Al-Ahram Weekly Issue No. 252 21 - 27 December 1995
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

Reflections

Transition transpired

By Hani Shukrallah

Does the composition of the new parliament tell us anything at all about the nature of the political sphere in Egypt at the end of the '90s? I believe that it does-- so much so that, unlike most other disheartened commentators, I am of the view that, already the new parliament has well and truly earned the historic character accidentally bestowed upon it by the Gregorian calendar, as the parliament that will lead us to the threshold of a new century, and a new millennium.

True, there is much in this parliament that rather stretches our credulity. I am no fan of the Muslim Brotherhood, or any other Islamist political force in this country or elsewhere, but I find myself incapable of making the kind of giant leap of faith that is necessary for one to believe that the political support enjoyed by the Egyptian left-- which for the past 20 odd years has been in almost continuous discussion of 'the crisis of the left'-- is five times as strong as that of both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Labour Party.

Let us grant then that a more temperate electoral climate would have resulted in a considerably greater Islamist parliamentary representation-- in my estimate no more than 30 to 40 seats, which, while small and definitely no threat to the ruling NDP's parliamentary monopoly, is still 30 to 40 times the current figure as well as a higher opposition representation as a whole.

Notwithstanding the somewhat distortive effects of the above, the new parliament, in my view, has come to adequately reflect what is truly essential about the Egyptian political scene in the late '90s, and in so doing seems to have settled, for the time being at least, a question that has bewildered political analysts of the Egyptian domestic scene for over a decade.

The bafflement lay in the following:

Egypt has embarked on a process of transition from the populist authoritarian regime of Nasser towards a more liberal style of government as early as 1975, when Sadat launched the three platforms of the left, right and centre within the then single legal party, the Arab Socialist Union. A year later, the platforms were transformed into fully fledged legal political parties. In other Third World countries, similar processes almost always led either to a retrenchment of authoritarianism, usually under different forms, or to a gradual, and often fairly rapid, expansion of the space for liberal democracy, ultimately leading to the transformation of the political system and the establishment of a more or less liberal democratic formula in which political power changes hands between two or more political parties.

Initially, the process in Egypt promised to move along similar lines. During the first few years, the newly founded opposition parties and their fledgling press seemed to have an impact on the political process. The mere fact that the process of democratisation was crisis-ridden, with almost daily clampdowns and showdowns, seemed a sure indication that big choices were at stake, that the nation was being obliged to choose between full political liberalisation or a retrenchment of authoritarianism, which in any case could not be a return to Nasserist-style populism.

With the rise of Islamism-- initially fostered by Sadat's regime-- an additional dimension entered the equation. Nasser's populist authoritarianism seemed destined to give way to some form of liberal democracy, but this could be just an interim phase, giving way in turn to a new form of populist authoritarianism, a theocratic form.

But none of these scenarios came to be. And for nearly 15 years, political analysts at home and abroad have been trying to explain why. Analysts spoke of a stalled process of political liberalisation, and tried to explain away the hitches by enumerating various 'exceptional' circumstances. Liberal dogma was crest-fallen that economic and political liberalisation were marching out of step, but its proponents continued to insist that with sufficient economic liberalisation, liberal democracy in the political sphere was bound to follow. Meanwhile, Islamic revolutions were predicted at every turn.

But as the calendar kept turning over one leaf after another, brining us closer and closer to the end of the century, analysts found themselves having to explain away nearly a quarter of that century as somehow 'exceptional', as 'retardation'. Indeed the transition was fast becoming of longer duration than that which was being transposed.

The 1995 elections were by no means a historic turning point, an end to the transition. They merely underlined that a transition had already transpired, we just hadn't noticed. What analysts failed to realise was that -- all their theories and models not-withstanding-- the Egyptian middle class, the fount of authority in the country for the best part of the century, was not really interested in government through the political sphere, but rather in access to the state through direct ties with the bureaucracy. Privatisation, not liberalisation, is the catchword.

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