Mission unclear

By Salama A Salama

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The only "change" that Egypt saw of late -- some would say it was a dress rehearsal for future elections -- was the Facebook dialogue between Gamal Mubarak, head of the National Democratic Party's Policies Committee, and a select number of young people.

Claiming that more than 12,000 Egyptian citizens followed the debate on the Internet, a US paper said the event was an attempt by Gamal Mubarak to boost his popularity before the 2011 elections.

The event seems to mimic the Obama campaign methods, for it is thought that his dialogue with the young people of America won him the elections.

But there is a huge difference between the dialogue taking place on Egyptian Facebook and the one that took place on the US Facebook. For one thing, the latter was followed by free and fair elections that defined the meaning of "change".

In the case of the Egyptian Facebook, the dialogue took place in the shadow of threats to restrict various freedoms, including the Internet. The dialogue took place only hours before a scheduled meeting between Hosni Mubarak and Obama.

The hope for "change" through well-publicised dialogues remains thin, and even the participants must have been aware that the whole thing was little more than a "dress rehearsal" or "test balloon". This was not a dialogue designed to know the true opinion of the youth ahead of free and fair elections. If there was a promise of change in it, it must have escaped my attention.

The answers given by Gamal Mubarak to the simple questions one hears every day were evasive. They were simple repetitions of statements made earlier by other party officials. They were not designed to probe into the concerns of the people or sympathise with their dreams for change and renewal.

Compare this with the Internet dialogue held by Obama and his aides during the US presidential campaign. In that case, "change" was the central point, and it did capture the imagination of the young and old alike -- change in domestic and foreign policy, change in faces and responsibilities. Obama promised that the following years would see change and progress. This is why the young took part in the US dialogue, voluntarily and without being told to do so.

We in Egypt and Arab countries resist change and progress and then blame our societies for the backwardness in which we live. Gamal Mubarak said something to this effect when he told his Internet interlocutors that Egyptian society resists change and opposes progress. Gamal attributed this state of affairs to fear of the future and to prevalent passiveness that holds back the development of society. He is partly right, except that it is the regime, not society, that's responsible for our backwardness. It is the regime that is spreading the fear and submissiveness that are holding us back.

The claim that Arab societies resist change is one that ruling regimes invoke to postpone reform, maintain the status quo, and keep rulers in office. It is their excuse for widespread corruption and inept administration. And it is the only way for them to justify repression and electoral fraud.

These "choreographed" dialogues are the ruling party's way of corralling public opinion and duping us into thinking that there is only one choice for political life in Egypt in the coming few years. The ruling party would have us think that the only way forward is through selecting certain groups of young people from different social backgrounds and organising them for a future mission. The thing is, this mission is still unclear.