A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Showing posts with label ElBaradei. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ElBaradei. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

One Reason Egypt's Liberals Lose Elections

I plan to write at some length soon about the Egyptian Constitutional referendum, but this is an inital comment. As expected, it passed: most voters want stability and are not terribly concerned about turns of phrase in a constitution. Turnout was low, opposition high in Cairo and major cities, but Upper Egypt carried the day. Like other countries I could name (I live in one), the views of urban elites are often not very compatible with those of the less urban hinterland. In a democracy, though, winning candidates need to appeal to a broad spectrum of opinion. You do not say to the voters what you may say to your inside-the-Beltway drinking buddies. Not if you want to win.

Now, Mohamed ElBaradei is an extremely popular Egyptian liberal among Western journalists and some of the intelligentsia, though he has spent more of his time abroad than in Egypt for decades: he's a key figure in the liberal (not the revolutionary) secular side.  Days before the second round of the referendum, the former IAEA head tweeted:
The Arabic goes a bit beyond the English, indicating that poverty and illiteracy create fertile soil for trading in religion.

Now, illiteracy is a big problem in Egypt and in many emerging democracies, as is poverty.

But the thing is, Dr ElBaradei, you just called the people whose votes you need in order to win illiterate, and probably offended their religious beliefs to boot.

Ah, you may say, but if they're illiterate and poor, they can't read you on Twitter. True enough. But the Muslim Brotherhood can; the Salafis can; the preachers these folks listened to on Friday before voting on Saturday can. Do you think they don't quote this and similar comments to their flocks?

Democracy 101: telling the voters they're illiterate rubes is generally a bad way to win votes, even if it happens to be true.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Egyptian Potential Presidential Candidates Maneuver

Over the past few days, Egyptian political figures have started to emerge from the upheaval and position themselves for expected Presidential elections. Departing Arab League Secretary-General ‘Amr Moussa has thrown his hat in the ring, as has Mohamed ElBaradei, to no one's real surprise. Though ElBaradei is already hedging a bit with conditions on the constitutional amendments issue, I should note that my cynicism in the past year or so over his chances were based on the fact that there was no then-constitutional route to power open to him. For example, back in 2009, I snarkily noted:
. . . his conditions include an independent national committee to oversee the elections, absolute judicial supervision of the vote, and international observers.

And rainbow-colored unicorns in the inaugural parade, I suspect. Okay, Mubarak senior and junior will surely agree to all that.
Well, the Military Council has already pledged most of that, except the unicorns, and these days, after all that's happened, I'm willing to believe even in rainbow-colored unicorns. Mubarak senior and junior are gone. It is, obviously, a whole new ball game.

I'm sure veteran opposition figures like Ayman Nour, and the longstanding political parties as well as many new ones, will also be looking at their options. The Muslim Brotherhood is playing a cautious game, afraid of spooking the West.And one of the oldest faces of the old guard, Safwat al-Sharif, who goes back to the Nasser era and was a Mubarak loyalist to the end, is said to be forming a new party to replace the NDP. No comment there, but don't bet your savings on its chances.

We're still at the beginning of the process, but they're off and running.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Surprise! Baradei Will Not be Next President of Egypt

As most people in the West figured out a while back, and as anyone in Egypt who hadn't been hitting the goza too hard figured out early on, Mohamed ElBaradei's not going to win the Egyptian Presidential elections.

When this whole flurry was beginning late last year, when ElBaradei stated his conditions for running for President as if the government were required to negotiate with him and he were De Gaulle demanding conditions, I noted:
. . . his conditions include an independent national committee to oversee the elections, absolute judicial supervision of the vote, and international observers.

And rainbow-colored unicorns in the inaugural parade, I suspect. Okay, Mubarak senior and junior will surely agree to all that. No problem there. What else? Sorry if I'm so cynical, but has ElBaradei 1) just been out of the country too long, 2) let the whole idea go to his head, or 3) been celebrating getting free of the Iran nuclear issue a little too hard?
That may have been too hard on him, but I'm not so sure. Lately, he's been an absentee candidate, or non-candidate (since under current rules he can't run), spending a lot of time in the US and Europe. Some of his supporters have been disillusioned.

