Twisted democracy
By Salama A Salama
The biggest problem with democracy, some think, is that it doesn't guarantee who's going to win. You hold free and fair elections and anyone, just anyone, can win. This is quite unfortunate; at least according to one of our neo-thinkers who recently said that democracy brought unwanted or banned political groups to political life. He called for restraint and regulations to be introduced so as to guarantee that unwanted figures wouldn't get into parliament, as they did in 2005.
This was the main theme of the recent Shura Council elections. Thankfully, the mishaps of the past have been rectified and the unfortunate loophole in Egyptian democracy has been plugged. We have just had elections that were at least as foolproof as those of Syria, Algeria and Yemen. We have successfully avoided the pitfalls of the Iraqi, Lebanese and Mauritanian elections. The elections in Iraq brought about sectarianism. And those in Lebanon brought about grave divisions, we're told. Those in Mauritania are definitely bad for the country, although we're not sure yet in what way.
The mid-term Shura elections proved to the nation that we could have elections without democracy, or democracy without real elections. Now we can safely assume that the National Democratic Party (NDP) is poised to win all or most of the seats without having to deal with competition, aside from that among its own members. In some of the constituencies we've seen heated battles among NDP rival candidates, or between NDP members and those independent candidates who will soon be joining the NDP. The elections saw no new rivalries, surprises, or political groups emerging onto the scene.
That's quite a feat. Here we have an electoral system that guarantees victory for the party already in power, a system that hands authority to those who already have it, a system that has no room for the unusual. Perhaps some faces can change, so long as they're all NDP members. But no change will happen in the composition of the new council, and no change in policy.
The only problem in that arrangement is not that the electorate will lose faith, for they did a long time ago. The problem is that democracy is being twisted out of shape. We have elections that keep the same people in power. We have elections that fail to stamp out corruption or expand freedom. We have elections that entail no accountability for the system. We have a democracy that no one can trust.
Worse than that, the process involves a heavy dose of intimidation. The process of excluding unwanted candidates is rather clumsy. Police have rounded up 800 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and independent candidates. The reason commonly given for the arrests is that the Brotherhood is an illegal group and is using religious slogans in its campaign. It was in this climate of fear and mistrust that the government decided to ban religious slogans from political life. Its real aim, of course, was to stop the Brotherhood from making further inroads into parliament.
The NDP seems to be under the impression that the Brotherhood won 88 seats in the People's Assembly because of religious slogans. In reality, only a minority of voters choose the Brotherhood because of its slogans. The Muslim Brotherhood wins whatever votes it gets because of its involvement in helping the deprived classes, the very classes the NDP has failed to court. Almost two-thirds of voters in this country don't even bother with elections, for they dislike the NDP and the Brotherhood equally. The nation is ready for a change. It is ready for a new political force to emerge. The sick and futile rivalry between the Muslim Brotherhood and the NDP is not getting us anywhere.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/849/op4.htm