Figures from each end of the opposition spectrum attending the seminar found these arguments hard to swallow. Farida El-Naqqash of the leftist Tagammu Party and Magdi Hussein, newly-appointed secretary-general of the Islamist-oriented Labour Party, argued that the political system lacks incentives for moderation, readiness to compromise and coexistence.
"Parties should be free to organise and mobilise support. This sort of freedom is not available under the current umbrella which excludes some parties and political groups on the basis of ideology and the emergency laws," Hussein said. El-Naqqash highlighted the negative impact of what she described as "the arsenal of legislation governing political participation." Included in this "arsenal" is the committee in charge of granting licences to political parties, which, as Hussein noted, had rejected 88 requests to found political parties and approved only six. The remaining 10 parties managed to acquire legal status through the judiciary.
El-Naqqash asserted that the state ultimately bears responsibility for this situation having decisively shaped the economic and social environment which has hindered the progress of democratisation. "The system sets the rules for the political game and the current political formula is that a ruling party will rule forever and the opposition will never be in power," El-Naqqash added.
Lending credence to this view, Mustafa Kamel El-Sayed, a professor of political science, suggested that the definition of democracy in the view of the ruling elite does not permit the sharing of power among parties. "Restrictions have been put in place so that opposition parties don't turn into real entities," El-Sayed explained.
More important, according to Yunan Labib Rizq, a prominent historian, is the nature of the relationship between the state and the ruling party. He described the current relationship as "a Catholic marriage" which should be annulled because "it will never assist in the emergence of political pluralism."
It was precisely this polarisation and lack of consensus which led one observer to conclude that even a minimal degree of consensus cannot be reached among the divergent elements of Egypt's political forces as to the formula needed to rescue the country from political stagnation. This same observer also suggested that in any future arrangement, it is very likely that the president would play a dominant role in determining the extent to which political pluralism and democratic institutions are allowed to develop. This view may explain why President Hosni Mubarak's statement to the US press last week on the need for the appointment of a vice-president was the subject of heated discussions during the seminar.
Other participants turned the focus from high politics to the grassroots. El-Badri Farghali, MP for Tagammu Party, argued that the vast numbers of apathetic and cynical masses must be integral to the process of democratisation. But for this to happen, suggested Hassan Hanafi, a professor of Islamic Philosophy at Cairo University, a kind of "cultural pluralism" needs to develop before political pluralism can be effected. "How can we talk about political pluralism in a society that is ruled by a inward-looking culture which does not accept the other," Hanafi asked.
Thus Hanafi suggested that national priorities should be re-examined, saying that a vibrant political life in Egypt is only one of many pressing issues. "Arab land is still occupied, the nation is threatened with schisms, poverty is prevalent, the masses are apathetic and our cultural identity is hanging in the balance," he warned. To face up to these challenges, Hanafi called for "a unified national project" that will bring all political forces together.
Such was also the demand of other intellectuals who called upon all opposition forces to engage in a national dialogue to achieve two objectives. These are the promulgation of a new constitution because the present constitution, in their views, does not uphold political pluralism, and the implementation of a new political formula for governance which has the support of all political forces.
So what does the future hold for the opposition forces? A united front seems unlikely in light of the infighting and political conflict among the leading parties. Observers say that the opposition parties should redefine their areas of difference and work toward a common platform. At stake is whether such an alliance can be maintained and if the opposition forces can prove they can present a viable alternative to the existing order.
Towards this end, the first action the opposition should take, says ACPS's Said, is to leave the comfort zone of seminars, speeches, and rallies and engage in real action. "This is not an easy undertaking but it is not impossible either," he added.
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See: Elections 2000
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