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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 suffocating atmosphere
By Salama Ahmed Salama
At times, the atmosphere can grow oppressive for reasons it is impossible to identify. Circumstances force the writer to write, but the pen may falter. What one genuinely wishes to say cannot be said, for it would drive people to despair; it would not please readers or capture their attention. So you decide to switch to another subject, easier to deal with and more entertaining -- the kind that does not cause disillusionment, or make people think. But a cloud of sadness suddenly overwhelms you. Your appetite for writing is dampened and your thoughts seem scattered and vague. Suddenly, you realise that the day of freedom has not yet dawned.
We cannot blame the smog that overcast Cairo's skies at around this time last year. The present suffocation is the effect of a political cloud, blacker and thicker and impossible to ignore: the decision taken by the Committee on Political Parties to suspend the activities of the Labour Party and to ban its newspaper, Al-Shaab.
No matter how much we object to the Labour Party's ways, banning a political party should not be taken lightly. The committee resorted to a fairly transparent legal ploy, under the pretext that the various elements inside the party were fighting over leadership. We seem to have forgotten that arbitrary actions that tailor the law to fit certain situations damages the legitimacy of the judiciary, cheapen the Committee on Political Parties itself, and undermine its effectiveness in achieving political stability and supporting the progress toward democracy.
The public has followed this crisis closely ever since its outbreak, and feels strongly that the strategy adopted to end it has nothing to do with the dispute over party leadership. Instead, the decision is perceived as a way of punishing the party and its leaders, who dared to cross certain red lines, thus provoking a regime that still seeks to guide its citizens. The party not only lied and slandered public figures -- crimes of which it was convicted in a court of law -- it used its newspaper to stir up religious indignation against a novel few had read before it acquired fame through a series of mistakes made by Al-Azhar, the party and the government.
While party leaders may deserve to be punished, due process must not be discarded so lightly. The decision does little to back claims of democratic reform, political pluralism, freedom of the press and freedom of expression.
When the government allowed the legal system to rule on the accusations of slander and libel, the conviction was more of a blow to the Labour Party than any administrative measures could have been. Had the government acted in the same way when dealing with the most recent crisis instead of running from Al-Azhar to the People's Assembly, sowing confusion in its wake, it would have won the battle and damaged the Labour Party's credibility irreversibly, without resorting to decisions handed down by the Committee on Political Parties. Statesmanship and political tact are in short supply, however. Administrative procedures and security considerations are short cuts that have prevented any of those involved from winning. All the parties to this crisis have lost, but democracy has lost the most. The Arab countries today have at least one thing in common: there is a fine line between legality and illegality.
Knowing all this, can anyone speak his mind, or must a writer start exercising serious self-censorship ?
The committee's decision may have brought some comfort to some people; it has not solved the problem, however, merely rendered it more complex. The worst of it is that a simple dispute over a work of modest literary value has sparked such a violent clash as to throw us off the path to democracy. We are completely disoriented. This is the most serious kind of accident: the kind that occurs at a crossroads. I would have thought the liquidity crisis and economic stagnation were quite enough. Why are we looking for more problems?