Now he's apparently recognized the inevitable: under present conditions, he won't run. The cards are stacked against him, and he now says he never wanted to run anyway.

Especially in this period of transition, he couldn't have changed the electoral laws without a massive populist campaign. Not a politician to begin with, he'd been out of Egypt too long. As a respected critic of the regime, he can still have clout, but even if someone had found a loophole to let him run, he couldn't have won. He may be a stronger critic from outside the system.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Egyptian Non-Campaign Gets Dirtier: Trying to Smear ElBaradei

As I was enjoying the last three-day weekend of summer (Labor Day here in the US), the Egyptian campaign for the Presidency (which, of course, doesn't exist, there being no official candidates) got dirtier. In the wake of Gamal Mubarak accompanying his father to Washington (the Egyptian Foreign Minister has denied Israeli press reports that "Jimmy" met with Bibi Netanyahu) and the curious wave of ‘Omar Suleiman posters around Cairo, somebody (I wonder who?) leaked the private Facebook photos of Layla ElBaradei, Mohamed ElBaradei's daughter, by posting them on an open Facebook group, leading to their publication in some Egyptian newspapers. Since her privacy settings are reportedly intact, either her page has been hacked or one of her Facebook friends leaked the screenshots and photos. So far more Egyptians and others seem offended by the violation of family privacy than by anything in the photos.

The leaked photos themselves are here
. I link not to further the smear campaign but so readers can see what the fuss is about (and how innocent the pictures are: safe for work unless you work for the Taliban). Though captioned "ElBaradei's Family Secrets," they're not particularly shocking: mostly wedding photos of her marriage to her British husband, and some beach photos where she's in a relatively modest bathing suit. But in increasingly puritanical Egypt the presence of apparent wine glasses at the wedding reception, and the swimsuit photos, as well as a party photo of her and female friends with champagne bottles, may cause some scandal, as could a screenshot of her Facebook Info page in which her political views are listed as "very liberal" and her religion as "agnostic." She's obviously not running for office, and her views may not be shared by her father, and her Facebook page was supposed to be private anyway.

ElBaradei has accused the government of being behind the campaign, which seems to be a widespread assumption. His National Association for Change says it will take legal action.

The Muslim Brotherhood backed ElBaradei on this, saying the following:

Given the realities of modern political campaigning, it should come as no surprise that the candidates most likely to use negative ads are the ones who feel most challenged . . .

However, there has been speculations such allegations may have been initiated by the Egyptian security apparatus, in an effort to influence the public negatively toward El Baradei, playing on both their emotional and spiritual stance. It may have also been seen as a shot to weaken the stance of the popular political opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood, which supports El Baradei in his appeal for political change, but it will not tolerate such allegedly unislamic behavior. If this proves to be the fact, it will reveal that security is bidding on the publics' religious & sentimental values.

Undoubtedly, for most Egyptians, choosing a ruler whose criminal security apparatus focuses on beating and killing civilians, and who shows no regards to human rights, freedom and dignity is far more than dangerous than electing the father of a bikini-clad daughter.

A lot of bloggers are making similar points, and the violation of a family's privacy seems to have offended many; the ruling National Democratic Party has distanced itself from the affair. Blogger Zeinobia wants ElBaradei to slap somebody. The breach of etiquette seems more controversial than any wine glass on a table.

Egypt isn't used to down-and-dirty electoral politics, at least above the local constituency level where real competition does sometimes occur; with the uncertainty about the 2011 Presidential elections, there's something like a campaign going on, but without a lot of precedent or legal underpinning. The Suleiman posters remain a puzzle. The smear on ElBaradei not only involves an invasion of privacy (were there wine or champagne bottles at Gamal Mubarak's wedding? No one knows: no pictures ever were published), but also attacks the man for his (adult, married) daughter's alleged behavior/religious leanings, and thus crosses all sorts of lines, including hitting at him through a female member of his family. The fact that the group that would normally have most objected to the pictures and information page, the Muslim Brotherhood, has denounced the whole ploy, suggests that whoever was behind this has miscalculated. If this was indeed an attempt by State Security or Gamal's supporters to smear ElBaradei, it may have backfired.

