The real thing
Neither lip-service by the government nor US-imposed agendas; democracy must be real, argued the pundits in Egyptian papers sampled by Aziza Sami
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Ibrahim Haneitar of Al-Ahram continues the press bashing of Egypt's footballers: "The Pharaohs are taking their positions.";
"Why is it that every time there's a problem, they want the government to go? Why always us? Why don't the people go?" Amr Okasha in Egypt's Al-Wafd
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The question of democracy -- be it home-grown or the more dubious version which the Americans and now, it seems, the Europeans are allegedly keen on imposing on the region (aka Arab countries) -- surfaced again this week.
Democracy, that once-novel term which was the sole province of the opposition press, has finally become a staple of the lexicon of the national press as well. On Tuesday, the national daily Al-Ahram carried reports of a "US campaign to market democracy in the Middle East." Citing the Washington Post, Al-Ahram said a new plan was under way to spread democracy in the Middle East modelled along the lines of the 1975 Helsinki Accords which set out to promote fundamental rights and freedoms in Europe.
This was followed on Thursday by two analytical pieces in Al-Ahram on the same topic. Referring to the relatively sudden interest displayed by the international community (the Western powers) in Middle East democracy, Al-Ahram's reporter Mohamed Abdel-Hadi asked whether these parties, which in addition to the US, now include the EU, NATO and the G8, are not indebted to the countries they now want to reform. The reason, Abdel-Hadi writes, is "the hypocrisy which these powers displayed in supporting dictatorships in the very countries they now want to reform". Such cynicism on the part of the writer, while not commendable is, however, understandable.
On Tuesday the national daily Al-Akhbar joined Al-Ahram in underscoring the address delivered by President Hosni Mubarak to the Policies Committee of the National Democratic Party. Referring to "political and economic reform" the president said, "Egypt has the determination to every day attain progress in political and economic reform." This, he added, "is because Egypt is in control of its free will and has the ability to take decisions in conformity with what the people want."
On Wednesday, a small and tersely written news item in Al-Akhbar announced, "The National Democratic Party's Policies Committee will convene today, headed by Gamal Mubarak, the committee's secretary-general, to discuss the paper on democracy and citizen's rights."
Giving his take on democracy, the opposition daily Al-Wafd's veteran columnist Gamal Badawi on Tuesday criticised what he described as Egypt's current "isolationist foreign policy which is in line with everything that the US wants. Those who are wise advise that it is imperative to undertake political and social reform. This does not mean whitewashing the current dilapidated structure but instead, totally dismembering the political system which has been passed on for 50 years, built on sacred taboos which no one can touch. They, for instance, include the concentration of power in the president's hands, the manner of his election and the monopoly of the ruling party which continues, despite objections by the people who have become totally emasculated of any ability to impose change or reform."
Badawi argued that the question was not one of a home-grown reform versus "an imported one" but simply that development and change are the laws of life. "But in our case", he continued, "competition and free choice are not possible."
In the same vein, Abdallah El-Sinnawi, the editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper Al-Arabi, issued by the opposition Nasserist Party, wrote on Sunday that "history is not written by good intentions alone. It is sad that the opposition is at a low point, perhaps because of the long and fatal boycott imposed on grassroots political activity. The whole country is in a crisis."
El-Sinnawi refers to the revelation announced by Aziz Sidki, former minister of industry in the socialist 1960s, and which received extensive coverage this week in the opposition press, that "he has in his possession a complete list of the fat cats, or elements of corruption, of the state." Writing that the list which Sidki provided to the authorities went unheeded, El-Sinnawi continues, "The whole country is in a crisis and the political system needs to possess sufficient self-confidence to embark upon a debate in which the president himself will participate, aired on television, and whose subject will be the democratic transition of power. This would be through elections among more than one candidate, in a process whose integrity is guaranteed. Prior to that, the Emergency Law must be abolished."
Summarising the general outlook on democracy as aired in the Egyptian press, El-Sinnawi concludes, "What we need is a democracy which will stand up to home-spun despotism, and the dictates which the Americans want to impose upon us."
Moving on to the Palestinian-Israeli front, on Wednesday the national weekly magazine Al- Musawwar's Editor-in-Chief Makram Mohamed Ahmed wrote, "Sharon and the Gaza first game: will the Israeli prime minister succeed in burying the roadmap?" Ahmed contends that the current plan by Sharon is to "show nominal flexibility on the issue of the separation wall, allowing it to change its course from the depths of Palestinian territory.
"Sharon might defend his retreat from Gaza by saying that this is out of concern for Israeli lives. But this plan is essentially the same as previous plans to get rid of Gaza while consolidating Israel's presence in the West Bank. Gaza, with its dire poverty and over-population, can go to hell. Sharon is not really keen on a settlement. He was not interested, neither with Abu Mazen [former Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas] nor Abu Alaa [Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei]. He wants no Palestinian partner because he is not keen on any settlement."
On the bloody battlefield which Iraq has become, Al-Ahram's editorial on Thursday denounced the recent suicide bombings in Baghdad which left 100 dead, almost all Iraqis. "Can such acts be considered legitimate resistance to occupation? It is significant that they occurred just as a UN team was arriving to Iraq to judge whether direct elections can be held in the country. It may not be an exaggeration to say that these attacks were aimed at aborting the UN's mission. As a consequence, the transition to sovereignty will be delayed. Resistance is not planting bombs and mutilating people. Resistance is political action undertaken with the objective of attaining independence and sovereignty." Al-Ahram, significantly, described the bombings as "reckless and random". In this, it does not appear to share the current propensity of the US administration to attribute everything to an elusive and increasingly omnipotent Bin Laden.
