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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 - 31 May 2000 Issue No. 483 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 - 31 May 2000 Issue No. 483
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A lose-lose situation
By Mohamed El-Sayed Said *
After a somewhat theatrical session of one-upmanship, in which three factions belonging to the Labour Party each attempted to assert their preponderant claim to legitimacy, the Shura Council's Committee on Political Parties decided to "suspend" both the party and its newspaper, Al-Shaab, and to transfer its file to the Socialist Prosecutor-General's office for investigations into what the committee called "mistakes and misdemeanors."
It is obvious that this decision is in fact a reaction to the most recent challenge to the state initiated by Al-Shaab and its current de facto editor, Adel Hussein, who is also secretary-general of the Labour Party. Although taken as a response to a crisis -- in fact, perhaps for that very reason -- the decision will no doubt have far-reaching consequences for Egyptian political life.
The Egyptian political community, surveying the landscape from the peak of the crisis, can only be puzzled by the rapid sequence of events. It seems bitterly divided, disillusioned and overtaken by an immense sense of fatigue. Amidst the flurry, society as a whole is feeling the impact of general impotence in the face of clashing motives.
In rational, comparative terms, the crisis itself seems surprisingly minor. The issues at stake appear quite trivial. Nonetheless, the intensity of the conflict and the militancy with which every imaginable actor has helped fan the flames seem to herald a drastic turn in the course of this country's political evolution.
The present episode of political conflict forms another major link in the chain of crises that have led to a failure to democratise, and the more profound failure to achieve a consensus with regard to the nature of the political system Egyptians deem necessary for their future development. There is, then, no exaggeration in viewing this episode as similar in magnitude and consequence to the wave of terrorism that shocked the conscience of the nation during the 1990s. While the country was still reeling from the drastic implications of the wave of terror launched by the Islamic Jihad and Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiya, the Labour Party triggered a new wave of terror -- symbolic, this time, but no less real for all that.
There are certain direct links between the two episodes. The challenge, in both cases, is posed by militant political Islamic trends; the state's response has been equally adamant in both instances; therefore, the political community has lost control over events, a situation resulting in violent confrontation. In both cases, politics loses, and brute force reigns supreme.
A crucial aspect of the most recent crisis, however, has been overlooked. I am referring to the increased militancy of the Labour Party, which has transformed it into something closely resembling a political wing of the Jihad and similar organisations. One interesting feature of this transformation is that the Labour Party, under the leadership of the Hussein family, has assumed a far more radical stance, in both tactics and substance, than the Muslim Brotherhood, for example. Since the state is already engaged in an endeavour to repress, if not crush, the Muslim Brotherhood, the increasing militancy of the Labour Party has provided an adequate signal for the present clash.
This militancy is generally demonstrated in a consistent line of brutal attacks on cabinet ministers and public personalities, spearheaded by Al-Shaab. Such campaigns have formed a substantial part of the newspaper's content in the past few years, and are generally conceived with the intention of causing major crises in the political system. The moral and symbolic character assassination of ministerial and public figures, as embodied in these campaigns, has implanted negative propaganda traditions in the Egyptian print media. Some appear to have been engineered with a measure of intelligence, since they target figures already lacking in popularity. On the other hand, their long-windedness, brutal exaggeration, general use of over-kill tactics and the customary lack of strong evidence all give the impression that the real motive is to shock the political system.
Al-Shaab's previous campaigns constitute one wave of symbolic violence, which severely tested the tolerance of an already sensitive regime. Nor do its smear tactics withstand the test of good journalism. The most recent episode, however, reaches a totally different, and drastically higher, level of violence. In fact, the campaign appears to teeter on the verge of insanity. Above all, beyond the usual symbolic and moral violence, it featured the home and work addresses of the people targeted, with a clear incitement to violence -- very close to a call for assassination along the lines of the Farag Foda case, in which a prominent writer was assassinated by terrorists professing an ideology of political Islam.