Monday, August 30, 2010

Stranger and Stranger: Saad Ibrahim Signs Gamal Mubarak Proxy

Okay, this gave me a double-take and then a triple-take: Saad Eddin Ibrahim has signed a proxy supporting the nomination of Gamal Mubarak for the Presidency.

Yes, I checked and it's not April 1. Yes, that's really him in the picture, and there are lots more pics of the signing at Al-Yawm al-Sabi‘ as well as an account (Arabic).

The AP account notes that he says he didn't "endorse" Gamal, he only supported his right as a citizen to run. This Al-Masry al-Youm report calls him "the most prominent opponent of tawrith" (the passing of the Presidency from father to son), and quotes him as saying he supports every Egyptian's right to run for the Presidency, and has also signed a proxy for Mohamed ElBaradei. (Link is in Arabic.) Perhaps it really is a statement for pluralism.

Yet he also gave the pro-Gamal forces a huge PR coup; he's savvy enough to know they would play this up heavily. Hassan Nafaa, a backer of ElBaradei, was quoted in the AP report as saying: "He's either lost his mind or there is a deal with the ruling regime . . . This is a miserable fall for Saad and no one is going to believe him anymore."

Naturally one wonders if this was some sort of quid-pro-quo for his being allowed to return to Egypt from exile earlier this month. He's long been a critic of tawrith, and he's long been outspoken, even to the point of going to prison and going into exile, so a sellout to the regime doesn't seem likely. I'm reserving judgment for now; I've known Saad on and off for years and am not sure if he was really trying to make a point or what, but it seems clear the Gamal folks are going to milk this for all it's worth.

If you missed it while I was away, Issandr El Amrani's weekly column for Al-Masry al-Youm English last week was about "Gamal Mubarak's Non-Campaign" and opened with the words, "How strange Egyptian politics are becoming." He can say that again; I'll eagerly await his take on this, and post more as I see it.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Demonstration for Khaled Sa‘id

UPDATE: More at the #khaledsaid hashtag on Twitter. Aida ElBaradei is the name of ElBaradei's wife, and shows up as one of those tweeting.

There was a demonstration today in Alexandria for Khaled Sa‘id, the young Egyptian reportedly taken from an Internet cafe and beaten to death by police. (My earlier post on the subject here: since then, the government has reportedly "investigated," and despite the photos that clearly show severe beating, they continue to attribute his death to drug consunption.) The demonstration, at the Sidi Gaber mosque (a small mosque to discourage large crowds), was visited by Mohamed ElBaradei, Ayman Nour, and other opposition figures. There is clearly real public anger about this, but if anyone was expecting a march on the Bastille, it didn't happen.

Some YouTube video:

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

ElBaradei Bandwagon: Slowing Down?

Many of Mohamed ElBaradei's reformist supporters in Egypt are growing disillusioned with their hero's record to date. We've touched on some of these complaints before, but The National gives a good summing up.

They're catching on that a man who's spent decades outside Egypt, has no campaigning experience (outside of international organizations, anyway), no well-organized infrastructure, and is up against a pro-government official media and an opposition press which agrees only that Mubarak must go, may not be a recipe for victory in an entrenched, dominant party and a widely-questioned electoral system, may not be able to walk on water after all.

You'll hear more from me as my recovery proceeds.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Is ElBaradei Running for President Everywhere but Egypt?

While I'm citing The National, I'd also note this piece about how Mohamed ElBaradei's "prolonged absences from Egypt" are "confusing" his followers; he's visited the US, Cameroon, and other places, and many of his chief aides have been attending a conference in the US.

This would seem to reinforce the sense that ElBaradei's appeal is to an elite group, perhaps even to expatriates, and may not run too deep at home.

