Despite the astonishing victory of the young Egyptian revolutionaries in the country's January Revolution, the struggle for a constitutional and democratic Egypt may be just beginning, warns Hassan Afif El-Hassan* The struggle for the future of the Arab nation has just begun, and the best thing that can be said about the uprisings that have taken place across the Arab world is that they were made in Arab lands by Arab young people. The West, including the US, may have influenced events, but it has learned to do so behind the scenes since the US-led war on Iraq. Moreover, the West, especially the US, is not a reliable supporter of democracy unless its interests are also served. The US overturned the democratic movement in Iran in 1953 led by Mohamed Mossadeg, as well as the movements led by Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, and the Sandinistas government in Nicaragua between 1984 and 1989. Most recently, it has attempted to overthrow the Hamas government in Gaza. Whatever the merits of these regimes may have been, there was no protest or criticism by the US public of attempts to overthrow them. Today, the US may be tempted to use its old tricks to abort or dilute democratic movements in the Arab states in order to ensure that small groups, "moderates" according to the US, come to dominate the politics of the Middle East rather than nationalists or Islamists who are perceived to be extremists in US eyes. From the moment Tunisian demonstrators succeeded in overthrowing former Tunisian president Zein Al-Abidine bin Ali, optimism has dominated reporting and commentary on what is being called the Arab democratic renaissance. There is hope that the future will bring equal rights and justice in constitutional, democratic and pluralist societies, especially in Egypt. The resignation of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was an astonishing victory for the young Egyptian revolutionaries. But the struggle for the future of Egypt is just beginning. The constitution and the election laws must be rewritten, the shaken economy rebuilt, and the grinding poverty, massive unemployment, housing shortages, injustice and inequality addressed and stability restored. Many past revolutions that overthrew tyrannical or corrupt regimes then replaced them with more of the same. The 1789 French Revolution that called for democracy ended with the crowning of an emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, for example. The American Revolution of 1775-83 institutionalised the system of slavery that it took a civil war to abolish. The fledgling democratic constitution in the US excluded women and slaves from voting, and in France the poor, women and servants were excluded from elections. The movement that drew on broad ideas of addressing social injustice in late-19th-century Russia later coalesced into the tyrannical Bolshevik movement. However, the revolutions that took place in Eastern Europe in 1989, overthrowing Soviet-style communism, may invalidate such warnings. Perhaps because the dictatorships in these countries had been imposed by outsiders in the shape of the former Soviet Union, democracy prospered in these countries after the overthrow of the communist dictatorships. There are questions about US democracy even today. The candidates with the most money are the most likely to win US elections, and the rules employed in the US presidential elections may not allow the candidate preferred by the majority of voters to become president. When more than two candidates run for the office of president, the winning candidate may also have a plurality of states but not a majority of votes. In fact, in 12 cases since the election of Andrew Jackson as president of the US in 1828, the winning candidate has not been the first choice of the majority of voters. This makes the US system even less democratic since the president's power has been growing at the expense of the legislative branch. It may take years for liberal democracy to succeed in the Arab world, including in Egypt, because liberty and political pluralism have not been practiced there in generations. Egypt's 1952 military coup created the template of a strong leadership cult around its leading figure, former president Gamal Abdel-Nasser, and this has since been emulated by other presidents and by many other regimes in the Middle East. This leadership cult inhibited the development of a political opposition that might have challenged the regime by demanding reform. The young Egyptian generation that overthrew Mubarak should avoid replacing one tyrannical system with another. The electoral process is central to democratic legitimation, but democracy cannot be reduced to elections even if these are fair. The elections held in recent years in Iraq and even in Afghanistan have been hailed by US politicians and some commentators as success stories of democracy, but Iraq and Afghanistan are still best described as failed states. The constitutions of Egypt under Mubarak and Tunisia under Bin Ali did not foresee these countries being run by repressive dictators, but their systems of governance nevertheless became dysfunctional when so-called elected leaders maintained their control through fraudulent elections, corruption, the banning of opposition parties, the persecution of critics and the use of emergency laws. Today, there are reasons to be concerned about the future of democracy in Egypt, even if, as the present writer believes, Egyptian young people's yearning for freedom is too powerful to settle for anything less than real democracy. Historical examples raise long-standing questions about whether new democracies can manage daunting economic crises. At this time of the Arab youth revolutions, and once government institutions are reformed, under what economic and institutional conditions will democracy be consolidated in order to meet the needs and aspirations of populations? Arab populations in the Middle East have been trained to consider the government as a provider of subsidised foodstuffs, employment, healthcare and education. Given the choice between a market economy and a Scandinavian-style welfare state, the Arab masses would approve the welfare model. However, choosing this type of economy has international dimensions that may limit reformers' options. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and foreign aid donors are known to support free-market economies, even if they lead to economic dislocation. There was a popular uprising in Egypt when the prices of subsidised foodstuffs were raised in 1977 by Sadat. For two days, on 17-18 January, order broke down in Cairo, rioters attacked police stations and foreign interests, and the regime was traumatised by the violence. Sadat called it "the thieves' uprising." The entrenched bureaucracies that issue regulations and administer policies in the Arab world may also be a major challenge to the democratisation process. The voice of the people may be heard on election days, but it may not be heard by the bureaucrats. The latter, their careers not depending on political popularity, are known for their violations of the will of electorates. The core of their work is based on acquired experience, and, as Carl Friedrich has argued, a government's being responsible to its people depends on its having a responsible bureaucracy. Politicising religion by imposing one religion as the sole official faith, as some Egyptians have demanded, would be a serious setback to political liberalism and the constitutional democratic state that was a major objective of the Egyptian uprising. Imposing one religious doctrine, even if it is the faith of the majority, can open up conflicts and arouse sectarian hostilities. Yet, liberal democracy does not dismiss spiritual questions as being unimportant; on the contrary, it says that because of their importance such questions should be left to each citizen to decide. Despite the present optimism, the future of democracy in the Arab world is hardly secure. This is because it carries within it the problems of the present moment as well as the legacy of the past. * The writer is a political analyst.