The individuals targeted by this latest campaign are essentially intellectuals who play leading roles in various publishing projects run by the Ministry of Culture. This fact alone underlines the folly of the Labour Party and Al-Shaab's editorial board, since they have completely alienated potential allies in any struggle based on demands for freedom of expression. Engineering sedition is further proof of such folly, which has lost both party and paper the sympathy of all those who would like to see their country evolving in a peaceful fashion. The substance of the campaign is a third indication of completely irrational behaviour. Taking a novel, whatever its content, as a means of causing a major political crisis is generally seen, at least by moderates, as cynical manipulation. The paper designed the campaign as a generalised attack on intellectuals, writers and cultural policy officials, with the clear intention of setting itself up as an agency for censorship. This caused grave -- and legitimate -- alarm. The fact that Al-Shaab demanded the restoration of Al-Azhar's role in censoring printed materials is an additional reason for alarm.
One point is abundantly clear. The religious propaganda campaign launched by the paper has made the Labour Party look like a group of fanatics bent on imposing themselves as a religious party, against the Constitution and the rules of democracy. In this sense, the party's endeavour was not restricted to forcing itself on society as a religious party against the will of the state and the intellectuals. One of the real aims was to impose the Labour Party as the sole legitimate representative of political Islam.
In this sense, the real significance of the Al-Shaab campaign is both as "functional alternative" to and revival of the material terror campaign launched by the Jihad and Gama'a during the 1990s.
For all these reasons, I believe that the intellectual and political community should have resisted the campaign staunchly. Such resistance should not have been restricted to countering the Labour Party's bid for the status of a de facto religious authority, and rebelling against the systematic violence it advocated. The correct response should take the thoroughgoing reform of Egyptian journalism and the political system in general as its goal.
The government's reaction to the challenge posed by the party and the paper is therefore wrong on two levels. In the short run, this battle could have been won politically and judicially without administrative intervention. But the state is also wrong in attempting to determine the direction the country should take when correcting mistakes like those committed by Al-Shaab and the Labour Party.
The paper and the party are driven to fanaticism partly by their own ideology. But part of the blame must be borne by the state. The failure to produce adequate legislation on press freedom has induced a shift in Egyptian print media toward extreme sensationalism of all types. The focus is traditionally placed on forms that impinge on moral standards of society. Political sensationalism of the sort in which Al-Shaab has engaged, however, is far more dangerous.
Another, more profound problem is the constant shrinking of the political arena. Rotation of power seems out of question, and all parties are suffering from the consequences. Despair and apathy are eliminating members. In such circumstances, the only binding forces that remain are militancy and fanaticism. Political parties do not need political skills to survive here; they need connections with the state that make them servile by the same token, while reducing their popularity and the ability of agitators to manoeuvre. Statesmanship is an impossibility. In some cases, those party leaders who have a sense of public responsibility are pushed to sensationalist politics, or into oblivion. Obviously, Adel Hussein and his colleagues have opted for the former; and, since they lack the skills and the traditions of working within a democracy, and are growing increasingly alienated, their essential political endeavour can easily approach insanity.
The state is pushing certain political forces towards fanaticism and violence, and then holding them accountable for these ills. The Labour Party's leaders have failed to derive the correct lessons from the experience of the terrorist groups, although they regard themselves as the heirs of these groups. The terror campaign launched by the militant Islamist organisations eventually undermined the quality of civil and political life. The state and society alike found themselves in a lose-lose situation. Militant Islamism lost uncounted lives, not to mention any measure of legitimacy its advocates could have won through different tactics. The state, on the other hand, lost the moral battle. Society lost its respect for human rights and the prospect of a peaceful transition to democracy.
The Labour Party has repeated the same mistake. Because it usually opts for intervention, the state has lost morally -- again. The paper and the party have lost every opportunity for respect outside the space occupied by political Islam. As for society, it has lost hope, yet again, that a consensual and peaceful transition to democracy can be achieved.
* The writer is deputy director of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