Friday, April 30, 2010

Amanpour's Egypt Show

I missed it on CNN, but Egyptian bloggers have been commenting on Christiane Amanpour's show on Egypt in which she interviewed Mohamed ElBaradei, ruling party figure Ahmad Ezz (a close ally of Gamal Mubarak), and Saad Eddin Ibrahim. It's on YouTube in several parts, the first of which is here (or, as a commenter notes, the whole thing is in one place here):



If nothing major intrudes, I'm off for the weekend.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Mubarak Meets Cabinet

Well, as promised, Husni Mubarak has held his first Cabinet meeting since his surgery, in Sharm al-Sheikh, not Cairo. I can't find pictures just yet, but see they discussed (gasp) wheat subsidies, Nile water sharing, and inflation.

His long convalescence had been starting to raise eyebrows again. And his 82nd birthday will be May 4, which will give everyone the opportunity to break out the succession stories yet again. Right now, Mubarak may be all over the state media, but ElBaradei owns the news cycle and the independent media. I suspect he'll either become more visible or drop some clues to his plans; the longer he does neither, the more uncertain things become. He's already caused flutters in the Egyptian Bourse over rumors of his condition.

Friday, April 9, 2010

ElBaradei, Mansura, and the Friday Prayer

I'm off for the weekend and it's my daughter's birthday, so anything short of peace breaking out won't lure me back, but here's a story to leave you with. It relates to last Friday, not to today, but here's the tale: Mohamed ElBaradei was making a visit to the Delta city of Mansura last week, his first major foray out of Cairo to promote his reformist agenda. Plans were for him to attend Friday prayer at a mosque that can accommodate 3000 worshipers, but surprise, for "security reasons" he was told to attend a mosque that can hold only 500.

As the linked Al-Masry al-Youm English report notes, regular worshipers at the mosque were surprised to see a new preacher in the pulpit. He repeatedly cited the Qur'an Sura IV, 59, " O ye who believe! Obey Allah, and obey the Messenger, and those charged with authority among you."

He also prayed for the health of Husni Mubarak, that his Presidency would continue, and noted that Mubarak had made Cairo as significant as Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem.

I'll let Muslims comment on the propriety of that remark, but my own reaction is: subtle. Subtle as an atom bomb. Do they think this helps their case?

Oh, and also: doesn't the government keep saying the Muslim Brotherhood can't run as a political party because it's wrong to mix Islam and politics?

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Reports from the Cairo Protests

A grab bag of reports on today's 6 April protests and the government's heavy handed, but apparently successful, attempts to neutralize them:
On the whole, like last year, those attempting to protest were met with a show of state force, and as some of the reports note, the absence of ElBaradei is apparently leading to criticism by many. As for Ayman Nour, he was reported holed up in the Al-Ghad Party HQ, which was surrounded by police.

Cairo is not Tehran, and while the April 6, 2008 labor protests were spontaneous, the 2009 and 2010 efforts to repeat them have fizzled in the face of determined state power.

Monday, April 5, 2010

ElBaradei Goes to Church

There are rather confusing reports about Mohamed ElBaradei's attendance at Saturday Night's Easter liturgy at the Coptic Cathedral in Abbasiyya. Senior government officials, though Muslim, always attend, as do senior diplomats. In some of the coverage: beforehand, it had been announced that since he is a recipient of the Order of the Nile, he would be seated in the front row. (The Order of the Nile is Egypt's highest award, and recipients follow only the President in protocol, ahead even of the Cabinet.) But he apparently was kept at arm's length by the church. Pope Shenouda, of course, is on record as a Gamal Mubarak fan. There are some confusing contradictions in the reporting. This English-language report (the first two links were Arabic) suggests that he was almost snubbed by Shenouda and that he was seated well away from US Ambasasador Margaret Scobey, though the photo at that link appears to show him next to Ambassador Scobey. As Zeinobia notes, the official press is showing the photo; and as another of her blog posts notes, his photo made the front page of Al-Ahram for the first time since he returned to Egypt. (Online version of the article in Arabic here.) (A commenter on her post said ElBaradei wasn't identified in the Al-Ahram caption. Perhaps not in the print version, but he and Scobey are identified in the online version.)

