Hopes for dialogue

By Salah Eissa

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One can sum up 2004, in both Egypt and the Arab world, as the year in which independence and democracy became confused.

It was a confusion that peaked following the Anglo- American assault on Iraq, though its roots stretch deep into earlier decades.

For complex historical reasons Arab political thought has been dominated by a concept borrowed from the Romans, and held even by those most hostile to Marxism and its various offshoots. This conceptual framework has always assumed that the solution to the principal dispute rests in solving a secondary dispute. When the principal dispute is between peoples and colonial rule, then achieving national independence is a necessary precursor to developing the form of government that will then come. Thus it is that the struggle for democracy is relegated to second place, and any talk on the subject is considered a breach in the national front that fights against foreign occupation or control.

The source of this confusion lies in a misreading of Marxist tenets. We now face an intellectual dualism that when focussed on independence considers any call for democracy a betrayal of the nation, and when focussed on democracy considers any failure to defend it a betrayal of the people.

I wish only that dialogue might continue between the Arab world's intellectual and political leaders in 2005, and that it will bring an end to this confusion. Confusion inevitably is an obstacle along the path towards a true understanding of any situation. Quite simply, there can be no independence without democracy and no democracy without independence.

This week's Soapbox speaker is editor-in-chief of the cultural weekly Al-Qahira