Now, in case some readers are missing the rather obvious message of the official media parading that picture, the message is: ElBaradei is America's man. That would surprise a lot of Americans who dealt with him when he headed the IAEA, but the picture of him next to Scobey is pure gold from a regime propaganda point of view.

I doubt if Easter is this politicized even in most Christian countries; certainly (unless perhaps in Lebanon) a Christian holy day isn't this politicized in any other Muslim country.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

New Yorker on Egypt Succession

A reader has recommended a piece by Joshua Hammer in The New Yorker on the Egyptian succession. Unfortunately only the abstract is available to non-subscribers, but I'll link to that and those with access can read more.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

The National on Egypt's Succession

Nadia Abou el Magd offers a good summary of the Egyptian succession question in this morning's The National, the increasingly essential Abu Dhabi English daily. (My praise is totally independent of the fact that their journalists have interviewed me for a couple of stories.) This story notes that Gamal Mubarak's first daughter Farida was born in London, not Germany or the US as in some early reports, but also notes that it's still awkward for a potential President of Egypt to have his first child born in the capital of the former colonial power.

And since we've been so focused on Mubarak's health, return, granddaughter and other such things lately, I'm not sure if I've yet called your attention to Steven Cook's piece on Mohamed El Baradei in Foreign Affairs. Since Foreign Affairs has a lot more readers than I do, you probably have seen it already, but just in case, there it is.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Do These Remind You of Anything?

I've been cribbing a lot lately from Issandr El Amrani at The Arabist, but he finds a lot of great stuff, especially on Egypt. He's been mining the ElBaradei Facebook sites for political art and has a post called "ElBaradei Fan Art". There's something distinctly familiar about these two:





Hey, it worked once . . .

Monday, March 8, 2010

Babaradei

From The Arabist, Babaradei:

Friday, March 5, 2010

Mubarak's First Comments on ElBaradei

Husni Mubarak is in Germany to meet with the leadership and undergo medical treatment (gall bladder pain, I gather, is the official explanation). Being in country where people can actually ask the questions they want to, he's made his first comments on the ElBaradei phenomenon. He's free to join any political party and run for the Presidency (except for the fact that only parties with five percent of the seats in parliament can run candidates, and no one but the Muslim Brotherhood and the NDP qualifies, and Catch 22: the Muslim Brotherhood is not a party) or he can run as an independent (if he can get a petition from several hundred members of Parliament, local councils, etc., who are almost all NDP).

Oh yes, and Mubarak said ElBaradei is not a national hero, and added, "We don't need a national hero."

Okay. I guess that clears that up. He's free to run, except that he's not eligible. And despite being one of Egypt's most prominent figures on the interntional stage, he's not a national hero.

Now, I wouldn't have used the word "hero" myself: he's been the senior bureaucrat of an international bureaucracy, he's not Superman. But Mubarak's remarks seem a bit misleading: he doesn't really expect people to believe ElBaradei is "welcome" to run, does he?

I hate to say it, but I think Mubarak just gave the ElBaradei phenomenon a useful boost. Not that it change the likely outcome. But with Elaradei in the picture, if something were to happen to the President — just gall bladder pain? Are you sure — there could be some major shifts in the odds, like when you ignore the GPS and it says, "recalculating."

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

ElBaradei's Constitutional Suggestions

I know that this blog, like a lot of blogs that focus regularly on Egypt, has been rather heavy invested in the ElBaradei story lately. Don't mistake me: I'm not endorsing or rooting for ElBaradei or anyone else, nor have I any profound animus against either the elder or younger Mubarak: I'm not an Egyptian, and I've got no voice. I would like to see the many Egyptians who also feel they have no voice find one, but I have no idea if they'd choose ElBaradei. The Muslim Brotherhood might be a contender: not mine to judge. I'm just analyzing an interesting dynamic. But for reasons noted in earlier posts and links ElBaradei has painted the regime into a corner it's not at all sure about. But I still can't see how we get from where we are to where he could have a chance to run.

Well, he and his new National Coalition for Change have listed the seven conditions under which he would run. As I think I've noted before, there's a certain amount of, well, for want of an Arabic term that comes immediately to mind, chutzpah involved when you're lecturing the incumbent who controls the state on the conditions under which you will condescend to run against him. But since that December post linked to above, ElBaradei has played a very interesting game.

The conditions are: 1) lifting the Emergency Law; 2) reinstating judicial supervision of elections; 3) local and international NGOs monitoring the elections; 4) equal media coverage for all candidates; 5) right to vote for Egyptians living abroad; 6) revisions of Articles 76, 77 and 88 of the Constitution which place draconian limitations on the ability of independents to run for President; 7) and a two term limit on the President.

Every single demand has been made before by dissidents, protesters, opposition parties, civil society advocates, human rights activists, etcetera. It's not new. But ElBaradei is not some academic or activist, but a well-known international figure.

But how does he persuade/compel a regime that disdains him at the moment (much as they loved him when an Egyptian headed the IAEA) to change its fundamental rules?

It's still early. If for example, Husni Mubarak passed from the scene from natural causes (or any other way) before the end of his fifth term, the succession could really be thrown open. For whatever reason, Husni has not placed Gamal in an inevitable succession position, such as making him a Vice President of the senior official of the ruling party. Why not is anyone's guess. A leadership vacuum before 2011 could throw the whole thing open, especially if the military and security services are not invested in Gamal (which is debatable at best).

On the other hand, when ElBaradei and friends give a list of conditions under which they must might run against a Mubarak, it's hard not to wonder if the proper metaphor is "the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."

On the other hand, this is a new game, a new dynamic. I'm pretty sure the regime doesn't understand it and I'm starting to wonder if ElBaradei does, or is simply making it up as he goes along, one step at a time.

For a fleeting moment I thought of all the opposition figures making their pilgrimage to ElBaradei's villa and was reminded of all the Iranian figures who made their way to Imam Khomeini in Paris in the last days of the Shah.

But then I recognized all the differences: the Pahlavis by then were a lot less entrenched than the Egyptian establishment (the military and security services, business community, ruling party) even if the Mubaraks were removed from the stage. ElBaradei is a famous and respected Egyptian but nobody much knows what his positions are on (non-nuclear) issues. Khomeini was a senior ayatollah in the most clerical societal tradition in the Muslim world; ElBaradei's a bureaucrat.

Still, this is interesting to watch. Something is stirring, and an unexpected development (which can happen with octogenarian leaders) could shift the equation quickly.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Mohamed Who?

Since the return of Mohamed ElBaradei to Egypt, the official government press has either ignored him completely (see this daily roundup at Al-Masry al-Youm of a day in which the government press ignored him and the independent and opposition papers led with him), or else they have been making fun of him, even in one case basically saying he won't give interviews with the government press because his wife won't let him (that's an English language blogger's summary; the link was to Al-Gumhuriyya's home page a day or two ago, and today the link goes to today's homepage; I poked around briefly without finding the story but it may be archived somewhere on the site). Do they think branding him as henpecked (his wife's a professional in her own right) will dilute his support?

I'm not surprised, but in the age of the Internet, satellite television, and independent newspapers in Egypt, it seems that the pettiness shown by the state media ought to seem fairly glaring even to Mubarak's staunch supporters. The fellahin may not know about ElBaradei's return, but they aren't his constituency. Does the state press think their ignoring him will make him go away? Does it think making fun of him will make people see him as a clown, a man of whom the state media was itself enormously proud when he was head of the IAEA and one of the most recognizable Egyptians in the Western world (after Mubarak, and of course Zahi Hawass, who is on one of your cable TV channels in his Indiana Jones hat right now)?

It just seems like something out of the pre-Internet era, the pre-satellite TV era, that distant time nearly 30 years ago when the local state media was the only media and Husni Mubarak was President of Egypt.

Oh.